Has anyone actually *tried* Pitboss yet?

I'm seeing a lot of conjecture about Pitboss and how it works, but I don't see anyone saying "This is how it actually works".
Has anyone tried it yet?
My concerns are as follows:

If I run a Pitboss "server" on a computer, can I log in to Steam on another computer?
If so, can I log in to Civ on the other computer?
What kind of failure tolerance does it have? (I.e. if the power goes out, is any data lost when nobody is connected?)

I have a Hyper-V server set up at home, when I get home tonight I plan on installing Civ on one of the VMs I have on it, and testing it out so I can answer these questions... Unless someone already knows if it won't work, then I won't bother

You can only be logged into your steam account at one place at one time, that I can answer for sure :-/

CS

I would like some feedback on this too. As far as i understand, its basily an email game which allows you to take 1 turn at a time? Its maybe good for 2 players, but for more its surely unwanted. Or can you do a hybrid mode (playing a few hours, stopping, doing a fe turns in pitboss and then continue)?

scheva007 said:

I would like some feedback on this too. As far as i understand, its basily an email game which allows you to take 1 turn at a time? Its maybe good for 2 players, but for more its surely unwanted. Or can you do a hybrid mode (playing a few hours, stopping, doing a fe turns in pitboss and then continue)?

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No Pitboss is more like a real time MP game that is always running and you can login anytime and play your turn. Turn times are set by the host, but generally 24hrs is a common turn time so everyone has to do a turn a day.

CS

CanuckSoldier said:

No Pitboss is more like a real time MP game that is always running and you can login anytime and play your turn. Turn times are set by the host, but generally 24hrs is a common turn time so everyone has to do a turn a day.

CS

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I'm currently trying to organize a pitboss game to try exploring how good Civ5's implementation is. The best way to think of it as a GMR on steroids which also allows everyone to play at once if they're online so doing rapid-fire turns is possible.

NCommander said:

I'm currently trying to organize a pitboss game to try exploring how good Civ5's implementation is. The best way to think of it as a GMR on steroids which also allows everyone to play at once if they're online so doing rapid-fire turns is possible.

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Yes in Civ4 pitboss it was common to "jump start" the beginning of a game by playing the pitboss like a normal MP game and getting the start moving. Fast pitboss games were ones with 12hour timers, but you had to have a group were all the players knew they had to login twice a day.

CS

CanuckSoldier said:

You can only be logged into your steam account at one place at one time, that I can answer for sure :-/

CS

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Yeah, I was 99.9% certain I was going to fail due to this, which I did...
I think the only way I can make it work right now is if I set up a VPN to my network and have people play a "LAN" game by connecting to the VPN...

I'm curious how Firaxis expects to get feedback from us about this feature, when it's been made extremely difficult to use in the manner that gamers need it to work...

CanuckSoldier said:

No Pitboss is more like a real time MP game that is always running and you can login anytime and play your turn. Turn times are set by the host, but generally 24hrs is a common turn time so everyone has to do a turn a day.

CS

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Ah right. Would take a year to finish a game, maybe a bit less when playing on quick. Then i prefer just some good 3h sessions every few evenings.

scheva007 said:

Ah right. Would take a year to finish a game, maybe a bit less when playing on quick. Then i prefer just some good 3h sessions every few evenings.

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I do too. I want to set this up so my friends and I that can only get together to play 1 night a week, but still play throughout the week, to be able to continue a game, and then when we can all get together again, play like normal... Hopefully finish games a bit quicker and keep interest going.

Yeah, it's kinda good that if someone get disconnected, he can back but a minus that if one player quits, you cannot continue the game :/

Taegost said:

I do too. I want to set this up so my friends and I that can only get together to play 1 night a week, but still play throughout the week, to be able to continue a game, and then when we can all get together again, play like normal... Hopefully finish games a bit quicker and keep interest going.

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I was thinking of this as a good way to go about it as well.

BTW, they really need a dedicated server option for pitboss. It would be so much better if you could just have it running in the background on a server and then no one has to worry about keeping their PC on all the time.