Civ 5 Multiplayer problems

SeismoGraf said:

Certainly simultaneous turns pose problems. One could just avoid them by playing team matches e.g 3v3, with consecutive turns for each team, but simultaneous turns for the 3 players of one team. If Civ5 has this feature. Could be a nice trade-off.

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Simultaneous turns are not a problem at all. If you are not sure just have look at civ IV multiplayer. It's pretty rare that two player are making a move to occupy the same square. However if that happens "the lag wins". You then learn how to avoid such situations. It's true that some players cheating using so called "fast moves" but it's not a fault of simultaneous turns idea but its implementation (read a developer which ignores it and doesn't release a patch ).

Regarding CIV V simultaneous moves it sounds pretty scarry for me to move every single unit separatelly. They say that big armies are something about 20-40 units. Imagine clicking on 20-40 units and move them one by one every turn just to move them. I'm not talking about fights where multiple selectable clicking is often necessery but at least you can select all your 5 catapults at once and attack at once.... I'm just curious if there will be some group movements and attacks in civ V....

One more thing - the newly produced unit has to be moved away from city. What if player didn't move that unit before enemy forces proceed with their attack on the city.

will see....

Simultaneous turns are usually not a problem except where AI attacking stack of Human, and another human then decides to attack same stack, and where Human stack attacks another Human stack and where fight in progress, and human that was attacked goes to attack the attacker with another stack (however, the non-AI scenario - scenario 2, is alleviated by using stack-attack game option). These will cause game crash.

wapamingo said:

Simultaneous turns are usually not a problem except where AI attacking stack of Human, and another human then decides to attack same stack, and where Human stack attacks another Human stack and where fight in progress, and human that was attacked goes to attack the attacker with another stack (however, the non-AI scenario - scenario 2, is alleviated by using stack-attack game option). These will cause game crash.

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Of course not !

Frist thing. I don't thing AI will be using sim-turns. In Civ IV ai moves only after turn ends and before next turn starts.

There were plenty of situations that where 2 - 3 stacks of different players were rushing to take a city. And that hasn't been a problem. PC always queues and orders these moves. So even if for you these moves were in the same "blink of eye" for server there is alwyas an order against which the battle is being calculated. So no worries- it works and works well...
Just go and play civ IV multi to see that it's ok. If there was a crash however its not a problem in the idea itself but its implemenation.

In MP sim turns in civ4, when AI stack attacks a human city, it does to unit-by-unit. While this occurs, I can still play my turn and either reinforce the city (which I often do, and is in a way abuse) or attack AI back while his attack is in progress. The latter always causes a game freeze. Also, if AI stack attacks human city (again, it will always do so unit-by-unit) and another human stack attacks same city at same time, game freezes.

The way we go around it in our games is that we declare: "I'll do my attacks 1st, and you do yours after" and we switch next turn (simulating turn-based) - only when human-vs-human occurs or human vs human+AI. Also we use stack-attack mechanic (whole stack attack resolved immediately - but this does not prevent freezes in scenarios described in first paragraph)

It's true that some players cheating using so called "fast moves" but it's not a fault of simultaneous turns idea but its implementation (read a developer which ignores it and doesn't release a patch ).

Can you explain what a "fast move" is? And what do you mean when you say that the developer ignored it?

Sorry. I didn't put bossconian's quote in there correctly on my last post. The first paragraph was a qoute from bossconian's post.

I still say Civ2 had the best multiplayer especially considering it wasn't even designed for it. It ran completely smoothly without OOS errors, had the production pop-ups (Unlike Civ3 luckily Civ4 restored them) and didn't take a ton for processing power to run unlike Civ4 hosting. Also thanks to a trick someone (I forget who sorry ) you can edit your .ini file and play it with simultaneous moves.

The main concern I have is with Steamworks, I play Modern Warfare 2 from time to time on Steam and it is not the dropouts that really concern, but that does happen quite often, but it is the hacks to my game I get all the time, usually about 1 a week.

It gets to be very frustrating having to wipe out a few days or more worth of progress to get rid of the hack. I expect we would see very little of that in this community.

This thread is crazy
but hopefully civV will have great multiplayer.
i would imagine that getting multiplayer right is a huge priority for the developers.
cannot fathom how people think civ is a single player game, or that simultaneous turns are not preferable to some long drawn-out mess.

also wapamingo what in the world are you talking about>??? it doesnt sound like civ to me.

bossconian said:

Simultaneous turns are not a problem at all. [...]

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wapamingo said:

Simultaneous turns are usually not a problem [...]

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It seems obvious to me, that simultaneous turns are very problematic! Not from a technical point of view - here the simple "first come, first serve" principle is usually enough to solve a conflict.

The real problem lies in gameplay. First of all, turn-based strategy games have a different philosophy than RTS, but with simultaneous turns suddenly you have a big advantage in reacting quickly. With consecutive turns you can allocate your turn time limit freely, do things in any order, usually prioritizing important decisions over detail optimization. Simultaneous turns, although a necessity due to time constraints, change the game radically and not for the better.

In my view, Civ is not about rush-buying 4 cavalry, 500ms before the enemy pillages your horse resource. Not about hastily attacking somewhere with all your units, just to get the first strike advantage. Not about attacking an enemy submarine with your own 250ms earlier than the enemy and destroy it, instead of vice versa. Not about retreating that wounded elite unit 100ms before the enemy can attack and kill it.

I agree, and that's why the only official podcast I realy care about is multiplayer...

With stack it was rarely a problem, but I don't think that the way CIV 4 was played will work with the new 1 unit/tile of CIV 5.

Maybe having everyplayer set their action for each unit but then having the move resolution and battle occuring between the turn with an initiative given to differant player each turn like in a boardgame could work... something like that I don't know.

But I bet they though of something good.

SeismoGraf said:

The real problem lies in gameplay. First of all, turn-based strategy games have a different philosophy than RTS, but with simultaneous turns suddenly you have a big advantage in reacting quickly.

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That's the whole point in multiplayer - you have to think fast and act fast. However there is still huge space for strategic thinking as you have to run your empire as in normal turn based game.


If you don't like it - don't play it. I don't like single player so I don't play it.



However in Civ IV you were able to prevent rush actions of the attacker by stacking units so they were less exposed to a rush. In CIV V it looks that we are having a huge problem with that....

bossconian said:

That's the whole point in multiplayer - you have to think fast and act fast. However there is still huge space for strategic thinking as you have to run your empire as in normal turn based game.

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For me the whole point in multiplayer is to have strong competition and share experiences with real people. Long-term, I find it much more interesting to compete with people skilled in their quality of decision-making, rather than those skilled in speed and quantity of actions. I want time to chat with other players, be it in-game allies or enemies. Real diplomacy. Play by E-Mail removes time pressure, but it is slow. Consecutive mode with only two players/teams and a turn timer of say 1m+2s (1 minute base plus 2 seconds per unit), as well as a limited amount of short timeouts for each player, that would feel about right for me.

Thinking and acting fast can be enjoyable, too. That has traditionally been the domain of RTS, like e.g. Company of Heroes. Many of us see Civ as the exact opposite, e.g. marathon players, who optimize everything and take weeks or much longer to finish their games. Singleplayer will, with little doubt, sum up the lion share of play time in Civ5.

Of course it is a matter of taste and Civ5 will have many game modes that should suit the vast majority of people. On top of it there is modding. To repeat an opinion I wrote elsewhere, I'd like Civ5 to be the antithesis to Starcraft2. Not because SC2 or fast RTS are bad, but because popular, slow-paced and deep, mulitplayer strategy games are underrepresented.

bossconian said:

That's the whole point in multiplayer - you have to think fast and act fast. However there is still huge space for strategic thinking as you have to run your empire as in normal turn based game.


If you don't like it - don't play it. I don't like single player so I don't play it.



However in Civ IV you were able to prevent rush actions of the attacker by stacking units so they were less exposed to a rush. In CIV V it looks that we are having a huge problem with that....

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You've obviously never played a PBEM game. That or you consider it not to be multiplayer.

I take quite a leisurely pace as I play my turns, thank you very much. I've won two games being by far the slowest player.

Oh, and both were very enjoyable as MP games.

bossconian said:

Don't worry about multiplayer - neither does 2K. Multiplayer is some kind of easter egg feature. It is just like small fun addon and has never been considered as a serious CIV game mode. Also playing against human is not such fun because most of people will not get apropriate experience and game satisfaction ratio losing most of the games. When you play against AI you can save and reload and eventually win which is unfortunatelly impossible in multiplayer. Therefore you better stick to single player and never ask about multiplayer again.

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Playing online is part of the reason why I loved CIV VI so much. Nothing beats playing against a logical and cutthroat enemy that doesn't make the same exploitable and stupid mistakes and habits the AI has.

Also reloading after every fight and everytime things look even a bit bad is the lamest thing I've ever heard. It's obvious that we're two different players but don't insult Civ's multiplayer because YOU don't like actually having a worthy challenge where you can't simply reload every second and can *GASP* sometimes lose.

The Leviathan said:

Playing online is part of the reason why I loved CIV VI so much. Nothing beats playing against a logical and cutthroat enemy that doesn't make the same exploitable and stupid mistakes and habits the AI has.

Also reloading after every fight and everytime things look even a bit bad is the lamest thing I've ever heard. It's obvious that we're two different players but don't insult Civ's multiplayer because YOU don't like actually having a worthy challenge where you can't simply reload every second and can *GASP* sometimes lose.

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There is no decent multiplayer in CIV V. SHOW ME YOUR ANGER !!!!

At least something going on here. Hopefully there are some people for who the multiplayer is important feature....

Multiplayer in Civ5 will be epic, as long as the technical/networking part is done professionally. I'm looking forward to play small and big mods exclusively designed for MP.

CerberusAlpha said:

also wapamingo what in the world are you talking about>??? it doesnt sound like civ to me.

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Of course it is. However, I play FFH mods.

SeismoGraf said:

For me the whole point in multiplayer is to have strong competition and share experiences with real people. Long-term, I find it much more interesting to compete with people skilled in their quality of decision-making, rather than those skilled in speed and quantity of actions. I want time to chat with other players, be it in-game allies or enemies. Real diplomacy.

{snipped}

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There is all of that. You still have to build your empire, and there are different victory conditions other than conquest - but people like to duke it out. In the duking it out case, sometimes acting fast / thinking fast makes the difference but you still have to plan ahead and plan accordingly. Cannot compare to RTS games.

SeismoGraf said:

Multiplayer in Civ5 will be epic, as long as the technical/networking part is done professionally. I'm looking forward to play small and big mods exclusively designed for MP.

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My biggest concern with Civ 5 MP is that its going to be slow as you have to act with every single unit separately.

Turn timers are a must, IMO. The only issue is the "cannot end your turn IF IF" rule with regards to city and >1 unit - must have an gameplay option that automatically resolves this by deleting offending unit when and if timer runs out for your turn.

The beginning of a new turn in a match with simultaneous turns (ST) will be very hectic. The winner of battles will be determined by hand speed, network latency and pure luck. Concerning the management of your empire (e.g. assigning citizens, choosing techs & SP, producing items), there should be less problems, because there are fewer ways other players can interfere with it.

In Civ4 I only played a handful of public games with ST. The experience was not the greatest, not even talking about the terrible lag. Most players left soon. Not much chatting. Diplomacy virtually non-existent. Weired chaotic wars - and I haven't even fought multi-front wars involving 2 other factions.

I fear ST in TBS games to be "the worst of both worlds". Therefore I will try to find people interested in 2-team games with consecutive turns. This will roughly double the time required to finish a match, but for me it is well worth it. Anyway, I enjoy time spent with Civ and I prefer playing one fascinating match instead of two average ones.

SeismoGraf said:

The beginning of a new turn in a match with simultaneous turns (ST) will be very hectic. The winner of battles will be determined by hand speed, network latency and pure luck. Concerning the management of your empire (e.g. assigning citizens and producing items), there are less problems, because there are fewer ways other players can interfere with it.

In Civ4 I only played a handful of public games with ST. The experience was not the greatest, not even talking about the terrible lag. Most players left soon. Not much chatting. Weired chaotic wars - and I haven't even fought multi-front wars involving 2 other factions.

I fear ST in TBS games to be "the worst of both worlds". Therefore I will try to find people interested in 2-team games with consecutive turns. This will roughly double the time required to finish a match, but for me it is well worth it. Anyway, I enjoy time spent with Civ and I prefer one fascinating match instead of two average ones.

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I sounds like you played only open lobby games, so no wonder you had a bad experience. That is precisely why we invited CivPlayers Leagues way back when Civ3PTW came out, to make some rules of conduct for games. Like no quiting, cheating and treat people the way you want to be treated.

So beleive me there is a world of difference between open game and organized league games. The league promotes competition and players tend to become very good at the game.

This is why I state that simu turns is not going to effect the over all strategy and tactics in MP. Yes for individual battles, the random number generator is going to effect the outcome, and who has the fastest internet connection or faster CPU will effect who moves first.

But good MP players never put themselves in a position were a bad single battle loses the game. The same can be said for Civ3 and Civ4, battles can be decided be who moves first in those games too, but we all know that and no one that is better than average puts there entire strategy on that one battle. So for us the fastmoves/double moves issue is a non-issue, it's just an excepted part of the game and everyone knows how to deal with it.

I am sure that what ever mechanics are present in Civ5 will be no different we simply will adapt and the playing field will be level.

CS