Suppose you want to play MP against friends. There's a "private game" option, but how do your friends actually join it? I couldn't find this information anywhere, but through trial and error I found out, and I thought I'd let CivFanatics know.
Here's what you do:
Here's what you do:
- In Steam, add the people you want to play against as friends. They should likewise add you as friends. (I don't know which direction makes the difference.)
- Go to Steam's Friends menu and "sign into Friends". (Steam may have done this automatically.)
- Did you ever turn off Steam's in-game overlay because it was annoying you when you started the game? Time to turn it back on, you'll need it.
- Go back to Civ 5 and start your private game.
- If you haven't hosted a Civ 5 game before, Windows Firewall is probably screaming at you right now, except you can't tell because you're inside Civ. Alt-Tab out of Civ and check for that window. If it's there, allow Civ 5 to talk to the Internet.
- In your hosted game, you should see a player list that contains just you, and in this state nobody will be able to join. Click the green buttons next to the empty slots until you have the right number of players, including AIs.
- Now your friends should press SHIFT+TAB inside Civ 5. This brings up the Steam overlay, where they should see an option to join your game.
- As they join your game, the AIs will turn into them. (Note: AIs that stay as AIs will play weaker than they usually do -- hard as it is to believe -- and they will suck at diplomacy.)
- Start the game. Enjoy. Do not hit alt+tab from this point forward, it'll kick you out.