Common Issues with Multiplayer?

So I bunch of my friends finally got Civ due to all the sales, and we were hoping to one day play together. I've heard a lot about the multiplayer though, most of it bad, though I've never tried it, and I was wondering what the common complaints were/if its still playable.

Also, I have Brave New World, a few of the them have G/Ks, and one has vanilla. Is it still possible to play together?

Hi xmol, the original game's multiplayer was broken. After turn 100 it started to get unstable, and finally your save would corrupt.

They released a patch a few days before Brave New World to overhaul completely the multiplayer. Note that you don't have to buy the extension to enjoy working multiplayer.

I've just finished a MP game, and it worked almost flawlessly. Except for a few rare bugs here and there, we were always able to continue our game.

It works. It still crashes too much, especially in the lobby. But yeah it works, and is a lot of fun once you're bored of beating up the AI. Very different game though, it can be hard to find people who actually play the game out. Almost everyone quits when you kill a couple of their units or put a city in their face. I don't htink I've ever taken more than 2 cities off a human player before they /quit the game. So, that's annoying. But also amusing. I'd recommend being able to beat at least Emperor or Immortal in single player first though, as you'll do much better than someone used to low settings like Prince or whatever where you never get invaded. In MP you will get invaded, period.

You'll be able to play against all your friends even with different versions of the game. It'll revert to the most basic version (vanilla) until those people buy the DLC or expansion packs.

PC and Mac don't talk which is frustrating for those who have friends that are fans of apple.

Simultaneous turns can be painful if you have a slow machine as those who are faster can take out troops before you realise. My advice would be to turn down settings and turn off auto-selecting units.

If you're playing with friends, you'll get good regular games where people don't just quit and it'll be loads of fun (I find solo games quite dull now) but playing with the community can mean you have people quitting when they're losing.

Good luck!