online multiplayer community is dieing

[Sovietof17]

9-11pm, about 25 max people on Gamespy, out of the thousands upon thousands of people who purchased this game. Firaxis, please do something to correct Gamespy lobby and 'OUT OF SYNC' errors as soon as possible, before there is no one left to play this game at all....

[Dida]

civ isn't a good multiplayer game to begin with.

[SPQR300]

Originally Posted by Dida

civ isn't a good multiplayer game to begin with.

No, no CIV4 has excelent multiplayer. It was quite popular until people got bored of the technical issues. There is plenty to do with it, but as I experienced CIV is very good to play in multi. Check this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140514

[DrWu]

I play all the time, but with people I know and we use direct Ip. Why would I want to play with a bunch of randoms?

No offence.

[Rik Meleet]

I've only played direct-IP games. Why should I go to gamespy when I have plenty of people in my contactlist on MSN who like to play ?
I know they won't cheat / exploit etc. With stranger I'm not sure about that.

[EdCase]

Originally Posted by Dida

civ isn't a good multiplayer game to begin with.

I concur....I only play MP with my wife...and genenrally winning is secondary to "playing for the sake of playing"

[Ubiquitous]

A lot of people probably are waiting for a patch to be released. A lot of people have stopped playing the game entirely due to the show stopping slowdown later in the game, which is only worsened with human players playing [humans tend to build bigger and better than the AI].

[Sovietof17]

It would be nice if someone, somewhere, made a concerted effort to bring "people who liked to play CIV4" together for directIP games, since Gamespy is as you say, fairly shady..

[Skirmisher]

The funniest civ3 multiplayer experience on gamespy was a game where one player suddenly had tanks while the rest of us still only had horses and swordsmen.

That player must have been a genius.

[kattana]

>civ isn't a good multiplayer game to begin with

soooo not true. doing some lan gaming with friends is a BLAST

we are waiting for this pitboss add-on to finally come out and will be setting it up for our own private games. but right now we are using this time to fine tune our civ4 gaming techniques.

[King Flevance]

Originally Posted by Dida

civ isn't a good multiplayer game to begin with.

CIV4 is the best game I have seen with potential for multi player. Who wants to battle a computer every time at a strategy game?
I personally dont like to go online as I enjoy longer games and people on gamespy dont. I am waiting for a couple friends to buy it before I get into the multi player scene again.
I played on gamespy a couple times but I noticed towards the end people leaving game after about an hour. Or the game was turned up so fast, it felt like a RTS. I am sure alot of people like these faster games.
I quit going online to play because of the bugs mixed with I didnt like having my teammate leave the game in mid game an AI is on my team. But it was definetly not because it wasn't fun playing other people.

[skadistic]

Once the game gets smoothed out my brother and friends will get the game and the MP wil start. It will be the first online game I will have played. Beeing a turn based strat. game modem speeds won't be a defining factor in who can play who so it should be fun.

[NetMapel]

I've never tried the Civ multiplayer game, but I do wonder how feasible that would be. Wouldn't it take WAYYYY too long for each players to end their turns as the game goes on ? More city MM, unit MM and so on, that would be a drag for the player waiting for his/her turn.

[King Flevance]

Originally Posted by NetMapel

I've never tried the Civ multiplayer game, but I do wonder how feasible that would be. Wouldn't it take WAYYYY too long for each players to end their turns as the game goes on ? More city MM, unit MM and so on, that would be a drag for the player waiting for his/her turn.

Everyone goes at the same time rather trhan 1, then next, then next, etc.
This takes away on a small part but I know people who enjoy playing and we wont set a turn timer. (although it is available to speed up the game)
More than like Civ will turn into a chatroom between us and a game in the process.

[NetMapel]

Interesting... so it's no longer like a "turn-base" game, but rather everybody take their turns at the same time, then hit an "execute" button of some sort and the game will then take all your commands and execute them ? What if there are two people at war or something, and each have a unit facing each others... one decides to attack so it decided to move its unit to the other unit's position. However, meanwhile, the other person moved away its unit for whatever reason (inferior unit, so wants to run away or something). When the game execute all these plans, will you see some sort of cat chasing mouse thing going on with those two units ?

[Sovietof17]

On the back of this box (or the developers) states that "Civilization 4 is designed from the ground up to be a multiplayer game". To which I agree. I can't stand the AI, it's so peaceful and serene. I just blast off into space or conquer the world fascist superpower style every game, and never do a coalition of AI empires raise up against me to check my rise to power... In a multiplayer human game, all kinds of bargaining, intrigues, and backstabbing takes place... The AI can never even amount to .05% of the potential of a even a beginning human player...

[kattana]

all turns happen in real-time aka my tank attacks you, it happens now...

then everyone hits enter to progress to the next real-time turn

my only concern would be for dial-up users...

LOL..if they got droped from a game...good luck ever getting back in having to load the game from another person....on a 100Mb lan game with a large map in the late 1900's it could take upwards of 2 minutes to load the game from another person...via dial-up..LOL no...

[Sovietof17]

Originally Posted by NetMapel

Interesting... so it's no longer like a "turn-base" game, but rather everybody take their turns at the same time, then hit an "execute" button of some sort and the game will then take all your commands and execute them ? What if there are two people at war or something, and each have a unit facing each others... one decides to attack so it decided to move its unit to the other unit's position. However, meanwhile, the other person moved away its unit for whatever reason (inferior unit, so wants to run away or something). When the game execute all these plans, will you see some sort of cat chasing mouse thing going on with those two units ?

So each turn you have a "chess clock" of X seconds, which depends on A) the game clock speed you specify (usually Fast or Blazing - Medium is the slowest I've ever seen). The X is also incremented by achieving a new technological era. During these X seconds is when you may take your turn. If you have "combat zoom" on, the game clock pauses while people watch the combat animations. The situation you described happens frequently and is usually a race condition type of thing - usually whoever can command their units first (highest ping + able to complete city build orders popups 1st). Once I crashed my game because of this, I think it may actually be an issue that isn't quite fixed yet...

[Stuie]

Originally Posted by Sovietof17

It would be nice if someone, somewhere, made a concerted effort to bring "people who liked to play CIV4" together for directIP games, since Gamespy is as you say, fairly shady..

Why not try starting a thread here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=160

[rchddap]

Multiplayer is good, but the lobby desperately needs fixing (*hint* the scroll *hint*) and the synch issue is extremely frustrating.

however, whenever I load the game up....my first instinct is to check to see if there are any good MP games going on before I play on my own against the computer.