So a couple of friends and I, long time Civ IV PBEMmers are having a go with the post-patch to see whether CivV works as a PBEM game. I'll record any thoughts and tips here.
First thing to note is how nice the setup is for Hotseat mode. Much more pleasing on the eye than Civ IV PBEM mode, and the well-designed UI flows naturally from top to bottom of the form. The sort of little detail that goes unmentioned, but nice.
There's no way to pre-set the passwords, so you'll have to trust each other for the first round.
Interestingly, the options make it clear that the random seed is stored with the game (you can turn this off, but why would you?), so there's no possibility to re-load the game and get a different result, although there's nothing to stop someone trying a different attack order, or re-loading after a failed attack and fortifying instead.
The key is of course to play with people that you can trust not to cheat.
Perhaps the biggest issue for PBEMmers is that after your turn, alhough there is a nice big fat Save button, there isn't a button to exit the game after the save. However...
IMPORTANT TIP: After saving between turns, use Alt-F4 to bring up the quit game dialogue.
No in-game PBEM interface, of course, but since the one in Civ IV was so horrible, maybe that's no bad thing. Just create a shortcut to your hotseat saves folder and then email them normally.
It's yet to make it round the loop yet......
First thing to note is how nice the setup is for Hotseat mode. Much more pleasing on the eye than Civ IV PBEM mode, and the well-designed UI flows naturally from top to bottom of the form. The sort of little detail that goes unmentioned, but nice.
There's no way to pre-set the passwords, so you'll have to trust each other for the first round.
Interestingly, the options make it clear that the random seed is stored with the game (you can turn this off, but why would you?), so there's no possibility to re-load the game and get a different result, although there's nothing to stop someone trying a different attack order, or re-loading after a failed attack and fortifying instead.
The key is of course to play with people that you can trust not to cheat.
Perhaps the biggest issue for PBEMmers is that after your turn, alhough there is a nice big fat Save button, there isn't a button to exit the game after the save. However...
IMPORTANT TIP: After saving between turns, use Alt-F4 to bring up the quit game dialogue.
No in-game PBEM interface, of course, but since the one in Civ IV was so horrible, maybe that's no bad thing. Just create a shortcut to your hotseat saves folder and then email them normally.
It's yet to make it round the loop yet......
