[R&F] Can Host: LAN Party/Multiplayer Questions (system)

[Plaidman]

Hey Civ Fanatics:

In a few weeks I'm hosting a big multiplayer Civ game with a few of my friends (between 4-8 players), and I want to make sure everything runs smoothly. To that end, I'm wondering if you can offer any setup advice, especially with respect to these questions:

- I've had problems with desyncing in the past, which can get frustrating when it happens too frequently. How can I limit/stop this from happening? Should the game just be hosted by the person with the best computer?

- Most of us will be at my place, with a few joining in from elsewhere. Does ethernet improve stability significantly, or are we ok to use wifi? Should I be worried about my router?

- Are there any other common problems that I should know about? What fixes do you use?

We'll be playing through Steam. Systems will be a mix of PC and Mac (woo cross-platform multiplayer), some laptops, some desktops.

 

[Plaidman]

I just wanted to give a follow-up report on this after the fact, in case anyone has similar questions in the future. We had 5 players in the game +1 AI on a small pangea map on online speed, 3 local players (2 on wifi, 1 ethernet) all on laptops and 2 on desktops connecting from home. I hosted the game on my 2015 Macbook, we connected through Steam. We played for about 4 hours, made it to the Renaissance.

Desync: Nobody desynced, which leads me to believe that desyncing can be avoided by hosting the game on the strongest computer and limiting AI players (we were originally gonna play with 6 people but one player dropped out on the day and we filled their spot with an AI). We also connected the weakest computer to ethernet, and they're the one who normally desyncs, so that may have helped

Stability: Like I said, everything ran pretty smoothly.

Other problems: We found out the hard way that Macs require the game to be registered through Steam to join internet multiplayer games, otherwise the only multiplayer options are LAN and hotseat. Also, if you're buying any expansions/DLC, save yourself the trouble and buy them all from the same place (App store/Steam/hard copy/whatever). One of the players bought the base game off of the App store but R&F off of the website, and he held the game up for an hour trying to get R&F to recognize the base game and Steam to recognize everything before eventually giving up. The takeaway: just get everything from the same place, preferably Steam.

Gameplay-wise, one guy quit a ways in but the four of us that made it to the end had a blast.

 

[The googles do nothing]

I'm glad to hear it worked out!

 

[Plaidman]

Thanks! And I guess the takeaway here is this: make sure you're playing with people who are as into Civ as you are, and who have their [expletive deleted] together