Civ V mac LAN - Firewall and Saves

[hew]

Hi there,
Ok so we are new to Civ (and to Steam!) but we got two copies recently for multiplayer as we enjoy strategy games on our LAN. However it was immensely complicated to get things running!

First off, we couldn't see any games on the LAN and resorted to playing through Steam over the internet - this worked fine. However we couldn't find the in-game feature to save the progress, and Civ games seem to be very long! (more on this later). Normally when we play LAN games, we have to add the app to the firewall ("allow incoming connections") in order to see the hosted game.

I tried adding Steam, and also the shortcut app in ~/Applications (~ = user folder), but that was unsuccessful. Switching off the firewall on both macs did fix the problem though, so I went on a hunt for the actual Civ V app, and I found it here:

~/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/sid meier's civilization v/Civilization V

Adding this to the firewall works, this is the actual app! How frustrating. I couldn't find any documentation anywhere to explain this. I thought I'd post it here for others who might be having similar problems.

In addition, the game manual states that the game can be saved. After seeing there was no option during multiplayer, we just assumed this was a single player only feature. However, after abandoning our first game (as these games are very long!), we found the next day that the game auto-saves itself.

When setting up the next hosted game, you simply need to press Load Game on the hosting screen, and scroll through to find the save with the latest in-game date appended to it.

I can only assume that the game auto-saves after each turn is completed, but would love to get some further insight on this, as we haven't kept a track of it so far.

Anyway, hope this information is useful to some of you (or coming up in google searches, which is how I found this forum).

 

[borad]

Multi-player might be different, but for single-player you can set how many turns pass between auto-saves (and how many to keep) on the options screen.

 

[forty2j]

Multiplayer autosaves every turn, and creates a file called Autosave_<turn #>_<year>. Next time you go into multiplayer, you will be able to click "Load game" and find it.

If you want to have multiple multiplayer saves going on at once, you're going to have to manipulate the saves/multiplayer folder. You'll want to create subfolders for each of your games, and move the most recent save for each to the appropriate subfolder. Then when you're ready to resume one of them, you need copy the save game you want from the subfolder to saves/multiplayer before you launch the game.

 

[hew]

Thanks for that info. So is there no "Save Game" menu option anywhere in the game? We've only done multiplayer so far.. will look out for the options for auto saving..

 

[forty2j]

Thanks for that info. So is there no "Save Game" menu option anywhere in the game? We've only done multiplayer so far.. will look out for the options for auto saving..

In single player, there's Save Game in the same menu with Exit to Main Menu / Exit Game. And I think the auto-save configuration option is somewhere up there, or on the set up game page.

In multiplayer, it's not configurable, you can't manually save, and it always autosaves every turn with a default name.

 

[hew]

Thanks, thats great.

Do you know at what point it saves? I would assume it saves when everyone has finished their turn, but I've checked and the saves seem to be one turn behind.

 

[forty2j]

Thanks, thats great.

Do you know at what point it saves? I would assume it saves when everyone has finished their turn, but I've checked and the saves seem to be one turn behind.

Yeah, saves are always start-of-turn.

 

[Aoxomoxoa]

Thanks, thats great.

Do you know at what point it saves? I would assume it saves when everyone has finished their turn, but I've checked and the saves seem to be one turn behind.

It seems to be a little bit confusing on the auto-save, but simply, loading the auto save with turn 12 in the title will be the game at the beginning of turn 13.

To change how often the auto save 'saves', it's in the options>interface options tab. I have mine set at 4.

 

[berts]

anybody used Protemac Netmine ( www.protemac.com ) ? I heard this is a good firewall too...