First, I am in the camp that thinks Civ5 is absolute awesomeness! Love the "no stacking" rule, graphics, gameplay... this game is very strategic from the moment you press Launch!
With strategy comes needed time to think and play. You need to plan your moves many steps ahead. I play on larger maps without turning down any options. (I tried one multiplayer the other day and hadn't noticed the host created smallest land mass possible, no ruins or civ-states then rushes with his pikeman very early knowing the likelyness of where other 3 players are... laughed my head off at why he bothers with such meaningless tricks).
Solving multiplayer save games for longer and more strategically intense games is critical. And it DOES work! Let's face it, you can get disconnected, game likely will be very long, life events happen...
Here's how my buddies and I save and resume multiplayer games. This is tested and it works well.
1) The host of the game is tasked with the autosave feature - so that's mostly me.
2) As the host, ensure your autosave game is activated - Choose "Menu", "Options", "Interface Options" and set your "Turns between autosaves" to 1.
3) At the beginning of every turn, the game will autosave something like this on the host computer: autosave_0010 BC-3600 (In this case this would be turn #10 with a game date of 3600 BC. The next save would likely be called autosave_0011 BC-3560 if you were to save every turn).
4) Having my maximum autosaves set to 5, the game only keeps the last 5 saves and continues throughout the life of the game. I haven't tried to change this maximum number.
5) Now the catch: You have to watch if one of your buddies gets disconnected! This is important because once a buddy disconnects, the AI automatically takes over the player's game. You will notice that your buddy name has been changed to that of the leader of the race played (**like Augustus Ceasar if he was playing Roman for example).
** At this point, STOP PLAYING if you need to wait for your buddy to reconnect. If you play for 5 more turns, your autosave games will have Augustus Ceasar as one of the players and your buddy won't be able to rejoin the game! Remember, in the examples here, we only autosave to a maximum of 5 turns.
6) If you only noticed a missing buddy 2 or 3 turns later, then you will need to reload the 2nd or 3rd last autosave.
7) Exit the game and return to menu. Once ready to resume the game or have the disconnected buddy rejoin, the HOST will Create new game but click on "LOAD" at bottom of screen. HOST then chooses which autosave to load and human player spots will be re-opened and await reconnection.
8) NOTE: The game name for the other players will have changed. Let's say you originally called the game "multi-8civs" or whatever... when you reload an autosave it now becomes listed with the host username instead (but your buddies should know who you are).
9) Once all buddies are back in, launch the game and resume where you left off. This way, you can carry on longer games
10) AGAIN, critical you notice when a buddy gets disconnected because the autosave replaces the player over the maximum amount of autosaves, game can't be restored with that player (there probably is a way with the CTRL-S and renaming the file but that's another discussion).
Hope this helps! Hopefully a future patch will allow players to reconnect automatically.
With strategy comes needed time to think and play. You need to plan your moves many steps ahead. I play on larger maps without turning down any options. (I tried one multiplayer the other day and hadn't noticed the host created smallest land mass possible, no ruins or civ-states then rushes with his pikeman very early knowing the likelyness of where other 3 players are... laughed my head off at why he bothers with such meaningless tricks).
Solving multiplayer save games for longer and more strategically intense games is critical. And it DOES work! Let's face it, you can get disconnected, game likely will be very long, life events happen...
Here's how my buddies and I save and resume multiplayer games. This is tested and it works well.
1) The host of the game is tasked with the autosave feature - so that's mostly me.
2) As the host, ensure your autosave game is activated - Choose "Menu", "Options", "Interface Options" and set your "Turns between autosaves" to 1.
3) At the beginning of every turn, the game will autosave something like this on the host computer: autosave_0010 BC-3600 (In this case this would be turn #10 with a game date of 3600 BC. The next save would likely be called autosave_0011 BC-3560 if you were to save every turn).
4) Having my maximum autosaves set to 5, the game only keeps the last 5 saves and continues throughout the life of the game. I haven't tried to change this maximum number.
5) Now the catch: You have to watch if one of your buddies gets disconnected! This is important because once a buddy disconnects, the AI automatically takes over the player's game. You will notice that your buddy name has been changed to that of the leader of the race played (**like Augustus Ceasar if he was playing Roman for example).
** At this point, STOP PLAYING if you need to wait for your buddy to reconnect. If you play for 5 more turns, your autosave games will have Augustus Ceasar as one of the players and your buddy won't be able to rejoin the game! Remember, in the examples here, we only autosave to a maximum of 5 turns.
6) If you only noticed a missing buddy 2 or 3 turns later, then you will need to reload the 2nd or 3rd last autosave.
7) Exit the game and return to menu. Once ready to resume the game or have the disconnected buddy rejoin, the HOST will Create new game but click on "LOAD" at bottom of screen. HOST then chooses which autosave to load and human player spots will be re-opened and await reconnection.
8) NOTE: The game name for the other players will have changed. Let's say you originally called the game "multi-8civs" or whatever... when you reload an autosave it now becomes listed with the host username instead (but your buddies should know who you are).
9) Once all buddies are back in, launch the game and resume where you left off. This way, you can carry on longer games
10) AGAIN, critical you notice when a buddy gets disconnected because the autosave replaces the player over the maximum amount of autosaves, game can't be restored with that player (there probably is a way with the CTRL-S and renaming the file but that's another discussion).
Hope this helps! Hopefully a future patch will allow players to reconnect automatically.
