Freezing Multiplayer Games to be Continued Later

[alexmarzec]

Hi, I am new to the forums and have never played multiplayer before, so please bear with me if this is a silly question.

What I am interested in doing is playing an epic multiplayer game of Civilization with a few friends where we can play together at the same time each week, then save the game and continue it later. For example, we could all log on every Thursday, play for three hours, then everyone exits and the game saves, only to be continued the following week. This way, we could have the full Civ experience without feeling rushed, while at the same time enjoy the challenge of playing against live opponents.

Is there any way that this is actually possible without actually hosting my own server? Does creating a gamespot account and playing on their servers allow you to leave a game frozen like this? If anybody could help me out with this I would really appreciate it.

 

[whiplash_CDC]

There are at least two ways to do this.

You can play it through the internet using the GameSpy service; or you could play it by using PitBoss for a peer-to-peer connection.

If you use GameSpy you may have to fight your way through the traffic of all the other players using that portal. For each weekly session the host would just reload the save file from the previous session, let his friends join, and launch the game. I have heard of some trouble GameSpy is currently having due to inadequate server capacity following the release of Grand Theft Auto 2.

With PitBoss one of the players sets up the game and the others join via direct IP address to the host. Set it up for simultaneous turn play. The host will have a save file on his comp which can be reloaded for the next session.