I've been thinking.
Even if everyone follows religiously the turn-taking honor system of focusing on the game so that all unit movements are more or less already plotted on the off-turn and then only doing movement itself on their turns, it would still take a while to do turns later in the game. I have played many MP games in this way and it has never before seemed a problem.
However, I have recently ran into the technique of making civ a simultaneous game and it interests me greatly. Alas, it is always new methods and techniques that bring to light problems which before were not 'problems' at all. Just like everyone who had a black and white TV 50 years ago and thought that was just super, but then came home feeling second class after neighborhood gossip reports came in and found out the 'Joneses' had got themselves the state of the art; a color, superior version of their now decrepid piece of crap monotone set. So it happened with television, so it now happens with civ. Amen. Well, enough with the history lesson, on with the show.
For those of you that dont know how it works, here is it, based on my ability to read and comprehend the written language in other threads and also using some mental skills of reasoning:
By adding "Simultaneous= 1" to a specific civ file you can make the game simultaneous. Not everyone need do this, though, only I do for it to work. This means that everyone takes the same turn, and not that there are no turns and you can simply reach across the world in seconds with a warrior by wearing your button-pressing finger to the bone. Taking the same turn implies that while you are moving your ship, for example, your enemy could be moving his own ship in order to intercept it, whereas normally you could make it wherever those few unit movement points would take you without being intercepted at all.
If you move all your units exceedingly quick, though, it does nothing in helping you except establishing your positions first and reward you with more time to plot on other things. It does not mean that you can then proceed to moving all your units again, since that one huge turn that everybody shares only resets itself when absolutely every single last active unit on the entire board is no longer active.
There are some issues that arise with this style of play of course, such as that in battle the host, me, could theoretically move his units far faster than anyone else's and therefore get the obvious upper hand, say, in attacking first with all of his units with high attack and low defense like artillery instead of having them attacked first. This could easily be reprimended and accounted for and eliminated as a problem, since I, the most honorable of honorable players by whom all true honor is honorably set and followed, all very honorable-like (*hehem*), could choose to move my units at half-second intervals like everyone else would be forced to do, meaning that I would have to summon up enough will to restraint myself, even when my opponent is attacking units that could otherwise be prevented by the dishonorable use of my full speed. This is not a problem, since this is Nicosar the Faithful you are dealing with, and not Nicosar the Treacherous, but that is not the real problem. You will have to play especially defensive in wars against the computer since it will not follow by any honor code we establish among ourselves. It would be an ominously and most highly cool thing if it could, but it cant.
This also means, though, that we play with 'unit slide' on, meaning the units are slower to move and therefore the computer will be given far less of an edge. I tried to set the game options to 'no piece slide' off, thereby enacting the default unit movement, in a recent casual MP game just to test it out but it did not have any effect upon the game. I thought maybe it was because I set that option in-game and so the computer couldnt reset itself midgame, but this is not so, since the option was left on and the next time I played all other pieces besides mine were still ignoring the slide. This means, I must assume, that EVERYONE must have this option turned off, meaning slow movement on, and this before the game even starts, so that the computer will not have a chance to act on behalf of one stray player whose option is still on.
Also, this means that the former rule about not doing anything aside from unit movement on your turn is kaput, for obvious reasons, the firstmost being that EVERY turn will be your turn, and if you ignore to perform any necessary tasks by turn's end they will go untouched and next turn will roll around as soon as all units are done moving, and you will miss the opportunity. I would therefore suggest, since everyone will obviously want to do their turn movement before anything else so as to get any possible advantage, to leave a unit always active in some unimportant place where moving it would not be crucial, such as some defending unit in a safe city, so that you can move all units without worry of your cities and other business going neglected. I'm not really sure if the turns automatically recycle upon completion of everyone's turns or if some sort of concensus is required, such as everyone having pressed their enter buttons, and I will make further tests, but I would save the above advice still, as a valid method for turn-taking, just in case.
As for modern air units, simultaneousness threatens to change alot that was already set in stone. I had designed escort fighters and stealth fighters (but jet fighters really take the place of the former ones so that the new stealth fighters are so only in name alone) to act as an air-battle defense system, working respectively alongside with fighters and jet fighters, so as to provide defense for bombers, and also just as air-enforcing units to remain active on your off-turns, since both units have a range of 2 like bombers. But, with simultaneous movement, my bomber could be headed for one of your cities, with an escort fighter behind waiting to back it up, when your fighter comes out of the blue and blows it to crap, my bomber dying undefended and unaccomplished. Hmmmmmm.... would this obsolete the need for 'escort units', which are a miraculous blessing to the game in normal mode, or would it mean that certain different strategies are needed when using air power?
I havent played a game with simul-movement before so I cannot say for sure, but let me try and adress this issue, since it is the only real problem that I can foresee (how I wish now more than ever that there was a way to drag a box around several units, call them a group, and move them at the exact same time with one press of the movement key): since the only real problem, considering my wisdom in introducing the escort concept to the game, would be the problem with defenseless bombers and also perhaps though with air units that are given too low a defense, making it so that in an air battle between two fighters, for instance, the fighter that attacked first would get the considerable advantage when in real life engaging aircraft of the same type, and assumingly with pilots of the same skill, have equal chances whether being rushed at or if they are rushing towards an enemy flock. This second problem could be calculated for, and fighter units could be given maybe slightly more defense (but not equal to their attack numbers, since in civ aircraft stupidly follow ground terrain bonuses, for those of you who didnt know or forgot, and so giving them equal att. and def. would give defending units the upper hand, which is just as bad). This means, also, that bombers and stealth bombers will be given slightly higher attacks so as not to be always thwarted by overly-defensive fighters. This is the minor problem, but the more complex one involves 'eager bombers', as I shall dub this interesting dilemna, since they would go ahead before their escorts to be unfairly blown away. This COULD, theoretically, be ammended by an addition to the honor system whereby players would have to acknowledge somehow (probably through pre-attack discussion) the specific bombers that were being escorted so that those bomber/escort stacks would only be attacked when in position, or only the escorts would be attacked in such pre-warned situations, with the bombers or alone, so that you would have to defeat the escorts realistically before earning the prize of downing the bombers. This might work, though clumsily, but I have thought of an even better way: You would take the two units you would want to move, the escort and the bomber, and you would move the escort first, just one square, then put him under 'wait' command. you would then take the bomber and move him onto the square with the escort, and do this all the way to your target location. There would be no honor code involved, and so if your enemy saw an opening in this routine he could legitimately engage your undefended bomber, but that would be rare, since if you did the square-by-square movement of your escort/bomber stack quickly and effeciently, the only way he could catch you is if he had his fighter somewhere nearby waiting on standby in mid-air for your bomber to be left behind one time, but then again, you could prevent this quite easily by sending out fighters of your own your own to intercept his. I suppose the equivalent of a fighter standing still in mid air for some time would be circling planes, or whatnot, but anyway, if you really wanted to go risk-proof you could have two escorts, one in front and one behind, so that when the lead escort advanced there'd be one behind to protect the bomber! Great, I have only just worked this all out, maybe taking a few breaks to ponder upon it, but it seems to wrap up nicely! I have only calculated for all these problems right now in my own head, of course, and so perhaps there'll be some discrepancies I have not anticipated, but that should cover it. In fact, that should enrich the game through these advanced air dynamics by ten fold, and if done correctly, no player should be able to whine about the unfeasability of it.
Oh! One more thing, of course: missiles! Heres the deal, and heres where the honor code WOULD come into action, but it is no big deal, nothing fancy: if you saw a missile coming your way, you could not try and intercept it unless you had an aegis cruise, flag battleship, mobile SAM, or another cruise missile (acting as an american Patriot missile or an Isreali Arrow) that could do it in time and in range. I can think of no other units that would be sensible under this category, but in any case, the above units cover all three domains, land, air and water, so there should not be too much fussing. As for using cruise missile to utterly annihilate bomber/escort stacks, this is not allowed, just in case, but I dont think cruise missiles are set to attack other air units anyway, so we should be fine.
That seems to be it, except now I will have to change a few units and rescan the sheets and send them out, as well as adding a new section to the honor code dealing with simul-play issues.
Do not worry, all of this is less than it sounds, it shouldnt take too long, and anyway, I am already working on it...
-The Gameplayer-
