Let's talk about how bad multiplayer is right now...

[sanddemon]

Hey guys,

I've got this post on Reddit about the current state of multiplayer - trying to drive traffic so we can get Firaxis to check this out.

https://www.reddit.com/r/civbeyonde...k_its_time_we_talk_about_how_bad_multiplayer/

Reposting it here so you can see...

After 50+ hours of playing with Filthy, Arvius, and other top Twitch players, I think it's time I try and get something read by Firaxis. Fundamentally this is just a broken, very unbalanced game. I'm beginning to wonder if the multiplayer was even run by QA. This list could go on forever, but I'll kind of list the main reasons that it's unplayable.

• Resyncs/reloads can lose you techs, wonders, and affinity points. Best game yet? Someone lost their Spy Academy and couldn't build another, so he had no more spies for the rest of the game. Each reload is rolling the dice to see who loses what.
  
• Map scripts are terrible. Five people placed together, with one person having the entire map... or how about all alien nests around one player.
  
• Stations are the ultimate troll - about to plant there? Nope, sorry, you have to suddenly get units to try and remove it before you can plant. Even better is you can "stall" by waiting your turn out every turn so you never have to choose the station so you can actually get your cities down.
  
• Spies are completely borked. Whoever settles first, can spy on everyone's capital. Whoever settles last, can't spy on anyone. I've attacked cities and I cannot spy them.
  
• Intrigue is also hilariously abusable by spamming "establish network", then swapping spies between ciites.... you can get to the point of nuking someone incredibly early.
  
• Affinity ruins are basically game breaking - you get none and your neighbor gets 2-3, your units are suddenly one-shot by his and there's nothing you can do about it since you have the same techs.
  
• Contact victory is incredibly broken because of how random it is. Winning under turn 75 by a dice roll is just bad.
  
• Let's not get started on how trade routes are incredibly strong and basically ICS is really the only way to play - the only thing stopping you is your willpower to deal with a multitude of options every turn. The turn timer can get to 8+ minutes... guess they want you to build more cities.
  
• Tectonic scanners and artists are basically the best options, to the point where our group has banned scanners and everyone still goes artists. Starting with the ability to build Solomon's Mine in your city on turn 1 with a worker? Policies are so incredibly strong that artists/health has no competition from any other choice.
  
• Did you just find a derelict settlement ruin? Set all your cities to culture and finish it, since it gives you 4x the culture you're making at that moment. Reset all your cities and bask in your crazy +culture ruin. Why can we turn off resource pods in multiplayer and not these incredibly broken expeditions?
  
• Did you just get a building quest for the algae building? Guess you're screwed, your city isn't anywhere near water.

I could keep going on here but the game is basically a beta. It's incredibly apparent that they asked no one about balance that has any skill in this game. Would you rather get +1 gold per Autoplant or +1 trade route per city - how is this even a choice? How is it possible that people in the stone age of Civ 5 can chop trees faster than robots? It can take you 1/10th of a game to build a terrace farm!
It's entertaining to sometimes play a completely random and unbalanced game but man, some of this is just incredibly off. The Twitch community is already going back to Brave New World... don't get me started on bison (which are deer, with no granary upgrade) and cocoa (which is citrus, with no sun god upgrade).
I'd be willing to talk to anyone from Firaxis about game design

 

[tommynt]

and other top Twitch players

The Twitch community

while the rest of the post is fine those 2 quotes somehow make it like a troll post.

What is a "twich community"?
What are these "top twitch players", Players who actually suck at playing the game but are top at spamming Videos it seems to me, by the way you write.

At least I havent seen any of the guys you mention play remotly good and I have seen a lot of Players Play. So their/your judgement might be pretty short viewed.

But then, as said your Points seems valid, but not like really unexpected.
When sp is obviously not finished and balanced you cant expect mp to be

Moderator Action: Please do not suggest or imply that other users are trolling - if you disagree with something someone has said, please express that disagreement politely.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Willburn]

I agree desynchs are a problem but the rest of your list shows you have not yet figured out much of the game. The so called annoying trolling stations can net you huge 36+ trade routes in late game with the right virtue - not to mention the fact none of this goes to your opponent. Or if you prefer to have much less power then you can simply attack it for a quick energy boost. (they are low defence as well.) If a player goes wide you take him down with military force or with spies as he cannot protect every city and coup can be done. I do not think that is a problem military wise. Regarding random affinity this is indeed powerful but I actually prefer it to be in the game but I do understand this is a bit too much and some might think it should be gone. You can always chose to play no ruins.

Also that trade routes are powerful i do not mind _AT ALL_ because it makes the game choke full of tactics. You can use mesmeri from orbitals or terraformers to block trade rutes, you can pillage them, in team games you can cooporate for more trade etc.. game is so much richer with powerful trade routes. If you start to look at this game there are so many tactics that can be done.. for example slav rush for laser orbit - that could again be countered by a smart opponent going rockets etc.. this game is very deep once you start to figure out the tech web.

Map script : I know at least skirmish puts teams together so this is a good script but I agree we need more map scripts and we need better description of where players will be put on the map.

With all this said we all agree 100% that out of synch problems are severe and worse for this game than civ5 was and this is the core of the matter that needs to be fixed.

 

[ense7en]

I've not had time to even play more than a little bit of SP, but my biggest worry about this game was MP.

Sounds about how i expected: terrible MP that we have to pray gets patched eventually so it's a viable gametype.

What's sad is how much i played MP in Civ5, and even now it's still broken with resync and reload issues.

 

[tommynt]

reload and resynch issues in civ5 are 99% connected to either:

- u Play with barbs and CS which cause huge load times in between turns - your own fault to not be able to adjust Settings to something which worksnad is more balanced

- u Play with some1 sabotaging game by alt tabbing or starting a dl or something like that - your own fault to not sort These guys out in staging room

 

[Willburn]

Civ5 MP is better than this (but yes it also has some resynch issues sometimes). When I play no quit games in civ5 we might need 1 reload during a game. In Civ BE I need 4 reloads or more and we risk corrupt saves where one has lost buildings/cities etc. So it is worse. Civ4 was much better, Maybe one out of 5 team games we needed to reload once and we could easily play 3v3 or 5v5.

Tommynt: I dont think it is as simple as someone downloading/alt tabbing. Regarding aliens/huts no I dont think this should affect the game either. I cant believe we are in 2014 and the netcode is in such bad shape. All you have to do is make sure every turn everyone are in synch and if they are not to reload the game automatically. In Endless Legend atleast it detects if you are out of synch and you can click to go straight back to lobby to rehost game so no big problems there.

 

[OranHarken]

Also that trade routes are powerful i do not mind _AT ALL_ because it makes the game choke full of tactics.

NOPE.JPG

It locks everyone into a single optimal build order. That is not choke full of tactics, that in consistent mirror matches.

EVERY multiplayer game I have played in has every player not trailing behind by 100 points playing one of 3 setups:

Polystralia/Artists/Continental Surveyor/Laboratory
PAC/Artists/Tectonic Scanner/Worker
ARC/Artists/Tectonic Scanner/Laboratory

It is only a matter of time until everyone is running one of these exact starts.

On a positive note:

If you set the world type of Taigan the lack of resource pods and expedition sites as well as the higher % that everyone get's a coastal start helps balance it out a lot.

 

[Willburn]

Nah it totally does not. Your big nope does not get you anywhere. I have much much more respect for old strategic genious like for example tommynt. (Much better than the current crop of players.) You are very weak to many things if you go strong on trade routes. Example being plundered (your very vulnerable to this early it is simply the fact most MP guys dont understand this), using miasma to block your trade, using orbital to create miasma and finally the fact it is totally fine to have trade a strong thing. I like it you dont. I hope I have majority with my when I say its a good thing as it create more fun game moments. It is however tedious and could use a better interface or solution for renewing trade routes. And by the way I totaly agree they are powerfull - if they should be or not is not what I discuss - I discuss if they are good for the fun of the game. And I think they are as just about any faction is viable with them. For me it would actually be a loss if trade routes where not powerfull. They where in civ5 and they are in BE. And I hope it stays that way. But thats my personal opinion only and not valid for the argument. It is however valid to point out they do not limit in any way strategies.

Regarding your so called most powerful setup I suggest you play me or any half decent players. Most of us hang out in NQ games. Artist is definitively not the best trait to get in all circumstances - Food is stronger if you get a single hut with culture. And your tactics is not that great.. polyestria gives you maybe 20 food/20 industry more at best vs for example a slav turn 40 laser orbital rush (use the solar for free tech) only countered if your opponent have the wits to get ballistic early (due to anti orbital ability) I think in fact all the factions are very balanced and I could probably win any MP game with any of them. You just have to know how to play and use map to your advantage. The only one I think is slightly weak is the African one with 10% food growth only when healthy. Thats very hard to keep healthy and keep wide at all times, but I assume even this I could make work if I put my mind into it due to the tech web allowing a lot of different strategies.

 

[omniclast]

I find continental surveyor way better than tectonic. Your chances of landing on coast, along with at least one other player's cap, are far better than that you land near titanium. And coastal TRs without scouting, from turn 1? Hard to beat.

 

[omniclast]

ARC/Artists/Tectonic Scanner/Laboratory

What's the advantage of this loadout over the PAC one?

 

[OranHarken]

What's the advantage of this loadout over the PAC one?

That is not one I used but from observing other people doing it, they were just taking ARC over PAC and rushing Spys.

@Willburn

When I see a single MP game last past turn 60-70 before a desync removes half the players I will take you seriously. All of your mid to late game implications mean literally nothing in MP as it is now. I simply do not believe you have had enough MP games that have lasted that long this soon after release. I've had time for only 5 and every one of them was over by turn 70 due to instability.

 

[Willburn]

All our games have crashes. But as we are NQ we simply rejoin lobby and continue playing. You should try it sometimes. Canucksoldier have a post about it here on civfanatics. Anyhow I share your frustration about the netcode - I truly wish the developers do something about this and wonder how they managed to make the netcode even worse than civ5 stock, when the engine they base the game on is the same.

 

[CanuckSoldier]

If you want to help Firaxis solve these issues we need all players in a game to turn logging on. If you do that and send the logs to me I will ensure they get to the devs. Without logs from a problem game it will be hard for the devs to track down what is going on with CivBE MP

I will assume that turning logging on is the same as Civ5 http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=487482

My email is canucksoldier777@gmail.com for anyone that does not already have it

CS

 

[Thormodr]

reload and resynch issues in civ5 are 99% connected to either:

- u Play with barbs and CS which cause huge load times in between turns - your own fault to not be able to adjust Settings to something which worksnad is more balanced

- u Play with some1 sabotaging game by alt tabbing or starting a dl or something like that - your own fault to not sort These guys out in staging room

Wha?

Talk about blaming the victim.

If using basic game features causes multiplayer to not work then it's the game designer's fault and they need to fix it.

 

[Quineloe]

I fully agree with the OP. If reloading isn't possible, then you either need to designate an entire day off for a game to play even on standard speed (it usually takes us 4 hours for 120 turns), or quick is the only speed possible in MP.
We've played a few games so far and every single time we were within 10 tiles of each other, together with a 4th AI and then there was a huge no man's land, followed by two more AI players with lots of space.
Stations that land in a spot where they block you from key resources are bad. They shouldn't count as cities, you should be able to settle next to them. Don't say anything about risk free trade routes, the trade route is just as risk free once you have fence quest done. That would be a very heavy fix for a minor issue.
Affinity ruins, he's completely correct here. Either you research expensive leaf techs to advance your affinity, or you just stumble on progenitor ruins.

I hope some of the issues - such as impossible quests, spamming establish network and so forth, are actually fixed within the next few weeks. They really need to be on top of this game, and not Civ 6 or whatever, because right now they're shipping a mediocre game and live off Sid's name.

All our games have crashes. But as we are NQ we simply rejoin lobby and continue playing. You should try it sometimes. Canucksoldier have a post about it here on civfanatics. Anyhow I share your frustration about the netcode - I truly wish the developers do something about this and wonder how they managed to make the netcode even worse than civ5 stock, when the engine they base the game on is the same.

Does this NQ also apply when you've lost your spy network or affinity points?

reload and resynch issues in civ5 are 99% connected to either:

- u Play with barbs and CS which cause huge load times in between turns - your own fault to not be able to adjust Settings to something which worksnad is more balanced

- u Play with some1 sabotaging game by alt tabbing or starting a dl or something like that - your own fault to not sort These guys out in staging room

Sabotaging? This isn't true for any other game I've played since I have high speed internet. I can play a much more ping relying Starcraft while my wife streams TV shows without a problem. I can actually check my network setup and see that neither SC nor BE max out my capacity. This has nothing to do with this.


And single player heroes jumping in here and calling him bad, that's just rude.
Battlesuit rush is incredibly powerful, I don't see why Affinity 4 would give you a 40 strength unit when all the regular units at this point have Strength 14, 18... That's like making the Japanese unique unit a Great War infantry. Just 1 affinity ruin, and you can have battlesuits out by turn 80. The issue is that with Adaptive Sciences, the Affinity points you get from researching battlesuits are just enough to jump you from 2 to 4. Did not even need Genetic Mapping researched.

 

[Willburn]

Lol did you just call tommynt one of the most famous and winner of several mp tournaments in several civ games for a single player hero? Haha.

Anyhow no if oos is corrupt as you describe your screwed. But we have had some games work. Albeit it should not be just some games it should have been all.

 

[tommynt]

played yesterday a game without any more Problems as in bnw.

1 Resynch happened due to unit spmage end of turn to try get a fast move. But appart that pretty fine.

 

[omniclast]

Battlesuit rush is incredibly powerful, I don't see why Affinity 4 would give you a 40 strength unit when all the regular units at this point have Strength 14, 18... That's like making the Japanese unique unit a Great War infantry. Just 1 affinity ruin, and you can have battlesuits out by turn 80.

This is an issue with SP as well. The affinity units are far too strong relative to the same tier non affinity units -- an aff unit rush will wreck an AI as none of them know what to do with it. Problem is due to a late pre-release patch that nerfed non affinity unit combat strength for some reason.

 

[CraigMak]

I have played quite a few games. It is for the most part extremely buggy. Crashes, freezes and infinite load screens galore.

The game is extremely luck based and has insane imbalances.

Outposts blocking your expos, random miasma possibly blocking vital trade routes or damaging workers that need to work tiles, free affinity points which is completely absurd. Tectonic scanner with titanium is ultra op... the game is just a complete joke in its current form.

 

[sanddemon]

Duels, teamers and 4 player games seem alright sometimes, but you can still have the case where reloading and someone can't move any units - it's usually the host. FFA 6 player games are completely jacked, no one has been able to play them for long in our group without a resync/reload and the host being unable to move any units.