Multiplayer still unstable?

[ggmoyang]

Tried MP with some fellow Korean civ community guys.

First 6 man game didn't worked so well, we had random dc and freeze.
Finally we played with only 3 man, and that was quite smooth. (But yeah, only 3 )

How was your experience? Did it go well?

 

[Willburn]

Very bad experience today. Feels like a step backwards from Civ5 and that again was a step backwards from civ4 so that say a lot. 10+ games all disconnect after maximum 1 hour play. The state of MP sadly is nothing like CIV 4.

 

[CanuckSoldier]

It's based entirely off the Civ5 engine, I would not expect any significant improvement in MP stability. If they had recoded MP I think they would have been advertising that fact....

CS

 

[ChIpStIcK]

I am pulling my hair out in frustration after trying a few BE multiplayer games with 2 of my friends. We play private games with 3 people and 3 AIs and its all very casual.

I've tried 3 multiplayer games so far. The first crashed by turn 3, the second we saved and made a new one as someone else turned up at around turn 10 and the third crashed at around turn 30. It is my impression, from this admittedly small sample, that it is as bad as civ 5 and perhaps worse.

I honestly do not think they should be allowed to sell it as a multiplayer game.

Edit: 4th game (reload of 1st game) crashed after approx 20 more turns.

 

[CraigMak]

So far it's been hit and miss for me. I played a couple of games that went on for 2+ hours. I also played plenty of games that crashed during the load or froze up at a completely random time during the game. I would say check pings with a fine toothed comb. Anything over 100ms might be pushing it in this game's current state. Also, keep the games small, 6 players is the absolute max if you want the game to work.

 

[ggmoyang]

So far it's been hit and miss for me. I played a couple of games that went on for 2+ hours. I also played plenty of games that crashed during the load or froze up at a completely random time during the game. I would say check pings with a fine toothed comb. Anything over 100ms might be pushing it in this game's current state. Also, keep the games small, 6 players is the absolute max if you want the game to work.

All players' ping was under 40 and still some games failed to start or randomly froze during the game. To me, only games with 4 man or less worked fine.

 

[Acken]

For some reason I cannot host 6 players it always crashes after first turn. 4 players works fine but I always get some disconect at some point. Even got a fatal error once.

Not a very good experience, and single player is too easy.

Don't know if there are ways to improve stability.

 

[CraigMak]

I had a couple of 6 man games that worked for quite a while. Most o the stable games so far have been 4 man though. It seems to be a crap shoot and I have no idea what makes one game crash while another plays fine for hours.

 

[omniclast]

I haven't tried to play a large-player game yet, but in 2-3 player games with people in my region the game seems more stable than Civ5 (though that's not saying much). No DCs but a couple CTDs (probably less the netcode's fault that the game engine). Resync screens seem to happen more often, but they don't last as long and the transition into and out of them is a lot smoother.

Overall, they definitely failed to fix multiplayer... but I'm having such a good time I don't really care. At least not yet.

 

[Willburn]

Well I am happy for you omniclast because that is certainly not my experience. Civ 5 maybe one reload a game.. Civ BE maybe 4-5 reloads in a single game. This was with 4 players. With 6 it is even worse and 8 is asking for trouble.

 

[Toiletman]

Just had a 3hr 4-player game crash 'connection to host lost' and back to main menu... no way to save, no way to check out the names of the players to add them as friends... no way to report a crash.... ffs I was at the brink of invading my neighbour :-(.

What might have caused the issue is buying tiles near my neighbour... after that at end turn the loading screen turned up, which resulted in the lost connection to host error afterwards :-(. Very disappointed at the multiplayer at the moment... very sad that Firaxis wants to discredit it's brand in this way by publishing this lack of quality.

 

[Quineloe]

A 193 turn game yesterday took us 10 hours, with all these reloads and crashes.
Low ping, high performance gaming computers only, no DLC bug involved.

My game crashed once when I pillaged another players titanium mine. Ugh.

 

[CraigMak]

The real trick seems to be finding some one that can host. Whoever can host without the game freezing or crashing on them seems to be a total crap shoot. It has nothing to do with how good their computer or graphics card is. I even had a stable game where one of the players had a 600ms ping consistently. Really, this game working is up to leprechauns and gnomes right now rather than system specs and latencies.

 

[Jacozilla]

Well, I came here to post a question re: is MP unstable or is it just my luck all the hosts I play with maybe has some problem. Guess it's a known thing re: really bad BE multiplayer stability at the moment.

Incredible as it is with 2200+ CiV hours and now 224 with BE, I had never played a civ multiplayer match ever, until tonight.

But all the games I joined would have random freezes, players disconnecting after end turn, and finally after getting to like turn 80 a freeze that crashed the entire client.

Sometimes, the freezes would still return you to the game, but after the client crash I lost my appetite to try MP. Guess I'll keep reading here and wait for hopefully some kind of patch.

Was CiV also this unstable, or is this just a BE thing?

 

[Tabarnak]

Was CiV also this unstable, or is this just a BE thing?

Civ 5 was correct. I say ''was'' because it became fully unplayable due to the halloween patch(what a bad taste!). It was correct if you played with friends or NQ group members only because... couple of reloads were necessary from time to time but that's mostly all.

Until they patch it again.

 

[tommynt]

be isnt only unplayable due to lacking stability but also due to total imbalanced and unfun gameplay.
Some things are so op and other things matter so few (like sps after free settler are all kinda meh - having like no Impact on other ingame choises)

 

[Empedocles]

The game approaches civ5-level stability with a good host: maybe a crash requiring a reload every 1-2 hours. This is annoying but workable if everyone has the host on their friends list or is in the same chat room, but means you will almost never complete a game with random people.

Resync issues are more annoying, with things like permanently losing your spy agency happening last game. These sometimes can't be fixed by reloading.

As for the balance issues that TommyNT pointed out: these are a little overblown in my opinion. The free settler is very powerful because of the strength of artists, but skipping those virtues and hard-building/buying your settlers can often pay off, since having 3 extra tier-3 virtues can be a big boost in the mid-game. The game is incredibly fun when you can actually get it to work. It just isn't Civ5 BNW.

I am hopeful that the issues that do exist can be fixed through modding, now that someone has figured out how to get XML mods to work in multiplayer. I'm going to try testing out some mods with my friends, and see if that improves the game.

 

[CraigMak]

The game approaches civ5-level stability with a good host: maybe a crash requiring a reload every 1-2 hours. This is annoying but workable if everyone has the host on their friends list or is in the same chat room, but means you will almost never complete a game with random people.

Resync issues are more annoying, with things like permanently losing your spy agency happening last game. These sometimes can't be fixed by reloading.

As for the balance issues that TommyNT pointed out: these are a little overblown in my opinion. The free settler is very powerful because of the strength of artists, but skipping those virtues and hard-building/buying your settlers can often pay off, since having 3 extra tier-3 virtues can be a big boost in the mid-game. The game is incredibly fun when you can actually get it to work. It just isn't Civ5 BNW.

I am hopeful that the issues that do exist can be fixed through modding, now that someone has figured out how to get XML mods to work in multiplayer. I'm going to try testing out some mods with my friends, and see if that improves the game.

I have found that getting a stable host, disabling DLC and using no turn timer and virtue deferral makes games much more stable.

Tommynt's concerns about balance are quite based in reality. The game currently only allows for very specific game play to be competitive. Beeline the free settler then get affinity from might because affinity is so good that you disregard everything for it.

Go wide, make tons of cities, get trade routes up ASAP. GG every game. Also there are a lot of OP things in the game such as slavic battle suit rush or spy rush. The game has severe balance issues.

Free affinity from luck = GG. Affinity is crazy good.