My thoughts on CPL multiplayer

CPL civ players league is by far the largest online portal for multiplayer and it's absolutely horrendous for new players.

It's not a FFA, it's who are the top players and how can we make them happy so we're not on the chopping block

First of all any questions or mistakes are met with harsh rebukes(which typically come from the top players) and all the other players tend to pile on as to be in the top players good graces.

During game things get worse. The top players routine ask for money and are given it, told where to find wonders, told the layout of the land, are given alliances, military buffs. It's not uncommon for the top players to make commands about where other players can and cannot settle. As a New of low rated player it's much harder to get any of the aforementioned benefits and it's not uncommon to be completely ignored. The way the other players grovel to the top players is sad. Not only are they good players they has these "legacy" advantages that makes them unstoppable and you simply play the game waiting to get taken out as his units have all sorts of buffs from various alliances that you can't get due to the fact that everyone is scared of upsetting said player.

The have a war only mode where there isn't communication but this is rarely played. They have a novice FFA but you'll never get a game.

 

Interesting. I'm in their discord but I'm only interested in PBC games and haven't had any of those experiences you've mentioned yet.

 

i agree. CPL is not newbie friendly. There was a guy Zac who made the novice ffa channel and created novice games. unfortantly his mac is broke now and he is not much online now

 

That sucks. I really wish there was something like CPL that was geared more toward casual players. If you set something up I'm down to join

As a new player in CPL you don't have a chance.

 

There really isn't any other place that you can reliably get a game, unless you have access to one of the regional language specific discords. Because it's so big it will draw a substantial amount of alpha types and bully gamers. But, you do get games. I have over 5k hours of multiplayer. I doubt I would have half that without CPL. All I can say is get better at the game. Watch streams of the better players. If you prove you know how to play the game well, you will get alliances.

 

well my laptop is crashing a lot these days so i cannot organize anything right now.

 

Zac was back on last night, saw him in FFA staging.

 

Oh did I forget to mention the world congress? The top player tells you how to vote in world congress so the top player gets yet more buffs.

So in summary the top player

-gets all the best land and gets to dictate where "lesser " players can go
-gets all the world congress decisions to go his way due to his "clout"
-get gold/ammenties whenever requested
-gets told the geography of the map
-gets told where the wonders are
-gets alliances/military buffs

@Swissy- yes, get better obviously but assuming that it's two players of the exact same skill and player one gets the aforementioned buffs and player 2 doesn't player one will win 14/15 times. It's ****. I've had a handful of new players voice similar issues to me in private and I haven't seen or heard from them since. Safe to say they are fed up and quit much like I'm more or less done with the community. I've even had players apologize to me in private for how I was abused and colluded against in game.

The barriers to entry are awful.

The solutions I can think of are more "war only games" and separating game lobbies. For example having a settler-prince FFA ranked lobby and a king-deity game lobby FFA lobby and you get graduated and demoted accordingly to your skill level.

 

Pub games have just as much or more abuse and collusion and are filled with fascists, commies and stoners. There's no private chat allowed in CPL FFA if there is collusion you know what's going on.

CPL is a lot like playing a hand of poker at a casino. You can't take loosing personally.

 

hmmmm ive thought of my self as a pretty experience civ player, but nothing your saying sounds sensable?

Plz dont take this as an insult becuse i can give you thoughtfull, respectefull reasons why

 

well give me the reason why