(Poll) How important is the Multiplayer in Civ.4 too you?

[oldStatesman]

Don't really care for MP...not because of the busted technology, or anything like that...it's because of the other "players".

I tried to play FreeCiv MP online once apon a time..but found that it was way too clique-ish. Certain immature regular players would gang up on newbies and never give them a chance. And the community seemed to be dominated not by players using real strategy..but instead by those who would take all advantage of exploits. IMO most of the MP game sites I have seen suffer from these problems...no matter how good a game is, there are always exploits and those who are willing to use them to satify their egos instead of playing the game as it was meant to be always seem to end up 'owning' the site. So personally, it is not for me...I am much more of a loner anyway....

No, I would only play MP with someone I knew...I'd much rather have an improved AI over improved MP. Leave that to RTS ....

 

[Dreadnought]

The Civilization series should not have been altered to multiplayer. There: simple enough.

 

[apatheist]

The Civilization series should not have been altered to multiplayer. There: simple enough.

Simple and short-sighted. The players here are not representative of the general population. Nor are people thinking through how Civ4 multiplayer is likely to work, nor the (hopefully) substantial improvements to gameplay that can only (realistically) come from developing the MP game first, and the SP game second.

I'm becoming increasingly optimistic that I'll be able to find players who are willing to play by my schedule. RTS and FPS games are synchronous games. It's like IM or chat, which are (generally) useful only if the other person is present. Everyone has to be in front of their computers at the same time. Turn-based strategy games like Civ4, though, have no such limitations. They're more like email, where you respond at your leisure. As long as your correspondent is willing to wait, it will work out fine. I won't ever be able to find a 10-hour block to play a game of Civilization, but I will be able to play a handful of turns every night for weeks on end.

Hopefully, either through the pit boss system or externally, I'll be able to advertise my availability for slower games with a handful of turns a day. Other players will state their availability. Players who want to play a whole game all the way through in a single sitting will gravitate to each other. Players like me will find each other. Players in between or players who are even slower will be able to find each other as well. Even if a game ends up being a little slower than you want, it's not going to be a disaster.

In addition, I hope it will be easy to have multiple games going on at once. Maybe you could play 5 hours of MP per day by playing 50 turns of 1 game, or you could play 5 turns each of 10 games. You'd get your Civ fix in either one big dose or multiple smaller ones. If even that isn't enough, you can play an SP game while you wait.

I'd be pretty surprised if the game supported this, but I'd like to see a situation where there was a built-in manager of all your running games. It would know what games were waiting on other players and what games were ready for your moves. You could configure it so that every time you finished a turn in one of your games, it would pop up a list of your other games were waiting for you to move. You would round-robin through all your games as the other players put in their moves. It would get confusing to have too many games going on at once, but it would certainly make it a lot easier to manage different schedules (time zones, etc.).

 

[wit>trope]

My fear is that including multiplayer will mean they won't have to have a strong AI.

 

[Mountain-God]

My fear is that including multiplayer will mean they won't have to have a strong AI.

Same here.

Civ3 multi-play for me was pointless - despite door to door fibre-optic, I'm unable to get decent connections bar spending $80 per month, so I'm not going to be interested in multi-play.

However, whilst I am concerned at it's impact on other priorities, I do wonder that it might instead be a strength - another avenue to encourage people to purchase, play, and develop.

Over the long term, it may be a strength.

To the suggestion that AI will never be as good as a human, I would differ - already AI has been able to beat a human in limited circumstances, and, given the massive lack of development in that area, this seems quite an accomplishment.

Meanwhile, such as unmanned military aircraft may suggest the potential for considerable investment in AI - as it remains impossible to guarantee remote control.

With such graphical investment as ID and other companies, with their advanced and modular systems, there is certainly room for the equivalent in AI.

There are a few such projects globally, but substantially limited given lack of like investment.

 

[joethreeblah]

The Civilization series should not have been altered to multiplayer. There: simple enough.

Yes it should have. it's fun.
Especially LAN with a friend or two.

 

[Phoenix_56721]

It seem to me that a lot of people think if you add multiplayer features you cant have good AI. That doesnt make any sense to me, from what I have read they have been testing the game for a number of years in multiplayer games. Then using the experiance gained by those games to help improve the AI! Seems to me if they didn't add a multiplayer aspect to the game, the AI might suffer.

 

[Pacifist]

@kryszcztov
Me too! I'd like to find out what PitBoss is all about
From the little description I've gathered from the press-release info, its looks promising

-Pacifist-
"Civilization is too detailed in concepts and management for multiplayer to be effective - its too grande in scale"

 

[TopDog]

I nearly never play multiplayer, because my comps too slow and whenever I tried to host a game it didn't work, any ideas? However, I do like playing it sometimes wih friends over LAN.

 

[Phoenix_56721]

I nearly never play multiplayer, because my comps too slow and whenever I tried to host a game it didn't work, any ideas? However, I do like playing it sometimes wih friends over LAN.

I have a slower computer also a 866 processer, and I only have dial up (56k) for internet. But I can still host games, I have a friend I play online with and we Usually pick a standard or large map with 3 to 4 computer oponents. We always play turn based (not Simultaneous) that helps with lag I think. The only thing I can think of as to why you can't host is to make sure that everyone has the same version of the game (v1.22) for example in Civ3C. Also Make sure all the stuff in the background of you computer is shut off or disabled before you start the game, virus scan, screen savers, window updates and so on, this really helps speed up your computer when playing online!

Edit: Also make sure your firewall is down so people can connect to your computer.

 

[Belboz]

Didn't someone whose intials are S.M. once claim that multiplayer games were unnecessary because computer gamers don't have friends anyway? And, scarily enough, do the results of the poll indicate that he might be right?

 

[The Yankee]

It's very important to me. Though I only do the Hotseat. Often it's against myself, myself, myself, etc. Good to try some strategies out and also.....nothing like facing the ultimate opponent, your own mind working against you.

 

[vinnybcfc]

Multiplayer is very important for me - I wish they will improve the netcode and force people to download the latest patch when there online.

The amount of games which have failed due to people still having retail on

 

[bt_oz]

I enjoy both multiplay and single play in civ3 and i can see that continueing with civ4, as i do host games mostly weekends for civ3, Pitboss mode in civ4 i hope it lives up to the hype as it will help, with mulitplay.
cheers
bt_oz

p.s cherios to dazz, beerchucka, and probablly quite a few people except cav3man (he's the gay welshman) heheheehehe LOL , ROFL

 

[josephstalin]

Mp is not so much important to me. I enjoed 1 player game long time ago... But if MP is really good, I will think about it.

 

[apatheist]

Multiplayer is very important for me - I wish they will improve the netcode and force people to download the latest patch when there online.

The amount of games which have failed due to people still having retail on

That's an awful idea. It's my computer. It's my choice whether to install the latest patch. If people don't want to upgrade, they can play with others who haven't upgraded. Other games have managed to handle this issue without forcing upgrades; Civ4 can, too.

 

[Raggamuffin]

MP is a not at all important for me. This has always been a great single player game for me and will probably keep being as long it is kept turn based, even with the new features it's still too slow. But I will give it a try before I judge it. When I play MP games I prefer more fast paced action based ones and in turn the exact opposite when I play SP.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

That's an awful idea. It's my computer. It's my choice whether to install the latest patch. If people don't want to upgrade, they can play with others who haven't upgraded. Other games have managed to handle this issue without forcing upgrades; Civ4 can, too.

Well if they do that it would probably only be when you sign on to their PitBoss server...since sometimes the upgrade will be designed to make it work better with that server. (which may be designed to assume everyone playing on it has the latest upgrade)

 

[Supa]

Why upgrade when you can keep all the annoying bugs ? :roll:

 

[apatheist]

If you don't get it, well, you don't get it. I trust the Firaxis guys won't do something so foolish, though, so it doesn't really matter. Also, don't forget that patches introduce bugs as well as eliminating them.