PS3 online lag/slowdown

[tonycz]

Hi all, this is my 1st post here, but I've read a lot of other ones and there's some really good stuff, god I'm loving this game, it's so deep!

Anyway my point is that I've played the PS3 single player quite a lot and have sussed the game out now, so thought I'd take it online and try my hand against some real life opponents. By the way I'm in the UK and have the full version.

During my 1st online game last night some really weird stuff happened.

1st I settled my settlers and founded my capital, a few turns later a message came on screen saying something like one of the other players was synchronising, so the game paused for a few seconds whilst that happened. When it came back, my city was in a totally different place to where I had originally put it, in fact in appeared the whole layout of the land had totally changed. So I got over that and just though "oh well"

The game was fine after that until about 500AD when suddenly massive slowdown started, like the game was severely lagging. Button presses took around 2-3 seconds until the game responded. Needless to day everyone quit the game after around 10 turns of this, leaving me against the computer. I just couldn't take it, so I had to quit too.

I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced this or is it just a one off game?

Please let me know, I'd be really disappointed if every online game is going to be like that, as it was totally and utterly unplayable.

Cheers.

 

[enchanter100]

I don't have the game yet because i'm in the states but lets just hope you had bad luck. Is the game hosted by gamespy? Maybe they had a bad day..

 

[tonycz]

Yeah it is gamespy. I did actually play a co-op with my bro only a couple of days before online, me and him vs computer. Mine ran absolutely fine but he complained of a little slowdown, though not to the extent of my game last night.

 

[Smidlee]

I doubt it has anything to do with Gamespy after you start the game.

 

[tonycz]

Fair enough. I can appreciate lag happening on action games like COD4, I just can't get it on something as slow paced as this. It was crazy, you had to press the button 4 or 5 times for it to work, then the screen would jerkilly (not a word) jump around to the next unit. Really hope this isn't a frequent problem. I'll probably have another game tonight, so I'll update this thread as to whether it happens again or not.

 

[PosSibley]

You could do some internet connection tests because it sounds like it's your connection to the game, not their connection to you. If everyone quits at the same time, it usually means you couldn't hold a connections and it was actually just you disconnecting.

Try power cycling your router/modem and you can see if there are any firmware updates for your router. Otherwise... you can try playing at non-peak internet hours (by avoiding later afternoon/evening)?

You could also try using a wired connection as opposed to wireless (not sure what you're using now). Though I don't have the full game so I don't know if this is a common issue, sometimes early multiplayer versions need some patching.

This game does "support" voice and video chat along with simultaenous turns, so it might be doing a lot more communication than it sounds like.

 

[Smidlee]

Fair enough. I can appreciate lag happening on action games like COD4, I just can't get it on something as slow paced as this. It was crazy, you had to press the button 4 or 5 times for it to work, then the screen would jerkilly (not a word) jump around to the next unit. Really hope this isn't a frequent problem. I'll probably have another game tonight, so I'll update this thread as to whether it happens again or not.

Sadly Civ multiplayer games has never run as smooth as FPS for some reason. When PTW (civ3 expansion) first came out years ago the online lag was totally unbearable.

 

[tonycz]

It's definitely not my internet connection, I play many other multiplayer online games on my PS3 with no issues at all. Plus they didn't all drop out at the same time, people quit one after the other over the space of a few turns. I hope they patch this quick, such a great game to have online multiplayer, don't want it ruined by this.

Plus, don't you think my 1st anomilie (spelling?) is very strange? My moving city.