Strategy for MP

Well in MOO actually the player moved whole fleets. All moves were carried out and if the units ended up at the same location, combat ensued. Same mechanics are also used for example in Sword of the Stars, andother turn based space strat.

Of-course combat was a bit different from Civ. In MOO2 once 'combat started' the participants went into a different game mode where a battlefield was opened up and they took turns in moving their ships in the fleet.

In MOO3 and Sword of the Stars the combat part was in real time (pretty slow and comfortable pace, no clickfest).

While this set-up makes for some longer turn times due to an additional phase it makes up for it with additional depth of tactical combat and greater fairness (just in my opinion) when compared to civ simultaneous moves.

Well if MOO3 used real time combat I don't see how that could be any different than simu moves in Civ5....if they used unit timers or something like that to "slow it down" that just takes away the reflexes and replaces it with luck about who gets to move when.

And the turn based MOO1/2 just means the luck if the turn order decides who gets trashed or not.

And yes I understand that if two units try and occupy the same tile combat is the result but that still doesn't answer my question about when one unit tries to attack and the other unit is ordered to retreat out of range.......

CS
 
Moo: seems like it was pure "luck" if 2 units end up on same time ....

only thing I might imagine what could "help" civ5 in terms of war in mp d be some sort of delay - maybe like 1 or 2 sec delay for u after u have done an attack - enough time to react properly.

Well other "common" stuff like more shortkeays - fe for heal, or to give units some number to switch to it d help aswell - apart all the other technical issues which are there atm.

Fixing the code/tech behind the mp is just prio1 - all other is secondary - cause best game out there is no good game if its unplayable
 
In civ 4 it was pretty nice to be able to move after pressing end turn (can't in civ 5 but why???).

Sometimes you play a bit fast and you can miss something. It was fine to continue playing your turn after, before everyone finished his turn. And the delay for a fast move under 8 seconds was a good thing.

A ''wait penalty'' is the best solution in my book.
 
In civ 4 it was pretty nice to be able to move after pressing end turn (can't in civ 5 but why???).

Sometimes you play a bit fast and you can miss something. It was fine to continue playing your turn after, before everyone finished his turn. And the delay for a fast move under 8 seconds was a good thing.

A ''wait penalty'' is the best solution in my book.

I can understand your frustration... as there is no reason why your commands shouldn't go through like the did in previous versions.

You could try playing with Turn Timer to work around this... but some people just object to that and i can understand why.
 
Thats because of built in mechanics, new one, implemented in Civ 5 which is solely part of "advanced simultaneous" system.

It called "Fast Move" - the ability to pre-order your units next turn moves.
However it comes at cost.... at cost that once you end turn and do it before rival - you can preorder fast moves.... but.. you cant dso any current turn action... That is what balances sim moves mechanics... So while fast move is powerfull feature to use - there are still counters - end turn moves and cons of not being able to move for skipped turn.

For ones who dont know - Fast Move is just games feature - which allow you to give order to units, after you skipped turn.. So lets say in duel if you skip turn before rival you can give orders to your units for next trurn... and those orders will be done AUTOMATICALLY at very start of the turn...
So, to use it you need:
1. Skip turn enough early and before turn timer ended/last player press skip. That means if you are last person to press skip turn u have not chance to order your fast moves.
2. Be very kin about situation on battlefield.... If your opponent smart he will postpone his moves if he plan to ETM..... and if part of enemy units didnt moved you should be very wary of fact that all picture on battlefield may change in few seconds before turn timer end, and your Fast moves wont be relevant.

Also to all those complains about skipped moves - well - if you are good player you should take care of all your units in time of turn timer....
 
I agree with a lot of the people who compare it to the idea of chess with simultaneous moves. There is a massive amount of waiting to the last moment of a turn to move a unit, then moving that unit immediately at the start of the next turn.

If the game wants to insist on simultaneous turns, one good option is something akin to MOO with a conflict resolution phase.

Basically how this works is that the orders happen based on actual turn order, but if something changes (for instance, an attack becomes a move) then in the conflict resolution phase this units order can be changed to whatever action you choose based on the new game state. Since actions are executed in normal turn order, you wouldn't have any more information that you would have in the normal (turn-based) game state.

I agree the bigger difference is that humans are better than AI, but when I played competitive online back in the day I used to insist on non-simultaneous turns (I took up non-video game competitions so haven't kept up with Civ as much). There is just way too much double-move exploitation, and while it isn't quite as problematic as double moves in chess, it isn't too far off either. While it does solve the problem of games taking a long time, it does so at the expense of changing the nature of the game.

One practical solution might be the following: Y second build phase (can not move units), X time unit move phase per player, non-active players can change build orders). This gives you a time of Y+2X in a two-player game which is the most typical case for competitive multiplayer, and X is typically a lot smaller than the normal turn as gamey exploits results in turns taking close to the maximum timer length.

Another practical solution is the EU style "Real-Time" where the economics of the game are basically turn based with turns happening every clock cycle (in EU one month), and the military interface (unit movement ETC) takes time based on terrain cost and unit speed so that an X speed unit will arrive in a square that costs say Y days/unit of speed to move into will arrive Y/X days later. This does lead to a few exploits with regards to things like unit attrition (not implemented in civ), but as a practical matter in no-pause games timing exploits is difficult.

In Civ for example you might have time passing at say 1/40th of a turn per second if you wanted 40 second turns. This would mean that the game clock would move 1 year per 2nd.. and a unit executing one turn of movement will finish moving 40 years after they started moving.. so If I start moving in 3660 BC I arrive at 3620BC.. and can then start my next movement which would complete at 3580BC even though the normal turns at this point are 3680 3640 3600 3580. The economic updates still happen at the normal end of turn years, but the unit exploits are basically gone.

I much prefer Civ as a game to EU I think Civ is a lot richer, but I strongly feel the multiplayer in EU is much more interesting. I'm not opposed to rush strategies, in fact I dominated at them for Civ3, but move exploitation is so important that in competitive multiplayer it is an absolutely necessary skill, and there are a sizable number of people who will avoid competitive multiplayer because how dumb the adhoc solution makes the game.
 
Also to all those complains about skipped moves - well - if you are good player you should take care of all your units in time of turn timer....
I would agree with that if it wasn't for the fact that a frustrated player can watch the turn timer disappear while lag is preventing them from making even a single move.

My preferred solution would be to drop the simultaneous moves and just have everybody go in turns, with everyone allowed to queue moves to take place at the start of their next turn and everyone allowed to adjust activities in their cities, tech, research, etc., which again don't take effect in the game until their next official turn starts.

People might complain that this makes the game take too 'long', but I would argue the delay wouldn't be that much more if you can simply do nearly all your planning when it's not your turn to move. And besides, which problem would you rather have? In a turn-based game I would honestly be expecting nearly *no* lag whatsoever, instead I have an unplayable mess. If I can trade that for a game that runs smoothly I will, even if I have to deal with 'slowpokes' once in a while. Since the people I play with are a different mechanic than the game itself, it is far easier to deal with that issue than with a broken game. I can either be respectful of people who might need a little more time than I do to play, or I can just stop playing them and only play with speed demons. If they had more than a 'one size fits all' turn timer that might be helpful too...

Anyways, lots of things that could probably be done, but won't be likely to happen this year. And we'd probably be lucky to even see a 2011 patch.
 
I would agree with that if it wasn't for the fact that a frustrated player can watch the turn timer disappear while lag is preventing them from making even a single move.

Especially when somebody is dropping...at 20 seconds from the end of turn.
 
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