"Time Out!" (Turn Timer on Multiplayer)

[bcaiko]

My friend and I were talking this over, and we both agree that we wish there was a "Time Out!" feature in conjunction with the Turn Timer -- at least on multiplayer. The Turn Timer would be a great help on multiplayer if, you know, humans weren't playing.

As it is, the need for a bathroom break (and God forbid if someone's lunch disagrees with them) and other interventions of life into Civ make the Turn Timer unfeasible in multiplayer. If you had a set number of Time Outs, though, that could make the Turn Timer more usable.

My friend and I disagreed on how the Time Outs would work exactly and how many Time Outs would come standard, but we both agreed it was a good idea in theory. What do members here on the board think? Do folks here already use the turn timer? If so, what do you do when nature calls, ect?

 

[Cheeseisgood]

I don't play Multiplayer, but that seems like a sensible idea. I can see why you'd want turn timer, the few games I've played with a friend can drag on where people forget to hit the button or think they already have.

I guess the simplest solution would be a vote, one person requests a time out which lasts for a set period of time (3-5 mins?) and it needs a majority vote by other players to pass. Once passed, players can fiddle round with their stuff for that time, building queues, techs, etc, but the turn doesnt advance until that time is up.

 

[user746383]

Seems like you could save and reload in that situation, although it's obviously less than ideal.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Can't you use the pause button on keyboards to pause it?!

Turn timer is an absolute JOKE in MP by the way. It is so laughably slow that it might as well not be on. Whatever happened to extremely basic options, like changing the timer? This isn't 1990, it's 2010 when this game came out. Surely someone isn't going to come on here and say "it waaz teeew hardz to preaugramz heeeeee".

 

[forty2j]

Not that it was hard.. just that the entirety of multiplayer was an afterthought. I mean, it took them a year to get to the point where you can actually save a MP game manually and give it a name other than Autosave*... and, by extension, actually have more than 1 game going on without futzing about the file system.

 

[bcaiko]

Turn timer is an absolute JOKE in MP by the way. It is so laughably slow that it might as well not be on.

I've actually been knicked out of a turn by the Turn Timer before... I think I was futzing around with focus of one of my cities.

 

[Tabarnak]

The problem is not the turn timer, it's the sudden short freezes that can happen and that make you lose a turn at choosing what to research, produce, moving units, etc.

The turn timer is particulary fast in the beginning and pretty slow at the end. Naure calls? Go to bathroom before starting a game and around turn 60+ you will have plenty of time to return to your bathroom if necessary.

No pausing is great because no stupid players can stop the game anymore. Plz no return of this awful thing.