What would it take to make multi stable?

[Ermak-]

It seems to me that steam itself is very crash-y. It goes offline for no reason on occasion. Steam advertisement pop ups cause game crashes sometimes. Certain people unable to sync in lobby room unless they reboot steam several times. What exactly is the cause of such an instability? Is it because civ doesn't have dedicated servers?

 

[DaveMcW]

Is it because civ doesn't have dedicated servers?

Yes. Every player needs to sync with every other player. Instead of being limited by the speed of a dedicated server, it's limited by the speed of the slowest player.

 

[FeiLing]

Steam does not go offline/online on occasion at all. Gotta be your internet which s unstable (part of the problem is everyone nowadays thinks WLAN is a good technology. It is not, never was and never will be (for a gamer)). People thinking their multimedia laptop is good for gaming the other.
The game apparently isn't very solid from a technical point of view and it would need work too in the first place to make mp more stable.

Anyway. I have never seen a 'steam advertisement popup'... are you sure you don't have mal-/ spyware?

 

[CanuckSoldier]

Yes. Every player needs to sync with every other player. Instead of being limited by the speed of a dedicated server, it's limited by the speed of the slowest player.

Yes part of the problem is that Civ games are p2p, but Steam is used by thousands of games so I doubt other than the odd outage that they are at fault. Civ4 was routinely about to play 5v5 international games, so I can only think that Civ5 has internal code issues that prevent it from being at least as good as Civ4 was, both being p2p games.

What we really need is a DirectIP mode, and for Hamanchi and other VPN's to work for Civ5.

CS

 

[bossconian]

so I can only think that Civ5 has internal code issues that prevent it from being at least as good as Civ4 was, both being p2p games.
CS

HI GUYS - but that's been bloody obvious since the very beginning - hence my all rants spree once the game had been released. And you just start talking about it....

But hey - you must be very happy that firaxis keeps ears open to your voices and they introduce a fight animation in multiplayer (this is ridiculous) in couple of months time (the timescale is even more amusing).... Can't wait ! not.

 

[Ermak-]

I think they are too cheap to provide dedicated servers no matter how you spin it. Adding multi-animations is ofcourse a waste. People now-a-days play on x9 instead of x11 just so the game wont crash. Adding animations is counterproductive. However, they said there more things things they will include into upcoming patch. One thing they can really solve is to allow people with DLC tribe to play with someone who doesn't. This really brings us all to least common denominator in FFA games right now and it blows.

 

[CanuckSoldier]

I certainly never asked for animations, but we are not the majority, the 2K forums are full of people requesting this be added. And it is a feature that you can turn on or off, so it doesn't hurt us to have the options.

CS

 

[anandus]

Steam does not go offline/online on occasion at all. Gotta be your internet which s unstable [...]

Indeed.
It's probably a bad network/internet connection and Steam getting disconnected and trying to reconnect? If you're on wifi, try getting a UTP-cable and see if that stabilizes it. Also disable any other programs utilizing the internet especially download programs. Best is not to have any other programs running.

I had a 60 hour multiplayer game last week, with two nights sleep inbetween and the game never crashed or anything, so it can be stable on multiplayer.