Massively Multiplayer CIV3

I toyed with this idea for a while, and came to the conclusion that it probably would not work. Still, I'll put it across ya, and see if you can come up with a solution to how to work it...

Okay, lets assume that Civ3 has the facility to support enormous maps and 64+ players at the same time. Shouldn't it then be possible to construct a multiplayer game type that would allow players to come and go as they please?

My idea goes something like this: A server is set up that will host the game, onto which players log in via some sort of portal system. New players are given two choices: To just get a few settlers and simple units and be placed at a (fertile) point on the map furthest away from all existing players, or to take over the empire of a player leaving the game. Some sort of evening-out system is in place, so that weak, new empires have an advantadge over large, old ones; possibly they could have more turns (as the large empire's turns take longer anyway). The game would never actually end, no victory would be possible, only a score based on (a) how weak you were compared to the average when you joined, and (b) how strong you were compared to the average when you left.

The problem would, of course, be with the timeline, which would have to be infinate or cyclic....

[UltraSonix]

If there was to be a MMP-civ3 then it cannot be cyclic. There must be an end, else it would totally not work. But I think the biggest problem with this is that it'll be too hard to get the new civs to be competitive, even with the extra bonuses. And I think having extra turns most likely wouldn't work either.

DLDLDLDLDLDL!

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards... Despite any stupid advertisments you may see to the contrary...

[Biddles]

Um, wouldn't you run out of techs too soon?


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- Biddles

"Now that our life-support systems are utilising the new Windows 2027 OS, we don't have to worry about anythi......."
Mars Colonizer Mission

I don't think anyone would have the patience to play a complete game in one sitting. Empires taken over would, of course, but, er, um... er, nothing.

[Adm.Naismith]

Massive multiplayer CIV can work IF:

1) simultaneous turn will be implemented (see
EC3 thread about it for detail);

2) the concept of player as single leader of Civ will be changed into team of players as cooperative leaders

For the latter I mean that a pool of player can subscribe as a team, every one taking care of one game aspect (as council): one for military, one for research, one for civil development and internal politics, one for trade and diplomacy, plus one "council president" for coordination of effort (define how to assign tax revenue, the government, etc.), and ready to act as a reserve.

Starting game every player will have assigned a role, then the related available command (you can't move troops if you are the research leader), plus some "chat like" tool for coordinated actions. Every turn any player in team has a defined timeslot to make order, elsewhere is role is taken for this turn by council president or any other player (by predefined priority or anything else can work).

This way, if a player leave the board, any newcomer can start with the help of the whole team; computer AI will have less decision (just minor civ/barbarians) and must not care to properly replace a human.

Game can speed up at least as fast as one/two turn a day, may be a lot more (it depends if lot of players living in different timezone must be taken in account, sometime we need to sleep ).

The concept of simultaneous turn will speeds up things a lot, the central server in charge of receive every list of order (kind of a saved list of order, very short file I suppose) can be very powerful and safe (no reload cheat possible, no loss of game data because of a crash ).

I'm sure it's absolutly too late for Civ3, but I'll love to see Firaxis developing a CIV3net for massive multiplay as I suggest: I bet it can become a success mostly as Ultima is (well, I'm not sure if we could sell any great developed Civ on e-Bay, as Ultima character are )

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant

[Vitmore The Great]

I like the idea of Team Players. It would give the game a new demension in strategy. The best co-ordinated civ is more successful than the less co-ordinated ones, just like real life nations. It can also bring in civ rivalry between the different cabinet members for the Council President job. Perhaps under such a playing model a cabinet memeber would be able to lead revolts and form a Civ under his/her control, or usurp the established president. A key way for an enemy Civ to gain advantage over a another Civ is to somehow split the cabinet of another Civ. This doesn't have to be implemented in MMP Civ III, a regular MP game would be good enough.


Vitmore The Great

[beyowulf]

Hey anyone remember the game Hundred Years War? It could be like that. Each player is given one settler unit, and told to go 'out there'. Each player founds one city and takes care of it. But each city is made of a nation containing other players. One player might control one city(the capitol) and decide overall strategy, diplomacy, research and luxury allocation.

Whadya think?

[airdrik]

I agree with the idea of joining in with one settler and only controlling the actions of one city and the units supported by that city (if you wanted someone else to control a certain unit you just move it over to their city and have it be supported by that city).
When you leave, then that city would go under the rule of either the AI or another nearby player (your/their choice?)

They should have 4-5 games going on at the same time, all at different time periods. Then you could join in anywhen you wanted to or wait for the next game to start. When a game ends it goes off line for about a minute for prepairation of the new game and for players to log in as new civs. If two games end at about the same time then one will pause and wait for about 1/5-1/4 the average game time, after which it would come back up again.

Comments, suggestions?

[airdrik]

I don't think you would need to pay any money/month. All you would need is a copy of the game, and at the startup screen, you could have the choice to log into one of these multiplayer games.

[DarthVeda]

I don't feel like paying $10 a month to play ANY game. Thankyou very much.

[Adm.Naismith]

DarthVeda, none is asking money to you personally!

None is asking money from me for Ultima on-line, too: if I like it I will join it, if not who cares?

Its like pay-tv: I don't suscribed to it, but I have no problem if they exist, as long as I have other choices.

Massive multiplaying has pro and cons, but if properly executed (not much bandwidth required, not need for h24 presence on the net ) can be nice.

I still prefer the single player, because I like to play CIV2 /SMAC during my commute by train, not easy to be on-line meantime

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant

[beyowulf]

quote: Originally posted by airdrik on 11-09-2000 11:45 AM I agree with the idea of joining in with one settler and only controlling the actions of one city and the units supported by that city (if you wanted someone else to control a certain unit you just move it over to their city and have it be supported by that city). When you leave, then that city would go under the rule of either the AI or another nearby player (your/their choice?) They should have 4-5 games going on at the same time, all at different time periods. Then you could join in anywhen you wanted to or wait for the next game to start. When a game ends it goes off line for about a minute for prepairation of the new game and for players to log in as new civs. If two games end at about the same time then one will pause and wait for about 1/5-1/4 the average game time, after which it would come back up again. Comments, suggestions?

Well I was thinking of something maybe a little slower, in the sort of a 1 turn/day lines. So, different people coming in at different times, would have a chance to play the same game. Also, there'd be more chance for stratedgy as player have a longer time to talk to each other.

[jdlessl]

I don't think you can use the normal Civ interface for a massively multiplayer Civ game. You'd have to use combinations of Civ and other types of games.

Here's my proposal:

Each civ is composed of many players, each with different responsibilities and abilities. You have one or maybe a couple of players who are actually in charge of the civ (President/Emporer, etc and his chief advisors) and run the game with an interface very similar to the one we're used to. They give out the orders, assign resources to the underlings, conduct international negotiations, allow trade and so forth, etc. Top level players can also decide how much interaction they will allow between their minions. Too little and the civ is inefficient: Mayor of Moscow needs a farm over here, so he has to route the request through a bureaucracy of sorts. Too much and he risks the underlings ganging together and ousting him.

Others players in a civ are put in charge of a city. Their game is closer to SimCity/Caesar and actual city design comes into play here. Commands to build this or that are handed down from on high and the human player decides how best to implement it. If a mayor is not living up to expectations, TPTB can sack him.

Other players can become generals or admirals and are given the task of managing an army or a navy. Combat can thus be taken down to a detailed tactical level as both the players are human (or executing one player's contingency orders if he's not online right now). Combat would be more like The Operational Art of War than Civ.

Furthermore, you can implement comm lag for earlier ages. You tell a commander what to do and he goes off and does it. You have no control over his actions (unless you tag along) and must wait for him to report to you. Any messages you send to him will depend on your relative locations. Same goes for cities far away from the capital. Installing telegraphs and heliographs becomes a top priority.

A really nice one would be a terraforming manager. Cuts back on the micromanagement to a massive degree.

Other jobs for players: spy/assassin, researcher, trader, CEO of a large corporation? It depends on how detailed a level you want the civ to go to. If anyone can think of how a player would perform these roles, please do so! (Machiavelli:The Prince for trader, maybe?)

You could even swap out the rulers with elections by the civ's 'citizens'. Rulers also have to worry about coups (bunch of the military players get together and take decisive action), rebellions (a city's controller gets a better offer from a nearby civ), civil wars (a change in goverment is not supported by some of the cities). Thus a mayor/general/admiral isn't _totally_ bound to the whims of the ruler, but knows he'd better have a good reason for disobeying commands. The reverse is also true for the rulers: if he is ousted in an election and chooses to stay, he'd better hope he has the support of the army.

You could even end up with the same inter-service rivalries with different branches of the military competing for funds and units, which are given or taken away by the head honcho. ie, Admiral Smith's assault aircraft are inferior to the Aztecs and need to be replaced, but General Bob's offensive against Denver has stalled since he has run out of Howitzers.

Keep the time/turn really low so tech doesn't tilt the game too quickly. Maybe a couple of years every day of play for the stone age and real time (or close to it) for the modern age. Also, put in a _very_ detailed tech tree with concurrent researching to spice things up (separate breech and muzzle loaded cannon/rifles, greek fire, proper horse collars, lots of little things that affect how all of the players will do their jobs).

The map would have to be extremely large as well. You want 100+ civs in the same map? This is the place for it.

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Jared Lessl

[Adm.Naismith]

Because of the lenght of a common Civ game, we must consider that a Massive Multiplayer Civ must be able to run as asyncronous possible:
a team of player as detailed as jdlessl propose, will become a very big problem after a bunch of turn, because of syncronus players presence required to work properly.

Look at the difference between fragging someone in a Quake style (short) multiplay or keep your character alive and running in Ultima on-line for months.

We must think of a game model than can cope with these reality, and left out anything can't fit in (as good as it can be, because that's not the point).

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant

[beyowulf]

I like idea of having a hug map with maybe a hundred or so civs.

What I am not sure I like is categorising the players too much. Maybe two types. A leader player, and a mayor player.

A leader player is responsible for the capital, and diplomacy, allocating overall resources, and military and civilian units supported by the capital.

Mayor units are responsible for their cities, and military and civillian units supported by the city they're controlling.

Players, if they feel that someone else is not pulling their own weight, will have some method of ousting them, either if the city their controlling is unhappy for a long time, or maybe by a majority vote.

Since the amount of collaboration between players will seriously slow things down, I suggest that unlike a normal game, only one turn take place per day, with a deadline at certain time, at which time the map is universally updated.

[airdrik]

I don't like the idea of one turn/day because that implies that the collaboration between players will take at least 24/civs hours to figure out what they are going to do. The more civs you have the more realistic it would be, but who says that there are going to be that many civs in one multiplayer game? Unless you are saying that the most time that all the civs can take is 1 day.
They could just limit the number of civs down to 16 at max, then with 5 players/civ thats 80 players which I think is a lot of people to be playing one internet multiplayer game at one time, and who says that they are going to be playing the same game? (see my prev. post about having more than one game) So at a given time, there will be 25-30 players at one game, about 2/civ. only a little negotiation will be needed to decide what they are going to do that turn(even less in the earlier parts of the game before you meet up with anyone) which means that one civ's turn wouldn't take much longer than a few minutes. Times 16 civs resutls in one turn takes no longer than 1 hour (it might approach that eventualy, but by that time you should almost be done with that game). A limit to each civ would be 30-45 minutes per turn, after which it automatically switches to the next civ. But that's still 12 hours if every civ takes 45 minutes to decide what they are going to do.

[UltraSonix]

How about a totally different angle to this idea - it'll never be implemented simply because there'll never enough interested players to make it commercially viable.

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards... Despite any stupid advertisments you may see to the contrary... (And no, koalas don't usually speak!)

[beyowulf]

quote: Originally posted by airdrik on 11-16-2000 12:12 PM I don't like the idea of one turn/day because that implies that the collaboration between players will take at least 24/civs hours to figure out what they are going to do. The more civs you have the more realistic it would be, but who says that there are going to be that many civs in one multiplayer game? Unless you are saying that the most time that all the civs can take is 1 day.

Yeah, thats what I am saying. A nation has one day to get its act together, before the turn is up. This doesn't mean that it will take a day for everything to be setup, just thats the time alloted.

Why this is good. Its good if, say, you want to play a multiplayer civ, but do not have a long stretch of evening to do so. Everyone has different schedules, and your really busy, its nice to be able to set aside a few minutes to do a turn. Would be nice to include a message board, members specific to each nation, so that the nation's leader can issue orders and what not to the members if need be, also
[This message has been edited by beyowulf (edited November 17, 2000).]

[jdlessl]

The more I think about this, the more I think it's actually doable. The only problem I keep running into is how to implement combat in a realistic fashion. Bear in mind that a map is going to be much larger than normal, and I think it would work better if military units were cheaper and more plentiful and had realistic limits as to what they can and cannot do. For instance, a single militia unit with 90% damage cannot conquer a city of 2 million people, especially with the opposing city's mayor fighting you tooth and nail. Have the units represent real quantities of troops that a commander can organize however he sees fit (ie, two half-strength regiments can be combined into a full-strength one).

Anyway, does someone have ideas as to how combat could be implemented?

Also, this sort of thing is rather different from Civ in that all the players are taking their turns at the same time. IIRC, there was an option to do that in SMAC, though I never actually used it. Can anyone tell me how well those games worked?

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Jared Lessl

[airdrik]

If everything is done simultaniously then if you moved a unit where another player can see it then that player would see it move on his screen at that time. He could also attack it that turn if he wanted to and had a unit in range to fight that unit.
Everyone would end their turns when they feel they are done, and when everyone is done then the next turn begins.

If one player attacks a city then the player being attacked could bring in nearby units to counter attack the units attacking the city. If you attack a unit that is in combat with another unit then you supprise attack that unit and get one free hit in. That unit then stops fighting the unit he was fighting to defend against your attack. If he was defending against another unit then the previous unit still gets to attack it. The sandwitched unit would only be allowed one conterattack per combat round. If the sandwitched unit was the attacker when it was attacked then the defender could (if it still has moves left) turn around and attack it's attacker if it's owner tells it to attack the unit that was attacking it.
This could result in a royal rumble if you arranged for everyone to get one or two units in there and just have a ball . Whoever wins would be very hurt, but such a battle would be soo much fun just to watch .

That is if it allows you to attack attacking units. They might not, though .

[airdrik]

How about we start a pole: how many people would be interested in playing Civ 3 over the internet against/with other humans? If enough people say yes, then it could/should be implemented, if not, then forget it.

I personally would like to play an internet version against/with other humans because playing against the AI gets old after a while.
[This message has been edited by airdrik (edited November 17, 2000).]

[SWPIGWANG The Second]

Well, All I can say is that without either simtanous turn/real time this idea is not going anywhere.

By the way the team idea is just GREAT.

[jdlessl]

Fun though it sounds, the SMAC synchronous game seems to favor whoever is quickest with the mouse. City management takes a backstage role behind unit movement. More like a real-time game there, which is something we don't want.

What if units are not moved during your turn but in between them? The commander tells a unit to head to location X and fortify as soon as it gets there. He also gives it orders on what to do if he runs into enemies on the way (attack, fall back, try to sneak past, etc). At the end of the turn, the server goes through and implements all the movements. It would have to do it a bit at a time for each civ; moves the units in small time segments so player #1 doesn't have an advantage.

This way, there's no advantage given to those who play in the first minutes of the new turn. It also allows you to have combined assaults with units attacking from different directions, something even CTP couldn't do.

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Jared Lessl

[airdrik]

This is a good idea, but not only would the prev. mentioned ideas give advantages to the faster, it would give advantages to those who wait just beyond the reach of everyone else until someone comes into their range at which time, he could strike.

This idea adds more realism, so to speak, because if you have two units that each have 3 movement points then they would move one space at the same time times their three movement points. You could have it so that a unit might move one, wait one, then move one. Thus if someone uses all it's movement points to get to where you are headed, you don't get caught defending, but offending.

[jdlessl]

Given the choice, I would much prefer to be on the defensive (usually; it depends on what kind of battle I'm fighting), so that sort of scenario is not something I'd try to set up on purpose. We just have to make sure that being on the defensive actually incurs a bonus. Easily done: make sure it's using a slightly more realistic combat simulator that pits the weapons against each other, and not purely against a defensive armor value. I believe I've heard more than a little complaint about the utter unrealism of combat resolution in Civ & SMAC.

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Jared Lessl
[This message has been edited by jdlessl (edited November 19, 2000).]

[Adm.Naismith]

Hmm, just in case there are lazy people around here...

This the abstract from the link I wrote in my previus post: I hope it explain quite well what some of us mean by simultaneous turn.

It's not a "click fest" at all, but simply asynchronous turns where orders are issued using one or more "client module" and are resolved by a "server module". They can work on the same PC (single player and hot seat) as well on different hardware (multiplayer).

quote: by Adm.Naismith (aka mcostant) and ChrisShaffer EC3 New Idea #15: Simultaneous Turns of Play The Problem The current turn-based model uses an unrealistic sequence, where a player can move units, attack a defender, and repeat. The defender can't properly react (reinforce, counterattack, etc.). All war declarations have a "Pearl Harbor" feeling, with significant advantages for attackers. Multiplayer is too difficult. Abstract All players (human and AI) receive a turn report, which can be reviewed and replayed as desired. All players create a set of potential orders for units, cities, and diplomacy. All players submit orders. All orders are adjudicated (on schedule or when all players have submitted orders). Conflicting orders are decided using a rule-based priority system. Game generates turn reports. Repeat. Advantages More realistic combat model. Forces players to consider both offence and defence. Eliminates the problem of "rolling attacks" where the defender has little or no opportunity to react. First strike nuclear attacks more difficult. Practical multiplayer options. In direct-connect mode, simultaneous orders creation saves considerable time. Eliminates the lag problems inherent in PBEM, as games could be hosted on web or email servers with set turn schedules. Players could receive turn reports, create orders, and submit them to the server for the next adjudication. The AI could create orders for players who do not meet the deadline. Eliminates most opportunities for cheating in multiplayer. Increased realism and excitement. In the real world, everyone acts at the same time, they don't wait until their turn. More tension in the rush to achieve objectives such as wonder building. Needed to implement this proposal Development of a priority mechanism to settle conflicting orders, such as movement, resource allocation by competing cities, etc. Turn reports combining animation and text that allow detailed review of events. "Replay" of any portion of the turn report as desired by players. Options for reactive movement and combat. Multiple defensive and offensive postures for units. Method of determining whether a unit is attacking, defending, or both. For example, a unit could be ordered to "attack and hold," "charge," "attack and advance," "counterattack if attacked," and so forth. Conclusion Simultaneous turns of play is more like a strategic level of command, where you make decisions and orders about the general plan, and then things happen according to your overall plan before you (the main commander) can change your mind.

Ok, now we have a draft of the model. We must add the team playing ability to solve occasional player unavailability and raise the feeling of beeing part of a civilization.

Well, if Firaxis will put the programming effort and some game server site will host the hardware, I'll be happy to do my job, sharing the income!

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant