I fear multiplayer could get too long

FrostyBoy · April 25, 2002, 18:22

I've been having massive wars lately, and I realised that one turn could last 15-30minutes!

I don't know what you have planned for multiplayer Firaxis, but I think that ctrl-selecting a group of units to attack or to fortify or to go to a desitination, would speed the game up a lot; because it gets a bit diablo (clickfest) like.

Especially when using artillary type units, it's all, shift-b drag mouse, click, repeat, repeat, repeat x10

It starts to get annoying, infact I ended up disbanding all of my artillary just coz it got too annoying.

And while I was thinking about this, I also thought it would be quite cool if you could assign a unit or a bunch of units to attack another unit, and to only attack that unit until either one of them is dead.

So if say an enemy is 20 tiles away, and you want to kill it, you could assign maybe 3 marines and a tank to travel that 20 turns and kill it. But if the enemy unit disappears under the fog, then your men will automatically stop.

And so you end up 'designing' battles, and watching them like a play.

and you don't have to use the damn mouse so much.

Oerdin · April 25, 2002, 18:48

I'm sure they'll have a time limit option like was done on CTP2. But then again I thought they'd have unit stacking in the shipped version too.

Lung · April 25, 2002, 20:14

Well, that's what you get when they ignore such gameplay advances as stacking and future pathing as employed in Call To Power

In any case, multiplayer is time-consuming, particularly PBEM (play-by-e-mail), although they are still immensely gratifying, particularly when you have conquered the AI or are simply sick of their cheating

I still haven't bought Civ3 because i'm waiting for multiplayer. Okay, so i'm also waiting for the all-important computer upgrade, but that's another story

Jack_www · April 25, 2002, 20:32

I know that Civ3 mp will take a long long time. But I still want to play Civ3 with other people!!! I have been waiting even before the release of Civ3 to be able to play other people with Civ3. I hope they release it soon!!!!!!

Dida · April 25, 2002, 20:33

i ain't got the time to waste on Civ3 multiplay.

Shadowlord · April 25, 2002, 20:38

Maybe some genius will code something like MMOMS (Multiplayer Master of Magic Shell, which added hotseat-based multiplayer to the single-player MoM).

Oerdin · April 25, 2002, 20:53

Dida, even if you don't buy Civ3 MP millions of people will.

Willem · April 25, 2002, 20:57

Quote:

Originally posted by Sn00py

Especially when using artillary type units, it's all, shift-b drag mouse, click, repeat, repeat, repeat x10

It starts to get annoying, infact I ended up disbanding all of my artillary just coz it got too annoying.

Yes, there really needs to be a stack bombard command, something like ctrl-shift-B to get all the units to fire together. I like using Artillery etc., but it gets to be a real pain firing off a stack of ten or so. I suspect this will be the next beef to make the rounds.

Inverse Icarus · April 25, 2002, 21:16

multi-what? i'm sorry, we here at firaxis aren't familiar with that term

PhoenixPhlame73 · April 25, 2002, 21:58

I think i missed something....did Firaxis ever add any sort of stack commands, are there any at all?!?!?!

Inverse Icarus · April 25, 2002, 22:43

yes. hitting j will make a "goto" cursor pop up. with the newest patch, all of the UNFORTIFIED units of the selected unit's type will move there.

Dida · April 25, 2002, 22:52

Quote:

Originally posted by Oerdin
Dida, even if you don't buy Civ3 MP millions of people will.

yo smart kid, i'm not telling you not to buy it.
If you are smart, you can keep your mouth shut on that.

Just My 2 Cents · April 25, 2002, 22:57

nice answer, gotta love the maturity level on forums.

Cyclotron · April 25, 2002, 23:00

Yo dida, it's good to have a poster like you to make all the deep, thoughtful comments.

player1 · April 26, 2002, 02:40

Solution:

Play on smaller maps.
Anything bigger that Standard map would be UNPOPULAR in multiplayer.

Killazer · April 26, 2002, 03:52

Yes snoop the ideas I posted in my making civ3 truly civ3 post for the most part all aim towards taking off of our shoulders all the unecessary burden the game programmers have left us. Come on, for a game of this scope where there can be hundreds of units and cities to command there MUST be a wide range of well developed commands from the single unit up to hundreds of units and various groups of units at the same time.

There should be waypoints, group selection and hotkeying, stack bombard (bombard with all yer arty in tile with just 1 keypress), fortify-all commands and many others. There were NO such conventions when the game was first shipped. Excuse me.. wtf? No wonder they didnt bother to release multiplayer it would have been a joke not to mention they didnt even finish it on time. If you dont have the budget and time to fully finish a game that has the potential to be one of the very best dont make the game at all... ok? Greedy bastards.

Anyway, there is still time and these commands can be added. To make multiplayer more viable and the game generally a better game with much less tedium allowing the player to focus on overall empire and not click click click (oops there goes 30 minutes) stack , hotkeying etc commands need to be added.

Sorry im kindof angry that they didnt add these features to start with. If they playtested their own game even once the need for them would have been very obvious. Im sure they knew about it but didnt bother with it for whatever reasons they have and that pisses me off.. especially since they charge 50 bucks for it. Software developers throw half finished buggy software at us and we lap it up. I hate that that pisses me off..... spend some more cash and finish the job! Well why should they, we shell out the cash so whatever I suppose. Now I hear they are also screwing MOO3 little by little. Get your **** together Infogrames cuz if you keep pushing developers to release half finished games.. well if I was a dev id say screw you.

Sorry again i dunno this wave of anger just suddenly swept over me. Anyway, I hope some new commands are added to make the game smoother and run faster turn-time wise. This is primarily a problem in early industrial- modern times as before that if you are experienced player you can zip past the ages. But once you get all those units and wars going later on click click click redundantly will take you lots of unecessarily wasted time.

redstar1 · April 26, 2002, 05:16

You wouldn't say screw you, you'd say:

'Hmmm, I'm not happy about the way things are going on the.....oh wow, my pay packet, thanks a lot boss'

Cookie Monster · April 26, 2002, 11:22

Quote:

Originally posted by redstar1
You wouldn't say screw you, you'd say:

'Hmmm, I'm not happy about the way things are going on the.....oh wow, my pay packet, thanks a lot boss'

Just picked up mine yesterday!

Mavfin · April 26, 2002, 11:25

LAN MP (i.e. simultaneous play to the end) would have to be limited to small maps or played among people who are together anyway to be practical. PBEM, OTOH, would be much like a succession game, but longer, as instead of 10 turns at a time, you'd play *one* turn of *one* civ, and send the game on to the next person. Some of the SGs take a month or more now. PBEM might take months on a huge map, and whether that's fun or not depends on who's playing. If it's not fun for you, then don't play it. I wouldn't have the hours-at-a-time to play simultaneous/internet/LAN MP very often, but playing a turn on each of 2 or 3 PBEM games might be fun for me. YMMV.

Killazer · April 26, 2002, 19:49

Quote:

Originally posted by redstar1
You wouldn't say screw you, you'd say:

'Hmmm, I'm not happy about the way things are going on the.....oh wow, my pay packet, thanks a lot boss'

Yeah I guess yer right.

DrFell · April 26, 2002, 23:54

Quote:

Originally posted by Oerdin
I'm sure they'll have a time limit option like was done on CTP2. But then again I thought they'd have unit stacking in the shipped version too.

Time limits are crap when you run out of time halfway through moving your units though. The key to mp will be playing on small maps (which most people will do).

Dida · April 27, 2002, 14:40

That's why we need true stacked movement. w/o them, we will get hundreds of units to move around.
We better get stacked bombard as well. It is annoying that I gotta send my 15 bombards out to bomb his single pikemen one by one.

Denday · April 27, 2002, 22:29

I think its stupid really with all your fancy commands it would still take to long even on a tiny map
lets say a turn takes you 2 minitues and there must be 300 turns in the game so thats
2 times 2 times 300 = 1200 minutes divide by 60 = 20 hours imagine that yahhhhh
its never going to happen i dont care if i am not perfect on my caulations but
you should get the genral idea

Dida · April 27, 2002, 22:47

it is true. multiplay simply takes too much time. Games are going real time now. No one's got the time to play out-dated turn base game online.

Inverse Icarus · April 27, 2002, 23:20

Quote:

Originally posted by Dida
it is true. multiplay simply takes too much time. Games are going real time now. No one's got the time to play out-dated turn base game online.

i disagree.

if you have a group of friends (i do, i know 11 civers my area) it works out well.

we usually play for an hour or two every night or so, and actually held a civ-lan

Skanky Burns · April 28, 2002, 00:49

A civ-lan?

Wow, that would have been fun. I don't know too many civers in my local area, so I've never tried it.

Jethro83 · April 28, 2002, 02:47

MP for Turn-based games is crap.

I played a Hotseat game of CivII with one of my brothers and it only lasted 5 turns before we both got frustrated and quit.

I played a lot of hotseat games of Heroes of Might and Magic II and III with both my brothers and none of them were ever finished.

It gets worse when people take too long to think about what to do in their turn. No matter what is done to try and fix this, it will always be slowed down by people who take too long to think.

At least in RTS and FPS, people who take too long to think are sitting ducks and you can simply blow them away (though it doesn't bring much satisfaction as it would be too easy).

The upside to turn-based multiplayer over TCP/IP / modem / Internet / PBEM is that you won't have to worry about lag slowing the game down.

Grrr · April 28, 2002, 15:28

Hey, what's wrong with 2 year PBEM games. They should implement some kind notepad into the game though, to remeber any plans etc.

FrostyBoy · April 28, 2002, 15:46

You live in Wellington? You should change your name to Brrr! haha!

But anyway, I wonder what Firaxis are brewing up for multiplayer, they did say they had some new never before seen multiplayer features that would make it fun, didn't they?

PhoenixPhlame73 · April 28, 2002, 17:36

i bet those including freezing, lockups, and general bad qualities.

Oh, wait, those have been seen before.... maybe tehy will make your computer cuss at you....