Putting Hotseat in the Hot Seat

[leapinlemur]

I haven't found any posts about problems with the HOTSEAT mode of the game, so here goes. (Let it first be known that I've installed the PTW 1.14 patch):

1) DIFFICULTY LEVEL REVERTS TO CHIEFTAIN: I've had sporadic success with assigning difficulty level in a game. All except one time I've not been able to keep the difficulty level I chose originally. It, for some ungodly reason, reverts to CHIEFTAIN level every time! I can tell because I've tried loading the game again, where it always tells you the difficulty level you're on, and I've also played until my first city grows to see if I would get the characteristic DEITY disorder upon reaching size 2. My people are happy as clams and, on top of that, the other civs are pathetic, so it can't be DEITY. I know that the interface tends to readjust settings back on the setup screen for no good reason when other pick lists are selected, so when hosting and launching the hotseat game, I watch the difficulty level closely to be sure it doesn't revert to some other level. Even when it says it's still DEITY, it never turns out to be.

2) LOADING HOTSEAT GAMES CAUSES ERRORS: If, while playing a hotseat game, I try to load an autosave or any saved game, it loads the game as single player. It does work if I LAUNCH a saved hotseat game from the MULTIPLAYER menu, but I can't believe that you have to go to the main menu every time to be able to load a game.

Thank you in advance for any help or suggestions.

[HolyWarrior]

Haven't noticed the second problem.

Never tried playing with both human and AI, but you could be on to something. I played a "ancient empires" game with 8 players, playing all positions, and the Celts built the starship in 1948. I thought it was just because unlike the computer, I made intelligent trades between empires--but you may be right.

[Sheik]

1) DIFFICULTY LEVEL REVERTS TO CHIEFTAIN: I've had sporadic success with assigning difficulty level in a game. All except one time I've not been able to keep the difficulty level I chose originally. It, for some ungodly reason, reverts to CHIEFTAIN level every time! I can tell because I've tried loading the game again, where it always tells you the difficulty level you're on, and I've also played until my first city grows to see if I would get the characteristic DEITY disorder upon reaching size 2. My people are happy as clams and, on top of that, the other civs are pathetic, so it can't be DEITY. I know that the interface tends to readjust settings back on the setup screen for no good reason when other pick lists are selected, so when hosting and launching the hotseat game, I watch the difficulty level closely to be sure it doesn't revert to some other level. Even when it says it's still DEITY, it never turns out to be.

I think you could fix this in the editor by giving the chieftan difficulty the diety characteristics. Then just play with this modification and when it switches to chieftan, chieftan will be diety.

Regarding #2: It is frustrating that you have to go into the multiplayer area.

I think that Hotseat is the best way to play and think it is the best new feature of PTW. With a few more tweaks it could be even better.

[player1]

The real probelm with Hotseat is lack of information during AI turn.

You don't see which your units are attacked, has somebody decalred war on you, is some your city taken...

[Th0mas]

Originally posted by player1
The real probelm with Hotseat is lack of information during AI turn.

You don't see which your units are attacked, has somebody decalred war on you, is some your city taken...

Here here, absolutely!!!!

This for me is a show stopper on hotseat.
This was exactly the same problem for the hotseat implementation in CIV 2. I could be completely wrong, but judging from the symptoms, it appears they have used the same scripting trick(bodge) to implement it in CIV 3.

I am assuming that it is the same for PBEM (haven't tried), which is a great shame as PBEM should be the multiplayer option of choice for CIV. (games v-long, time to think between turns, real life commitments etc).

...and according to the most recient Firaxis-apolyton chat transcript they are not planning on 'fixing' this...

[Colonel Kraken]

I've experienced both problems and here are the solutions I've found (I think ).

1)Go into Multiplayer first. Host game. Load game. Difficulty level is retained.

2)Do not load a Hotseat game from within a game. Always go to the main screen and load from there. This is a known way to turn a hotseat game into a single player game.

Hope this helps.