Hi, Big time Fan of Gal Civ 1 and 2! I never bought the expansions though, because there is no multiplayer component. I've always thought your polls are skewed because your polls are based off of people who play your game (people who are okay with only playing singleplayer), and not the audience you're missing out on because of not having multiplayer. People like me, who like your game, but just aren't that into it enough to visit your website and vote on your polls. Long story short, its like going to a republican rally, and taking a poll to see how many republicans are for the government taking more control over the citizen's private lives.
Anyways, because I'm a big fan of these games, I've thought a lot about how to implement multiplayer. The absolute BEST way, and the most streamlined way, would be to play turns without the entire 'party' being connected.
The reason why is because the hardest part about finishing these games, is its literally impossible to finish an entire game in one sitting (which im sure you are aware of). When you have more than 2 players in game, it becomes hard to sync 4 peoples schedule together, and you end up only being able to take less than a dozen turns a week. So to make it more practical, you need to reduce these barriers of multiplayer. And like I said before, the best way to do this, is to be able to take your turns without the entire 'party' connected to the game.
I played this Online Risk game, (its called Warfish, if you want an invite let me know) where you were able to take your turn, and it would pass on to the next player, and the next player and so forth. in a 4 player game, I was generally able to take 2 turns a day (Super casual). Once in the morning, and Once in the evening. Most of the time, more, and sometimes less. But generally it emails you when its your turn in a game, and it depends on how often you check your email. I would play 2 or 3 games simultaneously, and had a lot of fun.
So there is one other solution in practice, which is, everybody takes their turn at the same time. Which ends up being pretty fast, but you still end up having to wait one someone, feeling rushed. And in a 2 hour game timespan, you only ended up spending 40 of those minutes, actually taking your own turn, and 'having fun'. This solution offers the player to take his turn, and move on with his life. And comfortably wait for his friends to take their turn.
Hopefully I wasn't not obtuse in anyways, and my post was simple and clear. If you have any questions, please let me clarify. Either way, I'm really excited to play this game. I played BOTF with my friends a lot, so any multiplayer is a good multiplayer. But there ARE ways to improve on the time span it takes to play a multiplayer game for 4x's
EDIT: I do want to add that, this style of game will work if Stardock hosts the servers, Or if you give the ability for users to host their servers. Also, if you use HOTSEATS, with the advent of cloud drives, it would be cool of the gamedata was concise enough, you could play off of your clouddrive, and you could have 5 players using the same game data if they all had access to the same cloud drive.
Civ 4 MP games used special rules so to make it fast. Aside from simultaneous turns and a turn timer, there was a turn limit (120-150 turns, depending on era) and "city eliminaiton 2" mode (you lose 2 cities, your entire empire is destroyed, so to put a limit to non-stop expansion with undefended cities - in Civ 4 expansion was too cheap compared to an army required to raize that city). So a game itself wasn't that fast, it was fast only because of these MP settings.
Other than it's a complete fantasy. Don't expect more than one turn per day even from dedicated players. And random strangers are not exactly dedicated, especially if they'll feel they're not likely to win in that match. Did you ever participate in such Civ 4 games? I bet you didn't.
So, 200 turns is a year long game even if everyone can do turns at the same time. It will never be finished.
Honestly, I'm expecting very few players to ever use online multiplayer. Hotseat will be slightly more popular, especially pseudo "hotseat multiplayer" where one person plays two or more civs in the same game. I might even do a bit of that myself. It might even be interesting to be able to play a minor civ that way.
Note for Stardock: for all modes of multiplayer, there needs to be a way for the AI to take over for a player that drops out. It's probably already planned, but just in case it hasn't been.....
You obviously haven't played Europa Universalis multiplayer. Those games can last 100 hours and contain 20+ human players. It's easely organized in the forums by announcing a game will start for instance every monday at 5 o'clock, and last for 3-4 hours. Then it's saved, and all continue at the same hour next week. works perfectly well, and Europa Universalis MP is very popular. Never a problem finding players or games in the multiplayer forum there, at any day of the week.
There is also no problems finding people to play a non-pause 7-12 hour game or even more with. Just look at the Steam site NO QUITTERS where we organize loads of long Civilization games daily. We have players from all over the world organizing games that are played in one go there, at all hours.
Long MP games are popular. 2 hours are more like a teamer game on a tiny map, or RTS-multiplayer games at their longest. Not by far enough to get the fun out of a large scale strategy game. It may be good enough for you, but we are many with epic scale multiplayer needs.
I'm just hoping it has coop play. That is the best form of multiplayer for a game like this, as it doesn't work against the single player part at all. Get a couple of friends, crank up the difficulty, and try to win.
Competitive multiplayer isn't as well suited to the genre, and while some games have made it work, they're really doing it in a different modes or with special rules (along with really small maps).
But guys - please, please please PLEASE get coop play in!
+1. It seems like co-op would be built in via alliances. You can skype while playing too.
Yeah, exactly. That's kind of the beauty of it, is that it doesn't take a huge amount of extra work if you're already doing both diplomacy and multiplayer. Start up a sandbox game, let players start in an alliance (aka: start on a team), have allied victory, and you're pretty much there.
Bonus points if allies can start at least reasonably close together, being on the opposite side of the galaxy from your ally in a huge galaxy isn't ideal.
CO-OP never apealed to me, but it is popular even in these kind of games (for me that is more for RTS, 2 vs 2 games for instance).
FFA games are what I play, and I find games like GalCiv are perfect for it (Fallen Enchantress would have been too). Just like playing the ordinary SP game, but with human opponents instead of AIs, which makes a huge difference in challenge and diplomatic opportunities (real shifting coallitions everyone). A marvelous gaming experience awaits us.
NB! What can ruin long epic MP games are of course quitters/unserious players. To avoid that it's smart to organize the games well in advance. This can be done in the forum or in Steam groups (where unwanted elements are kicked out), or both.
It's a good way for people of significantly unequal skill levels to play. Rather than one person intentionally handicapping themselves to give the other a chance, they can team up to take on the rest of the galaxy.
Nah, ive played asynchronous games with extremely casual players, at the minimum you can expect AT LEAST 2 turns. I think a dedicated gamer group will get to 10 or 15 turns a day. I already know that 4 to 5 is extremely easy. Everybody will take a turn when they wake up, once when they get home, maybe check on it after dinners or something, and once right before bed.
And i dont think anybody cares about playing against random strangers, because nobody is going to finish those games. Am I right? I sure am not excited about playing against strangers. I'm excited about bringing my friends into my space opera with me, so we can talk about the same game! I dont think multiplayer with strangers has the same attachment as it did 10 years ago. I dont get excited to play against strangers on the internet anymore. In fact, I generally dont even care. The only time I do care, is when I'm playing competitively and desire challenge. Everybody just wants to play with their friends. Thats all.
So once again, 200 turns is not a year long, it will probably take a month or 3
And we wonder why TBS doesn't get much multiplayer attention. Until TBS games are designed with multiplayer with strangers in mind, it is a waste of resources to even include the multiplayer aspect. TBS is just not a very popular genre of game. It is even rarer that you know more than 1 or 2 other people to play with.
I am completely o.k. with allowing people to play the full space opera with friends. But I would also like a multiplayer with strangers friendly version of the game. And by that, I mean a game of 4 to 8 players that can conclude within 2 hours. A lobby, registered name, and rating would also be good.
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