A most excellent Civ 4 MP adventure!
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- jpinard
- Posts: 5057
- Joined: Wed Oct 13, 2004 6:32 am
- Location: Enceladus, Saturn
A most excellent Civ 4 MP adventure!
I just played Civ IV on-line... and ... well I'm not feeling too good and am tired - but I really wanted to write about this.
I've been a vocal anti multi-player advocate for years as I generally play games to get away from people... not to spend more time with idiots. But I'd heard positive things about the Civ's integrated on-line aspect and thought, "What the heck, I'll try it once". So I set up a game with the strict purpose of limiting city expansion. A 2-player tiny map, arctic tundra (Ice Age), high sea-levels (once again to limit the amount of available land), ancient era, wide continent.
It's about 1:30 am and after fighting with my stupid Gamespy ID (had to create a new one through Civ with a new e-mail address) I finally got on. The lobby was very well-behaved with many thoughtful people on, and almost no spam. I setup the game mechanics mentioned above and labeled it "Fun Small Arctic Scenario". I felt my game title was much better than most of the idiot labels I saw (who wants to join a game that's a bunch of random plus and minus symbols?). I waited several minutes and a guy came in with the username: lootandpillage -----> oh great. I've got myself an idiot l33+ dude. So we get started and I find out he's kinda new to mp as well... though he'd already played a larger mp session yesterday. I tell him to have fun beating me cause I've only finished the tutorial and am clueless. I'd set the turn limit to 130 turns (on the advice of someone in the lobby) - and the turn timer is at medium. Well medium is actually pretty darn fast. It only gives you 45 seconds to complete your turn. That's great for quick turns, but not-so-great when hunting for new land (but it's absolutely manageable). The turn play is smooth, and the individual I'm playing turns out to be a really thoughtful and helpful individual. He helps me with several things I don't quite understand and in the meantime accidentally cripples himself early on. Since he thought I was a super noob - he started making a Settler first, which crippled his Capital City growth. At least I'd read to the point in the manual where it told me there's no growth while you make Settlers, Workers, or Work Boats. So for the entire game I've got a very healthy lead. Despite the fact he had little chance to win - he stayed in the game and was as competitive as possible. We never went to war, but instead competed economically and culturally.
An hour and a half later the turn limit was up and we'd completed our game. He tried to go full religion and was trying to develop a Theocracy hoping religion could turn the tide of the game. While I remained a treacherous ruler. My people were lower than slaves and we remained pagans. At the end, we'd mapped out our small continent and had 4 cities each. There was a surprisingly abundant level of resources to work with so our cities were not hurt by the cold climate. If I'd wanted to I could have wiped him out around turn 110 with my army since he fell so far behind the curve - but he'd actually helped me win. He saw my first city was surrounded with forests stated he loved chopping them down to speed production. Normally I don't chop down forests... but I realized in a shorter game this could make a huge difference - and it did. In the time he made 1 settler, I made 3 warriors, 2 workers, and a settler. His next project (after creating a few spearmen), was a worker. Once again this wasn't too smart since his city was only level 2 and it could not expand while the worker was being created. When I saw my score was ahead by about 30% - I sent one of my workers to him as a gift. I felt bad.
All in all, that 1.5 hours flew by, and I'm excited to try another mp game. It was excellent... smooth as glass. My only complaint is the chat window is too big (I wish we could resize it smaller).
If you get the chance - try it at least once. Set it up the way I did (except set the turn limit to 150 turns). Knowing you can't reload makes the initial exploration that much more exciting - coupled with the unpredictability of a human. I really can't believe Firaxis pulled this mp sensation off.
I've been a vocal anti multi-player advocate for years as I generally play games to get away from people... not to spend more time with idiots. But I'd heard positive things about the Civ's integrated on-line aspect and thought, "What the heck, I'll try it once". So I set up a game with the strict purpose of limiting city expansion. A 2-player tiny map, arctic tundra (Ice Age), high sea-levels (once again to limit the amount of available land), ancient era, wide continent.
It's about 1:30 am and after fighting with my stupid Gamespy ID (had to create a new one through Civ with a new e-mail address) I finally got on. The lobby was very well-behaved with many thoughtful people on, and almost no spam. I setup the game mechanics mentioned above and labeled it "Fun Small Arctic Scenario". I felt my game title was much better than most of the idiot labels I saw (who wants to join a game that's a bunch of random plus and minus symbols?). I waited several minutes and a guy came in with the username: lootandpillage -----> oh great. I've got myself an idiot l33+ dude. So we get started and I find out he's kinda new to mp as well... though he'd already played a larger mp session yesterday. I tell him to have fun beating me cause I've only finished the tutorial and am clueless. I'd set the turn limit to 130 turns (on the advice of someone in the lobby) - and the turn timer is at medium. Well medium is actually pretty darn fast. It only gives you 45 seconds to complete your turn. That's great for quick turns, but not-so-great when hunting for new land (but it's absolutely manageable). The turn play is smooth, and the individual I'm playing turns out to be a really thoughtful and helpful individual. He helps me with several things I don't quite understand and in the meantime accidentally cripples himself early on. Since he thought I was a super noob - he started making a Settler first, which crippled his Capital City growth. At least I'd read to the point in the manual where it told me there's no growth while you make Settlers, Workers, or Work Boats. So for the entire game I've got a very healthy lead. Despite the fact he had little chance to win - he stayed in the game and was as competitive as possible. We never went to war, but instead competed economically and culturally.
An hour and a half later the turn limit was up and we'd completed our game. He tried to go full religion and was trying to develop a Theocracy hoping religion could turn the tide of the game. While I remained a treacherous ruler. My people were lower than slaves and we remained pagans. At the end, we'd mapped out our small continent and had 4 cities each. There was a surprisingly abundant level of resources to work with so our cities were not hurt by the cold climate. If I'd wanted to I could have wiped him out around turn 110 with my army since he fell so far behind the curve - but he'd actually helped me win. He saw my first city was surrounded with forests stated he loved chopping them down to speed production. Normally I don't chop down forests... but I realized in a shorter game this could make a huge difference - and it did. In the time he made 1 settler, I made 3 warriors, 2 workers, and a settler. His next project (after creating a few spearmen), was a worker. Once again this wasn't too smart since his city was only level 2 and it could not expand while the worker was being created. When I saw my score was ahead by about 30% - I sent one of my workers to him as a gift. I felt bad.
All in all, that 1.5 hours flew by, and I'm excited to try another mp game. It was excellent... smooth as glass. My only complaint is the chat window is too big (I wish we could resize it smaller).
If you get the chance - try it at least once. Set it up the way I did (except set the turn limit to 150 turns). Knowing you can't reload makes the initial exploration that much more exciting - coupled with the unpredictability of a human. I really can't believe Firaxis pulled this mp sensation off.
- Turtle
- Posts: 6310
- Joined: Thu Oct 21, 2004 2:09 am
- Location: Southern California
- Contact:
- Turtle
- Posts: 6310
- Joined: Thu Oct 21, 2004 2:09 am
- Location: Southern California
- Contact:
A feature that had to be cut when they were rushed to release. They've basically promised to patch it back in.
The pitboss server is a server someone sets up online to take incoming turn information, process them, and then let players get new turn info back from it.
Basically it automates the whole process of a play by email game, except now everyone is on simultaneous turns. I suppose you can set some kind of turn time limit so that if anyone hasn't submitted their turns by the end of the limit, the server processes it anyway.
Think of it being similar to those online kingdom simulators you see on the web.
The pitboss server is a server someone sets up online to take incoming turn information, process them, and then let players get new turn info back from it.
Basically it automates the whole process of a play by email game, except now everyone is on simultaneous turns. I suppose you can set some kind of turn time limit so that if anyone hasn't submitted their turns by the end of the limit, the server processes it anyway.
Think of it being similar to those online kingdom simulators you see on the web.
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- Posts: 2781
- Joined: Wed Oct 13, 2004 1:38 am