The long-awaited sequel to the greatest game of all time, Civilization, comes out at the end of this month. My copies are alreadfy preordered…
…and SURPRISE!!! The game company, Firaxis, just admitted it will not have multiplayer play of any kind. They might release it later as part of an expansion.
Holy living fuck! A strategy game, a game obviously suited for multiplayer, and no multiplayer! It’s OCTOBER 2001, for God’s sake! All games have multiplayer now! What the hell were they thinking?
I already had Civ III online games planned. SDMB members were talking about having games. Now, all down the drain. Jesus Christ; as long as they’re rleasing new games with 1980s technical specs, why not release a game with no sound card support or CGA graphics? Idiots.
What??! Is this some kind of fucking joke on the part of Firaxis? Holy Living Fuck. No multiplayer at all? I could swear it was eventually possible to play ALPHA CENTAURI against other people… this really sucks.
Around ten years ago there was a company called Level 9 that made text adventures. Good ones. Their final release was a game called SCAPEGHOST. One thing to note about that game is that it didn’t know the word “at”. Kind of crucial for a text adventure – “>look at item” and all – and their previous works all understood the word. Before now, that was the most terrible de-featuring of any game “engine” I had ever known about. Civ III just FREAKING trumped it.
No multiplayer… dammit! I’m with you, RickJay – I was planning on grabbing this the day it came out and touching base with my hometown friends back in New York over the net.
the Holy Avenger
Actually, Avenger, I prefer it without the ‘at,’ being a MUX user(where you type ‘look [object]’). I tried playing the HHGTG text game and was constantly screamed at to use prepositions.
Civilization II always took me several hours and over several days to complete a game. Uh, not counting the times at higher difficulty levels that the computer stomped all over my ass. Personally I think the game will be just fine with out multiplayer. But don’t worry I’m sure they’ll eventually release a multiplayer version.
well, one of the major reasons he’s pissed is because civ3 has a whole bunch of game-shortening elements, which were essentially added just for multiplayer.
as in, they added value-based win adjustments. so the entire endgame, when you know you’ve won, but you still have to hunt down the last little bit of the enemy forces to win under the game’s terms, has been chopped off.
so, an ‘easy’ game with all the game-shorteners on should be less than three hours long. most people thought this was made so that the multiplayer was at least viable.
and news of this removal of multiplayer left a lot of “WTF?!?!?”'s hanging on the air.
<trying to be voice of reason> Well, firaxis did say that they were going to come out with a multiplayer patch later and we know that we can easily waste the next month or so playing any Civ game single-player and we’re gonna have a doozy of a new one. Or, if you really get an MP itch, you could play CivII multi-player to tide you over (which is kinda like a Crack user switching to Meth to quit).
Just out of curiousity, what are the game mechanics of playing CivII online? Just my opinion, but it’d seem pretty boring to me to play my turn and then have to sit around waiting for the other players to do their’s (not to mention time intensive). Did Firaxis have some way of speeding people up in the multiplayer version of CivII?
On Civ II you had a perdetermined amount of time on your turn during which you could do anything you wanted. But when it wasn’t your turn you could do city management and whatever else, and the only thing you couldn’t do was move units. So basically you just kinda prioritized during your turn, and spent your opponents turns just taking care of more routine crap. It was fun.
I have no doubt that’s what they’ll do, which is part of the reason I’m pissed off about it. I am absolutely convinced there will be no “multiplayer patch.” It’ll be included in “Civ 3 Gold” and the “Civ 3 Scenario Disk,” and the only way to get it will be to buy it.
I am very, very disappointed in Sid Meier. Until now he’s always been dependable to produce quality, finished products; this bait-and-switch tactic, marketing the game as multiplayer until all the preorders are in, is a low move even by the dismal standards of the video game industry. But they’re already lost some of my money; I’m only getting 1 copy instead of 2, because Mrs. RickJay doesn’t want it until we can play together.
Well, no kidding guy. It’s been well known in the community that Firaxis wasn’t going to put MP on the realease version. It’ll either be on a:
(1) Patch in march or
(2) Expansion in March.
Also, neither Sid Meier or Brian Reynolds have anything to do with the design, so for those of you who are expecting the fin of Alpha Centauri or * Civilization II*…Hah!
Alpha Centauri has had working multiplayer right out of the box, and it’s a better game than Civ 2 ever was, and Civ 3 probably ever will be (seeing as how it has no relation to the true creators of Civ) As for “game-shorteners”, AC also already has two other ways to win besides just military and evolutional.
Hey SpaceGhost, can you elaborate on “neither Sid Meier or Brian Reynolds have anything to do with the design” please? I can’t find anything more about it online, everything seems to be saying it’s a full project.
Yeah, I’d have to back that up. Last time I interviewed Sid (May 2000…drinks and appetizers with Sid Meier!)(You may worship me now) he certainly seemed to believe that he was going to be the lead designer.