SDMB Multiplayer Civ 5 games

The Game Room
1

Most people don’t play Civ 5 in multiplayer, but having tried it, it works pretty decently. It uses a simultaneous turn system where people execute their turn at the same time - occasionally this can lead to awkward situations, but for the most part it works well enough and fairly quickly.

Even on quick pace, a 4+ player game can take over 8-10 hours, so we’d have to break it up into several scheduled sessions over several days. Our normal gaming time together is generally from roughly 8-11pm eastern, so I’m thinking that would be a good start.

Tuesdays are one of our TF2 games, so I’m thinking we can give this a go on Wednesday at 8pm eastern, for 3 hours. After that, I’ll ask those who attended what works for them and see when we can schedule a continuation session.

Anyone is welcome - you don’t have to be good at the game, we can help you learn, and I doubt any of us have played much multiplayer. We’ll use ventrilo for voice chat.

If you’re interested, go ahead and post here or contact me on steam. If you have a preference as to when to play these games, post about it and I’ll try to work out a schedule that works for everyone. A few people have expressed an interest in playing to me so I’m guessing we can get at least 4 or 5 players during this time period, but the more the merrier.

We’ll probably play on quick pace to keep the time managable, but otherwise I’ll go with what everyone wants as far as settings. If we get 4+ people, there’s no need for AI.

If this goes well, we can start up other games at different times or on weekends only or whatever works for people.

But for now, let’s give this a try. You’ve got 2 days to sign up. Wednesday at 8pm eastern. Post in the thread and/or contact me on steam to sign up.

2

Sure, I’m game. Wed @ 8 pm EST works for me.

3

I’ll give this a shot.

4

I’m in!

Gotta practice. :slight_smile:

5

We’ve got about 6 people who want in. I’ll try to keep a schedule of continuation that works for everyone, probably during our normal gaming hours, but I don’t want to set anything in stone until I’ve talked to people. But if someone has to leave mid-game, I wouldn’t ask the 5+ other people to cancel or anything - I think if you leave the AI will take over your civ, and maybe you can return and regain control of it, I’m not sure, I haven’t had to deal with those situations.

Anyway, keep in mind that I’m planning on doing this in 3 hour chunks, so do your best to be available for it. If you have to leave early, hopefully the AI taking over transition is seamless.

Also, the private/free vent server only holds 8 people, so if we end up having more than that, we’ll either need to leave someone out, or we’ll have to find a rented vent server with a higher capacity. Does anyone have a guild server or something we could get our own channel on occasionally?

6

Guess I’ll have to go get one of those headsets then. In any event sounds cool to me. I guess it’s vanilla Beyond the Sword?

7

Civ 5, not civ 4.

Fewer people in the SDMB group have civ 4 than civ 5 (oddly enough) and we don’t run into any issues with some people having certain expansions and some not. I actually don’t have civ 4 on steam and I have no idea where my physical disks are, so Civ 5 is more practical it would seem.

8

I need to practice as well. What type of rules are we looking at? I usually play pangea, and I think that’d be the best because it’d keep us in closer contact. But I’m open for anything (just not islands. I fucking hate islands. Ok, I’d still play.)

9

Then I’m out-for various reasons I’ve never sprung for Civ5, and likely never will.

10

How ruthless are we playing? I usually play King but I can easily scale it back for everyone. I’d still have fun.

11

You can actually set different difficulties per-player. I assume what this means is that you’d get the various bonuses or penalties to happiness and production and such that come with that level, but not the AI penalties/bonuses against you.

I was thinking we could all play on prince, which is the level where there are no penalties or bonuses.

12

Any suggestions for settings? Pangea is okay for me. It looks like we’re looking at between 6 and 8 players (some people expressed interest that didn’t post to the thread).

I think the game will end up playing too passively as people will probably be reluctant to engage in war and will instead try to build their little empires. Diplomacy will be … interesting, discussing it on voice and also I guess maybe sending secret messages to each other. If two people decided to team up against another guy and steamroll them, it’d be kind of shitty for that person, but I guess it’s part of the game. I don’t really know how the etiquette would work - I’ve only played 1v1 games where we were at war with each other. Multiway diplomacy could be strange. Do we need to set any sort of rules?

I’ll set the pace to quick just to keep the game at a reasonable pace. There’s a turn timer that gradually increases as time goes on and people have more stuff to control - but it’s always overly generous. It gives you several minutes per turn by mid game. I’m hoping people will act quickly to keep the pace of the game up generally, because even with people acting promptly these things can still last 10+ hours.

Any concerns/issues/suggestions?

13

I was thinking a gentleman’s agreement on not attacking until Classical age maybe? Because it’s very easy with certain civs to rush others (Alexander, I’m looking at you).

If not, I won’t fight it. I’ve never played a quick game (I usually play epic) so I’ll probably get steamrolled quickly.

14

Pangaea is probably best so players can find each other quickly. Plus I’m not entirely pleased with how the game handles amphibious assaults. Half the fun of multiplayer games, I think, is shifting alliances - cooperate with someone long enough, then stab them in the back. Will we be able to send secret messages? Because that would be awesome.

And now I know I’m going to get steamrolled.

15

Well people would always have the option of sending steam IMs to the other people. I guess we could make a rule against it but I don’t see why, I guess private diplomacy makes sense.

I really have no idea how this all would play out - it may be rational for 2 or 3 people to get together and steamroll everyone else, but that wouldn’t be terribly fun for the victims.

On the other hand, if we all just play peaceful little builder societies, that would eliminate a big part of what makes it a civ game.

Dunno, guess we can play it by ear. Also not sure how we’re going to resolve conflicts about who wants what civ. If there’s a big contention, I could use a list randomizer to come up with a picking order for civs.

Anyway, game is in about 5 hours, and will run for 3, don’t forget.

16

That went… alright. The game was more laggy than it should’ve been, and I’m not sure why. It did seem to improve after people turned settings down, so it may have the sort of bad netcode that makes every other client immediately acknowledge everything before it goes through, and someone with a slow game was holding everyone else up.

It was managable after we restarted, but in the future try to reduce your settings until the game runs totally smoothly.

We didn’t go as fast as I’d hoped - some people were newish at the game and weren’t as quick as the others, and since the pace only happens at the speed of the slowest person, that kept things fairly slow paced. Things started to get better later on relatively - but as the game gets more to manage as you go along, the pace slows, so this may end up taking ups 12+ hours to finish.

Anyway, as of now, we’re looking at resuming on Monday at 8-11 again and then hopefully Wednesday at 8-11, since it sounds like people are busy until then.

I may be getting a second game going late at night if anyone else is interested - Love Rhombus really wants to play but he doesn’t get home from work until around 1-2am eastern. If you’re a night person, tell me - we may get a second game going at late night, maybe 4 or 5 of us.

17

That was a lot of fun.

I just wish I had replayed a game or two before diving in to multi-player. I’ve forgotten my way around the interface. Also, I don’t think I’m doing terribly, but I’m not doing great either.

I will at least drag one nation down before the great big China descends on us all. I’m thinking that nation will be Greece. :stuck_out_tongue:

18

Yes, I’m quite alarmed at how well China is doing, though he seems friendly so far. I’m with you in Greece, though. Sparta is sticking in my craw and Greece gives the very convenient excuse of barbarians chasing his settler for placing the city where it is. :rolleyes:
:wink:

19

And to think I was going to take it easy on you bitches!

20

I’m not worried about Greece at all. He’s past the horse rush era and barbarians are easily keeping him busy for a bit.

China, otoh, I’m weary of. They’ve surrounded me and they’re getting really big (that’s what she said). I’ve got my eyes on them…