Official Multiplayer Discussion Thread

I would love to see a GalCiv2 play by email with a similar setup to Stars!. (Yes we still play it

)

Just to show my age - eek!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars%21

lf

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Just to toss out a worthless idea, VGA Planets would make a good model for a game like GalCiv2, until they do a simultaneous mode game like Society.

Basically have a server side client to officiate. And perhaps assume that players can only make changes every 10 turns or so. So each nightly round of the game might be 10 turns, with some auto-moves added, such as move to engage ships withing "fill in the blank" turns.

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I am for multi-player, only if it is with friends and family. Getting on some gaming system on the internet is where I see all the issues as memtioned above. Keep the MP simple so as not to disrupt the current flow of the game.

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It's not more fun to play against other humans, but it is a lot more fun to play with other humans. GalCiv2 still sits on my shelf collecting dust (and my friend's shelf). We've now waited through two expansions and it sounds like multi-player still isn't close to being implemented. Sheesh, if multi-player isn't going to be added soon then take me off the mailing list.

I've (recently) had conversations at work where GalCiv2 is used as an example of a well designed space game but with the inevitable comment "it's too bad it isn't multi-player".

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I've been gone for awhile and this is probably a stupid question, but have they said anything about including multiplayer in the Twighlight expansion?

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I'm one of those who have no interest in a muliplayer strategy game .So please quit assuming you can include me in that wish of yours

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I've been gone for awhile and this is probably a stupid question, but have they said anything about including multiplayer in the Twighlight expansion?

Stardock has already stated multiplayer is not being included in the new expansion. Sorry!

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Basically what the fans of MP are saying is how about a little programming be throw in our direction. No need for fans of SP only to be greedy.

You have virtually every other game on the market, it's not selfish of us to want to keep ONE for ourselves.What is says about you that every single game on the market (with no exceptions, like this one) must accommodate your niche interests, on the other hand, I leave to reader interpretation. I don't go to web sites for MP only games and demand an SP component be added, I just find something to play that better suits my gaming tastes.

I think Stardock is really missing the boat on this because almost every single review has said they wished for multiplayer (still a great review because they are great games); image the game press you would get for adding multiplayer.

The gaming press is almost absurdly skewed towards MP gamers, because the reviewers invariably have an office full of gaming friends with the time, schedule flexibility, and interest to play games with them. Single player gamers (the bulk of the gaming population) have no representation to speak of in the gaming press.

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Hi im new to the game and its great big thx developers. I will also love to see multi, it will add whole new dimension to the game. I dont think adding basic hotseat multiplayer is so difficult. pls add it so i can play with brother on 1 comp...

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...
You have virtually every other game on the market, it's not selfish of us to want to keep ONE for ourselves.What is says about you that every single game on the market (with no exceptions, like this one) must accommodate your niche interests, on the other hand, I leave to reader interpretation. I don't go to web sites for MP only games and demand an SP component be added, I just find something to play that better suits my gaming tastes.

I do like MP... played Stars! for years even if it was not as complex as it could be developped now. The human factor on your opponents side, fear to start that war because this one could actually be waiting for you to do so.....

Ok, I do accept a lot of players do not want unexpected results and like the predictability of an AI (sorry, but this AI is not that good).

For me: if Stardock had clearly presented on their website "NO MULTIPLAYER (EVER)" I would have left immediately and never returned. It would have been fair to SP fans and to me but I guess the price for this game would grow extremely high if only SP-players would be paying for it. So Stardock seems to have made the choice to downplay the lack of MP, even suggesting it might come at some time, to draw in those not careful enough to look through all the specs and through this forum before spending the money on a game lacking any social interaction.

If you think this game is to fullfil a niche demand for SP-games.... fine. Just make sure SP-players are the only ones paying the bill.

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

I have to disagree with the whole lack of social interaction. I spend more time on the board discussing the game than I do playing it!

Of course, this may be related to the fact that one option is available at work, and the other isn't. LOL getting paid to cruise the board

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So Stardock seems to have made the choice to downplay the lack of MP, even suggesting it might come at some time

There have been news posts titled "GC2: The case for no multiplayer", and AFAIK the devs have always said that MP wouldn't be included. I have yet to read a post where a SD official hints at MP being planned.

Adding MP isn't just 'throwing some programming in (your) direction", it opens a whole can of worms of having to balance everything 'just so', taking away time from AI development, having to deal with the fans a certain race whining about being nerfed, etc.

I bought GC2 specifically because I knew there was no MP, meaning a simple amazing AI and not having to deal with all the MP related bickering on the forums that I experienced in other games. As soon as you include even the tiniest bit of MP, that vocal minority shows up and essentially ends the enjoyment for the SP players. At least that's what I've seen happening to several games I played.

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No, it wouldn't by easy. It's been suggested before, but hotseat would actually require *more* work and changes than standard multiplayer would.

Would it be possible to elaborate on that? Or if Cari already did, link up to her post? I´d really like to know what exactly makes it so problematic. From my ( admittedly totally ignorant of programming issues ) side, it seems as easy as adding a "Add another player" button to the main menu. Obviously it isn´t as easy, but I´d like some elaboration of the why´s.

Magnus

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Hello all,
This is my first time posting as I’ve only recently began playing, so let me start out by saying that I have been greatly enjoying the game. I’ve been playing exclusively sandbox DA at this time. My previous experiences have been with Gal Civ 1, which I found to also be fun, but this is an exceptional improvement over that.

Now for the subject at hand, multiplayer. I am a proponent of multiplayer. I greatly enjoy the ability to play a game with people who are important to me who share the same interests. I will not lie, I was disappointed that Gal Civ 2 didn’t support Multiplayer, and like many of you, expected that it would support it. I believe this is a great game, and I would like to play in the same game with my friends and family by LAN, hot-seat, and possibly people over the internet.

However, after playing the game for a month and after reading this thread I’ve changed my opinion, slightly.
Why did playing the game make me think that it’s all right not to be a multiplayer game? Well, that’s in the diplomacy. I imagine that the AI diplomacy engine would be greatly affected for each human player involved in the game, as the AI treats other AIs differently than with human opponents. It knows if computer empires are good/neutral/evil, etc. It knows if computer-run empires are in an alliance or not, where it might not know if two humans have struck an accord. The AI for the Altarians and Drathu to motivate and manipulate would have to be extremely hard-hit. How much do the Drathu have to pay to buy off a race to attack another? Would a human make that same deal? In any game where there are more than two races, their abilities are bound to come into play because the AI expects that their motivation and manipulation to work on other AI players. These AI’s would have their effectiveness reduced, if not eliminated. In short, I believe the AI would be reduced diplomatically for each human added to the mix. Also after playing the game I realize that there is a lot of time that would be spent waiting for other people in a game like this, because it’s a very detailed game.

Why did reading this thread make me think it’s all right to not officially support multiplayer? I think “officially” is the key word there. Multi-player hot-seat is supported, in that it’s allowed via cheats. It’s sort of like the back-door way to play the game that they left in there to allow people to play with others, while not having to allocate any official time to it, or it’s improvement. Because it’s not official, they don’t have to worry about all of the bad parts that go with multiplayer games. (This is described by others in prior posts in-depth).

If I had my wish, I’d like to see simultaneous-turn multiplayer via LAN included (despite the AI diplomacy hit), but I won’t rant on Stardock for not including Multiplayer.

(also, I appologize if I spelled the names of the races wrong, as I said before, I've only had the game a month and not near me while I'm posting this)

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I would personally be quite happy with just a hot seat element, that way you could play with a freind who also likes the game, and you would still be able to benefit from all the excellent SP content.

me and some of my freinds have always loved the turn based games, and I lost count over how many nights have gone away with playing heroes of might n magic X in hotseat, and I must admit that hotseat is just something I have come to expect as a minimun requirement in any turnbased game.

As many in here point out, then online versions would require support, would proberly drag on forever etc etc. And in general the only reason to implement this sort of thing would be so you could play with close freinds who you know wont take forever over distance.

But to sum up then I still think that any turn based game is not "complete" without a hotseat option in it!

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Well, to be honest when I bought the game I thought the Metaverse was the multi-player. I was a little let down by it, but I still enjoy the game and the forum community. As to the problems that multi-player would invite - Cheating/Hack/Verbal Abuse ( Infamous word - "noob" ) I believe that the interactivity would surpass the negatives and raise the overall fun factor of the game.

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From the majority of posts it seems that most people who hate mp do so because of the social stigma and other factors surrounding this type of gaming, for instance hacking etc. But given the overall level of maturity that this community displays I believe that these issues would be almost none existent. Obviously some people will be compelled to cheat but it seems, from my experience, that these people are few and far between.

As for time constraint issues, its obvious that this might cause a few headaches, but the solution almost already exists, make ship templates before goin into each game and use those to streamline play. Otherwise it is obvious that it will still take alot of time but from he look of things anyone who is actually interested in MP would be willing to endure the wait.

Finally, stardocks primary argument of preferring to focus on sp issues is not all the concrete if you ask me (but what the hell do i know right). In terms of balence issues it is obvious that if the game is balanced in sp it would stand to be balanced in mp, mind you a few features such as a couple random event would have to be removed to insure adaquet balence. As it stands the primary issue with mp development is a secure netcode and streamlined player interface, which admittedly would take a long time to create and test, and given that SD is currently using the bulk of its staff to make New titles I can see thier apprehension with the need to delegate more staff to work on mp features.

As it stands I would only like to see hotseat, as this feature wouldnt take all that long to implement and in fact can already be used with either a lil cheating or a few changes to the scripts.

But hey Stardock does a great job and im enclined to enjoy thier title for what it is now and forgo the lack of mp, and while this means i wont be playing it all that much, im not quite ready to shelf gal civ quite yet.

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As it stands I would only like to see hotseat, as this feature wouldnt take all that long to implement and in fact can already be used with either a lil cheating or a few changes to the scripts.

I've read elsewhere in the forum that hotseating would take longer than tcp/ip to do, although no reasons were given. I can guess at a few (having to remove control and sight of the other players units on turn change being one), but on the other hand, there would be no need for any connection of any type.

On a seperate topic, I believe the reason multiplayer polls have invariably failed on this website is because a lot of the people (like myself) that can not play single player games wont even bother comming to the website. It should (at least in my opinion) be obvious that because GC2 is single player only, the majority of your audience is single player fans. And while not all single player fans loathe multiplayer, most of the multiplayer-only people would simply ignore the game.

P.S. When I said I am a multiplayer only person, that is true except for this game. I will not play anything else singleplayer.

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Although there are a lot of pitfalls that would need to be addressed such as expounded upon by

- Drop-out players
- Angry, foul-mouthed players
- Experienced players who pass themselves off as beginners
- Beginners who get pissed when they don't sweep everyone the first time out of the gate
- Players who spend hours finding exploits in the game system so they can "cheat" themselves to victory, using the excuse that it is the fault of the developers for having poorly programmed security algorithms
- Players who have multiple, on-line personalities so they can form up "alliances" with themselves
- Players who form pre-game alliances that other players don't know about
- Players who have the knowledge and the time to figure out cheats with hex editors, modifying the game files used in PBEM games
- Hackers who successfully invade MMO servers
- Players who try to slip trojans to opposing players so they can investigate the opposition. "They use spies in real life, don't they?"

I do think if the great programmers that created Galactic Civ2 were to put their considerable talents to work on the above named problems (as well as some others) that they would be able to create a turn based game superior to BRE (imnsho the all time greatest door game back in the BBS days of turn based bbs door games) not only because of the great talents of the GalCiv2 artists; but also because the programming abilities of the GalCiv2 is quite evident in their having currently created a superior product.
I for one would be willing to pay for a multi-player turned based type of game like BRE. I think that I would not be the only one willing to do so. I speculate that most all of the current players would likewise pay for such a game and with word of mouth (best advertising) going out over the internet exponentially that even more players would be interested in such a turn based game.
Back in BBS days and even with my old 9600 baud dial up making the game play quite slow I eagerly watched *each line* of *text* of the game come into view. Today with the great graphics as I have come to expect from GalCiv2 and how I think that GalCiv2 lends it's self to becoming a great*ER* turned based game then what BRE was because GalCiv2 is already a turn based game so all that is needed is to turn it into a *multiplayer* turn based game incorporating the great graphics and programming talent already contained in GalCiv2 and personally I believe that a multiplayer turn based version of GalCiv2 would be the *all time* greatest turn based multiply player game ever created. Although I never thought that a multiplayer turned based game could ever compete with BRE, I believe that with graphics and AI GalCiv2 could be.

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Why not just implement a LAN, TCP/IP, and hotseat feature. It seems to me that the big deal people have is annonymous online play ala battle.net. I don't want to play with random folks, but I'd love to setup a LAN game with friends. Think of it as a giant boardgame, but since the board is so insanely complicated it needs to be hosted on each players' PCs.

I just want to play this game with my friends.

What's the problem with this?

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Firstly, I'd like to say that I'm an avid multiplayer fan but I seldom buy a game that doesn't have a single player mode because I like both. The thing with this game is that the AI has already been developed, there isn't going to be another expansion pack like DA or TA and so the development of MP capability CANNOT take away from all the things that we don't want it to because.... THEY'RE ALREADY THERE!

It was pointed out above that more human players=lower AI effectiveness. True, but if I'm playing with three or more humans - why do I need AI?

I'm not really fussed about having the game on Gamespy or whatever because I've rarely had non-frustrating experiences with playing with strangers outside of a MMO game. I would, however, really enjoy the possibility of playing this game in whatever multiplayer form is the easiest for the programmers to pull off both in terms of time and effectiveness so that I could play with my kids and/or friends.

I would not, however, pay 20$+ for what is, albeit a hardworked one, essentially a MP patch given the title of exapansion - just as those in the SP only camp wouldn't want to pay for what is basically a multiplayer expansion just to get that one new building or other small feature that isn't worth 20 bucks. (Is that clear?)

There seem to be a lot of people who feel that MP capability is 'missing' from this game and another camp which seems to see 'the MP crowd' as a bunch of party poopers, 'spoiling' the experience for all the 'real' SP gamers. The truth is that there is nothing 'missing' from the game (if we discount bugs/issues that are waitnig to be fixed), there are simply many things that we'd like to see in it. As far as the critics of multiplayer are concerned, I find many comments to be quite bitter and border on offensive - to be honest - but believe me, I do understand where you guys are coming from.

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Whoa, whoa, whoa... no multiplayer? I never played GC2 before but I just bought the ultimate edition today thinking from the description on the back of the box "put you scores on-line via the metaverse and compete with players from around the world" meant there was a multiplayer option. My friends and I had a blast playing Master of Orion hotseat back in the day and I was hoping for a similar experience here. No multiplayer? I feel robbed. They should change that note on the back of the box, totally misleading.

So disappointed.

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Quoting bosskoss,

reply 22

Whoa, whoa, whoa... no multiplayer? I never played GC2 before but I just bought the ultimate edition today thinking from the description on the back of the box "put you scores on-line via the metaverse and compete with players from around the world" meant there was a multiplayer option. My friends and I had a blast playing Master of Orion hotseat back in the day and I was hoping for a similar experience here. No multiplayer? I feel robbed. They should change that note on the back of the box, totally misleading.

So disappointed.

It's not really misleading. The Metaverse lets you post your scores online as it says. You compete with players around the world in single player games to get the best score.

It 'replaces' multiplayer, so to speak.

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You don’t wonting to play a multiplayer mode is fine , but actually saying that it should not be made and nobody should play it because you don’t like multiplayer games or have no friends to play with is just plain wrong .

a one guy even went that far to say in his post" if you do make it multiplayer , please make it a separate version so I can completely ignore it ".

I have never heard anything so obnoxious and rude ... well if you don’t want to play a multiplayer game then just dont press the bloddy multyplayer button, single player game button is usually just above it , and I am sorry if the multyplayer button hurts your eyes … it must be quite a painful site for you

Playing games solo is ok , but its never fun as playing against your friends ... after all this years we still play age of wonders and heroes over the lan .. they are great turn based games with a multiplayer mode …

All my friends including myself would love to see Galactic civilisation in multiplayer mode . that would make this game truly a masterpiece …

Playing in multiplayer mode is about shared experiences , jokes and chats that happened while playing it , competitions and challenges , and memories that are created with playing game with your friends that we discuss long afterwards ... none of this is possible if you play solo

level of adrenalin is always higher in multiplayer games

solo its like one man trying to play football , or you going alone to see a great film and there is nobody to share this experience with and talk about it .... its just sad

what I am saying is that; if you think that there is no enough interest for multiplayer mode then you are wrong …

Everyone I know ,and I know many gamers , they all would love to play Galactic Civilisation in multiplayer mode against their friends …

But they are not going to log in in here in post their comment it would be like solo players logging into world of war craft and asking for game to be made in solo mode …

Or vegetarians walking into butcher shop and demanding to sell a tomato… it just will not happen

But if that butcher does decide to start selling some veggie believe me lots of us vegetarians would walk in and buy it

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Soo... still no multi? pls stardock.. You want money, WE WANT MULTIPLAYER! so give us multiplayer, we will give you money... that simple.. or make GC2 opensource!

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