Frogboy, you kick ass as usual.

For those who may not have read far enough, I wasn't really stating that Civ 4 is garbage. I personally didn't like it long enough to play more than about 3 games, but it seems like an okay game. My point was merely that blanket statements about a game based on my particular biases aren't valid.

Dude, you guys see the latest bargain bin game? Apparently this lame company "valve" is trying to sell 5 games for $50 - or $10 a game. They couldn't even come up with a good name for it, so it's just called the orange box or something. Why? Because it's packaged in a friggin' orange box! Who would buy such junk? $10 games would suck. I can't imagine anybody would be willing to buy something so cheap. I even heard that one of the games, "Portlet" or something (what a lame name) does NOT HAVE MULTIPLAYER. I've been posting on their forums how lame that is to have a FPS game that doesn't have multiplayer and they're all "have you even played it?" and I'm all "STFU N00B". Totally showed them.

(I own the orange box and think it's awesome, Portal in particular. Just making fun of the "bargain bin" logic. [Low price] && [Good deals] != "bargain bin")

I would like to disagree, well with the statement than GAlCiv2 gets no high profile attention. At release both PA and CAD raved about it, and there's no way you can say those websites are low profile by any measure.

in fact CAD just talked about the upcoming expansion pack on the front page, and linked to this website. I wouldn't be surprised of PA made some sort of comment at release either.

One person's cheese is just another person's maximum efficiency strategy. I look forward to maximizing the upcoming tournament mode. I'd also enjoy multiplayer - but I'm thankful the AI never quits and is always willing to play another game no matter how badly it did last time. I'm not sure I'd be a very popular multiplayer opponent if other online games are any indication. I'd much rather have more single player support for this sort of game where play time can be erratic but expected fun is consistent.


Does this mean a third expansion is out of the question no matter the sales? Is there a target sales number that will justify expansion 3? Am I just crazy to still want more?



- Wyndstar

So by saying this when can we expect to see GAIII??????

Not for a while.

I love the unit designing in Alpha Centauri, and i think Alpha centauri is actually a better game than galciv, but that dousn't mean galciv is not a wonderful game!



Acually, i have to say i was a bit dissapointed with civ4 at the very moment when i first tried to bombard an enemy naval unit off my coast with my newly constructed artillery unit! ahem, my artillery seems to be broken?? yea, and so is the game!!



You wan't to sensor this forum to recieve just positive posts?? Everyone who buys the game is entitled to come here and post an opinion, good or bad. Besides, I'm sure Stardock appreciate that people take the time to give feedback on their products, good or bad, customer feedback is a valuable tool.

According to Frogboy in last nights live chat this would be in GCIII assuming they do a GCIII He did say this probrably would be washed up though for the multiplayer side of things.

I don't understand the anti-multiplayer mentality of this forum.

 

"I would never want multiplayer in this sort of game" is not a reason it should not have multiplay. Just because you don't doesn't mean others don't. Plenty of us enjoy multiplayer in Civ, and Civ is the same exact type of game, just this uses distance instead of a grid.

It's not the exact same game as Civ though.  GalCiv II, out of the box, allows you to have a massive amount of customisation control where your units are concerned.  If you're playing multi you can't expect other players to hang around while you fiddle with cosmetic ship parts.

So yes, you can expect some resistance to the idea of turning a single-player game where you can spend as much time customising your ships as you like, into a multi game where other players are going to complain and/or quit if you so much as take the time to quickly plop components in the right places on a template design.

Personally, I never made any friends playing Civ multi, not did I ever get to hang with a bunch of players who were in it for long haul gameplay as opposed to throwing stacks of doom at cities.  I gave up on that pretty quickly and focused on the single-player experience which, thanks to the modding community, got a lot better.

 

I have played Birth of the Federation over LAN connection, and after the first hour or so, it turned into absolute waiting HORROR. As the bigger player is usually both the winning player and the player that has the most stuff to do, it is hard to expect from strangers that they wait for whoever is top dog to finish his micromanagement spree. Multiplayer in games like these just doesn't allow for the same epic feel.

Would I not want multiplayer? Hell yes, I would definitely appreciate multiplayer GalCiv2. I'd probably play it about 2 or 3 times with friends I painstakingly nagged into joining in, and then we'd leave it at that as most likely one person would always win, one person would always drop due to falling asleep and pretty much no one would like to sign in again for a game that has lasted 6 hours, is already as good as lost, but will take another 6 hours to complete. Hell if my experience with Age of Empires II games is any indication, a game that has gone on for 2 hours, and requires completion at a later date, with about 30 minutes playing time left, is pretty hard to rally the "losers" for anyhow.

And playing GalCiv2 for a "rush game" that needs to be finished under 45 minutes, simply isn't what GalCiv2 is about at all...

You know there are some great ways that GalCiv could be multiplayer.  For example, a native play-by-council mode, where all the players can collaborate, essentially speeding up gameplay by allowing each player to have a different screen open for editing, negotiating or viewing.  The other players would be able to view those other screens and offer suggestions.  Imagine having six players debating the placement of hull jewellery until a particular ship template is perfect?

See now that's something that players who traditionally like single-player could really learn to appreciate.  Best of all, it doesn't require everyone to be online at the same time, if someone has to go then the rest of the players can keep going, the pace essentially determined by players returning to the game to catch up on what happened since they logged off.

Lol, priceless...

Splitting up the empire into different parts that need to work together  could be nice. Although I doubt many would-be-emperors of the universe really want to have to cooperate/delegate part of their operations to other people with free will.

Well it depends on the sort of players you bring to the game.  I play Minecraft and the sort of players who play that are quite content to work together or do their own little thing as the mood strikes them.  The point is, you can have a lot of fun together and have a productive empire-building game, if the tools are there to do it.

A countdown turn clock.

Next turn auto-initiates when last player hits "Turn" or in (say) 10 minutes even if not all players have entered all their orders.  That is, the game code hits "Turn" for all players who have not hit "Turn" themselves.