How does multiplayer work in Elemental?

Hmmm, I have this creeping suspicion I just asked a really dumb question...

If you want a good 4x game to play in MP with exciting and balanced battles I suggest you try Birth of the Federation game.

The multiplayer is simultaneous in the sense that you and other humans players move at the same time. It has too many flaws to even list. If you're looking for a fun multiplayer experience, I recommend not looking here.

Just a few things wrong: terrible animation lag - units warping over the map instead of ordinary movement. No tactical combat. Some spells disabled. Terrible chat interface. AI will move first, you are not in a simultaneous turn with it. AI will delay movements in a game for about 20+ seconds before you can start moving your own units. Once a player hits end turn, the turn will end for everyone else as well in 10 seconds.

Thanks for the replies.

Stardock has a history of creating amazing games.  It must be really painful that some are so upset with the quality of Elemental.  I suppose I will wait until these details are fully flushed out.  These guys take a lot of pride in their work, so I have no doubt the end product will be very good.

Oct. Nov.  Dec.  It's now Jan, still no MP.  Ren, Yes it is painful, but I suggest looking to other possible MP games.  My friends all gave up.  But I, I still check here once a month.  Always Nothing.   

Well, hopefully we can get some progress on MP some time. =)  Devs, how about it?

Best regards,
Steven.

They cannot learn to make amazing multiplayer games if they don't try making them. If Society is ever to be done, they need good "multiplayer skills".

MP is pretty much the lowest priority for SD.  They believe (with reason and backed up by polling) that very, very few TBS players play MP, so they put most of the MP budget into AI development instead.

That said, I think with Elemental's AI issues, which are improving but still there, investing in MP is needed for this game.

If the AI is good enough, I won't care about MP that much, but it isn't good enough right now.

If everything were fine, multiplayer would have higher priority but as things are, doesn't make much sense to prioritize it. That said, and as someone that has paid for that part of the game (d'oh, like anyone who has bought the game), I hope that with 1.2 things start getting well for multiplayer. One of these days when I have time for a TBS multiplayer game, I'd like it to actually work and be fun.

Me want Elemental mp so very much... I love long, long, long tbs mp sessions on the internett and with my friends!

I think it is shame they put any effort and time into doing a MP option - the audience for MP would be, IMO, very small. And unless they pulled off something amazing it would most probably not live up to the requirements of those who do want to play TBS MP games. For me, personally, mp is a complete waste of time and I would never use it. If I am going to play a game with mates it needs to be a bit more exciting and faster paced.

As far as i'm concerned elemental doesn't have multiplayer. It has a multiplayer mini game mode

since this thread seems to be getting some traction, I will ask here:

I wanted to play a LAN game with my brother the other day and I remember reading something about our one copy being able to spawn others for LAN play. Well, we had no such luck, even using my friends account we still couldn't get a game to start. So I ask:

Is multiplayer down?

Can I not use my login twice? If we create another login, does that account have to be linked to another unique game serial?

seems the general consensus is that mp is borked. true?

Gee Wilikers, your right Chunga, why in the world would people who bought a game, a TBS game, that had 16 multiplayer on the box want to play MP when they can stay home and play a much "faster" game with others   

BTW you will find even with Civ5s pathetic mutiplayer there is a very high number of players.

It is not currently possible to spawn other copies for LAN play. 

You cannot use your login twice because there is currently only one character per account.  We are working on a way where you can sign on twice and choose a different character so that you can play with another family member using the same account.  

All logins require a valid serial to be associated with the account, and you can only associate a serial number with one account.

All computers must have an internet connection.

Does this explain why you couldn't get it working?  If not, could you please provide more details?

Well, after trying several times to mp with 1 account, I called my friend and had him give me his account so my bro and I could play.

We created a game and hit start and it just sat at the custom game screen for several minutes. We tried twice and gave up.

Hmm,...well, if entries for each of you showed up in the game lobby, that indicates that you were both able to connect to the server.  If either of you had lost connection, it would have popped up a dialog.  It could have possibly had issues creating the game on the server.  I'll try it out later today to see if I can reproduce that.  I think that one of our admins had to increase the memory available to the servers last week, so it's possible that the problem has cleared up since you tried it.