Players' impressions of Civ3 MP

Oerdin · October 30, 2002, 21:13

So the million dollar questions is: Now that Civ3 MP has been released what are players impressions? Do games appear to be stable or do they crash/drop players from the game? Has anyone noticed any obvious bugs or design problems with the intial release? Lastly what is everyone's opinion as to the quality of this release; was PtW rushed out the door or did Firaxis take it's time on this one?

I'm holding off on buying PtW until I get some feed back from the critical eye of the descriminating Apolyton user so please make a post and tell us your opinion.

Tuberski · October 30, 2002, 22:50

REad the very first thread on this forum, so far it doesn't look like it was worth it.

monkspider · October 30, 2002, 23:11

The various single player features are impeccable. It's perfectly stable, with no bugs in sight. However the MP does admittedly need a bit more work it would seem.

Tuberski · October 30, 2002, 23:43

If and when I get PtW, it will be for the single player features. Dial-up would just be to slow.

ACK!

Minmaster · October 31, 2002, 01:38

so how does this simultaneous turns work?

CiverDan · October 31, 2002, 16:40

I was able to start 2 games yesterday (one as host). Both were very laggy. (I have DSL) I did get to kill someones scout who wandered too close to my warrior though

alva · October 31, 2002, 16:48

ahhhh, the first MP casualty, sniff, sniff

Whohangs · October 31, 2002, 17:23

Dang, looks like I'll be passing on PTW if the multi-player is that bad... Do they use GameSpy for matchmaking? Yech...

I think Blizzard could make some major money by licensing out battle.net and their servers so that other games could use it.

Jon Shafer · October 31, 2002, 17:53

Unfortunately, I have to admit that Multi-player is unusable at this point. I have connected to a game only once, and that time it froze 3 seconds after starting, and the setup screen even crashed once, for no reason. The time it worked was 1v1, and that was with pings under 100.

flash9286 · October 31, 2002, 22:09

well trip finally got a game started and it was in turnless, acutally pretty good, minmual lag and dipoclmny in mp rules, just get people with good pings.

Jon Shafer · October 31, 2002, 22:22

The thing lagged to all hell though, so we didn't get anything done.

I couldn't even build a city.

ChaotikVisions · November 1, 2002, 05:15

Played a little bit. One game till 2700BC when an error crashed it, lag was alright during it. Another game with not much lag but only like 10-15 turns since we were just testing it. Turn based seems to lag the least, so i'd try that. And not sure if it helps any, but I turned off my animations as well.

flash9286 · November 1, 2002, 08:15

i think the turnless mode is the future for most mp games its really a genuis mode of playing civ 3

metalhead · November 1, 2002, 10:04

With my VERY limited PtW experience - 2 1v1 games where the other player locked up and I won, 1 3 player game where the other players quit due to unbearable lag and I won - I think it seems quite promising. Once all of the lag issues get worked out, it seems like it will be a lot of fun. The 1 v 1 game where the other player locked up, we were playing turnless, fast timer, and accelerated production. I literally had 3 warriors built in 10 seconds, before I even had a chance to switch production. Crazy, but fun.

Wittlich · November 1, 2002, 13:08

Quote:

Originally posted by metalhead
The 1 v 1 game where the other player locked up, we were playing turnless, fast timer, and accelerated production. I literally had 3 warriors built in 10 seconds, before I even had a chance to switch production. Crazy, but fun.

My God man!

What do you do if you have to go to the bathroom?! ...come back in 2 minutes to find out that your entire empire has been over run, or that your city now hosts 150 warriors?!

Nope, I think I'll stick with turn-based, my nerves couldn't take it!

I guess the turnless option are for you younger, hyperactive players...

atawa · November 1, 2002, 14:15

So compared to gameplay in civ2, now does PTW rate?

phelonius · November 1, 2002, 14:45

Unreal Tournament can host 16 players sending an inordinate amount of data to the server in a real-time 3D world. Asherons call has 2000 people running about with only the occasional lag. Hell, I can play Towers on Yahoo with 7 other people and click like mad with no problem.

Why can't I play a glorified board game on-line with out mind-numbing lag?!?

Hey Sid, I almost cried when I realized what you did to the program I was waiting forever for. And I thought SimGolf was going to be the only bad game you ever made.

Oerdin · November 1, 2002, 17:27

Quote:

Originally posted by phelonius
Why can't I play a glorified board game on-line with out mind-numbing lag?!?

I imagine the reason is a lack of investment on Firaxis's part. They seem to have tried to do things on the cheap. I'm glade they put the hot keys on sceen and added a few new civs, but, that costs almost nothing to do. The only real addition you get with PtW is the ability to play MP games... which doesn't seem to work for most players.

Heck, CTP2 was released two to three years ago and it's MP actually works and is enjoyable. To bad Civ3 MP is such a none event.

ChaotikVisions · November 2, 2002, 00:07

From the chat today it seems the lag is from a few things. Lag from how gamespy does things, lag they never really noticed caused by a bunch of people trying to play, and the game will go the same speed as the slowest comp/connection, so a P42.5ghz playing with someone on a P350mhz will still probably be slow. Patch is supposed to fix the problems and improve things, as well as add a direct IP connect, so that you don't have to go through gamespy to play. Read the chat log if its out yet to see more.

Oerdin · November 2, 2002, 15:54

It looks like Firaxis is making an attempt to make MP usable which is good. However, I'm old fashioned and I don't want to buy a product until I see it in its final form. I think I will wait to buy PtW until the next patch comes out and I can make sure multiplayer really works. Thanks for the help everyone.

Th0mas · November 5, 2002, 06:06

Quote:

Originally posted by Oerdin

I imagine the reason is a lack of investment on Firaxis's part. They seem to have tried to do things on the cheap. I'm glade they put the hot keys on sceen and added a few new civs, but, that costs almost nothing to do. The only real addition you get with PtW is the ability to play MP games... which doesn't seem to work for most players.

Heck, CTP2 was released two to three years ago and it's MP actually works and is enjoyable. To bad Civ3 MP is such a none event.

Sheesh!

Firaxis are:
1. responsible for the internet infrastructure and should be able to guarantee connectivity
2. responsible for the specification of PTW users home PC's.

and...
3. the cost of development is so cheap to make it almost neglegble.

and we all know how good the CTP series was out of the box!

..enough said

Harovan · November 5, 2002, 17:52

Quote:

Originally posted by Oerdin
However, I'm old fashioned and I don't want to buy a product until I see it in its final form.

How comes you bought CtP2 then?

NeOmega · November 5, 2002, 20:14

Quote:

Originally posted by metalhead
With my VERY limited PtW experience - 2 1v1 games where the other player locked up and I won, 1 3 player game where the other players quit due to unbearable lag and I won - I think it seems quite promising. Once all of the lag issues get worked out, it seems like it will be a lot of fun. The 1 v 1 game where the other player locked up, we were playing turnless, fast timer, and accelerated production. I literally had 3 warriors built in 10 seconds, before I even had a chance to switch production. Crazy, but fun.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showth...threadid=35785

this thread is about how to play a better than 2 player game.... it's not as complex as you think

metalhead · November 6, 2002, 17:27

I tried that, but it gets old pretty fast, since you can only play against others who have uninstalled GameSpy, and finding compatable players with the patch and low PING is tough enough already. I think a lot of problems could be eliminated if everyone entered the PtW multiplayer lobby, instead of launching GameSpy. From what I can tell, GameSpy never launches if you enter MP through PtW. Shouldn't it be the same as uninstalling if the program never launches?

NeOmega · November 6, 2002, 21:02

Quote:

Shouldn't it be the same as uninstalling if the program never launches?

I believe so.