Live multiplayer anyone..weekend

Socialist · #1 November 30th, 2000, 01:58 AM

Much rather try a live multiplayer and play during weekend..(savable as well)

tactical control much more interesting than
auto combat on Email...

message here or use my ICQ...just let me know

------------------
Waves his Red flag

Socialist

Jubala · #2 November 30th, 2000, 04:22 AM

As far as I know the only way to get tactical combat between two players is to play hotseat on the same computer. Even if you do a live game over a weekend you have to set it up as an email game (I think) and thus you get strategic combat. Sorry, but tactical combat in multiplayer is a no go at the moment.

WendellM · #3 November 30th, 2000, 08:44 AM

Hiya Socialist and Jubala,

Once again, a semi-parallel between strategic SE4 and "that other company's" tactical Combat Mission.

Until a couple of days ago, CM was email-only. They've just added a patch to allow for TCP/IP play in "real time" (each player plots his turn at the same time as the other player, and when they're done, they automatically exchange turns, watch the outcome from different angles for as long as they wish, then start simultaneously plotting the next turn).

This allows for both players to be busy all the time, either plotting turns or looking at the result of the plottings... at least in theory. In reality, one will be finished sooner than other in each step.

This factor prompts me to ask how a many-player "real-time" strategy game would go. If one player were doing well, with the other players each commanding many fewer units, would the game be bogged down as the other players quickly concluded their turns and had to wait as the single player took much longer? Or would the weaker players need much more time to confer on strategy, so that the powerful single player had to wait on them?

I don't know (I'm not too much into multiplayer scene, though I've played a few MP games from time to time). Maybe TCP/IP would help multiplayer SE4, but it might mean that some players would be left waiting with nothing to do for long periods of time. Perhaps e-mail, with its built-in slow nature would be better in these cases, since all players would expect to have the same amount of time for planning (like, a day). This would presumably be better for players who live in different time zones (As an American player, I recently enjoyed several CM games with a player in Germany, where arranging for true real-time play would have been difficult, if not impossible).

However, I don't have enough experience to really answer this question of real-time compared to email for a deep strategy game. What do more-experienced players say?

Jubala · #4 November 30th, 2000, 10:47 AM

quote:
Originally posted by WendellM:
This factor prompts me to ask how a many-player "real-time" strategy game would go. If one player were doing well, with the other players each commanding many fewer units, would the game be bogged down as the other players quickly concluded their turns and had to wait as the single player took much longer? Or would the weaker players need much more time to confer on strategy, so that the powerful single player had to wait on them?

I'd say it depends alot on who you are playing. In my experience it usually equals out unless there's a very big difference in size of players empires. Sometimes player A waits for player B, sometimes the other way around. I used to play Age of Wonders alot and that is a turnbased fantasy strategy game with options for both turnbased (classic as they call it) and simultaneous play over the Internet (TCP/IP) or LAN and email as well as hotseat. In simultaneous move all players moves at the same time but orders are executed directly. So it was quite possible to get away from a larger enemy force simply by moving first. Or the other way around. In AoW you can at the setup of a game decide on time limits for the turns. Many players on the leauge tables wanted to play with 3 minute time limits which I thought was too short, usually wanting 5-8 minute time limits. Which meant the faster paced "twitch" crowd played with others of their kind while us more sedate players played with others of our kind. I think it works quite well. Tactical battles could take forever if they where big with 16 or more units per side and several sides. Usually most smaller battles (few units or massive overkill battles) where played on autocombat but many players didn't like autocombat (me included) as it did some really stupid things.

Anyway, you just have to find the right people to play with that take about the same amount of time you do. There's nothing more irritating than someone yelling at you in the ingame chat to hurry up.

Cyrien · #5 November 30th, 2000, 06:19 PM

Hrmm.... I wonder how many other people around here played AoW.

Good game. Fatal flaws. Long live the Humans

But in general through that game and several others I have found that in general you do end up playing with those of like mind. It's only an issue in the beginning really and then everyone splits up into different Groups that like to play in certain ways. Turn based Simult, lots of micro management... lots of managers. All these things end up ballancing out eventually.

I would enjoy a TCP/IP option greatly as a large number of the people I know are quite a ways off distance wise and Email would take forever on the scope and size of game we like to play... *sigh*

Dweeb · #6 November 30th, 2000, 07:49 PM

quote:
Originally posted by WendellM:
Hiya Socialist and Jubala,

This factor prompts me to ask how a many-player "real-time" strategy game would go. If one player were doing well, with the other players each commanding many fewer units, would the game be bogged down as the other players quickly concluded their turns and had to wait as the single player took much longer?

This was the problem with Alpha Centauri, IMO. They tried a "live" simultaneous-turn system. It was further complicated by the fact that in AC only one unit can occupy a space at a time. Therefore, they needed to implement a record-locking system where a space became "blocked" when the first unit moved into it. This made it the first turn-based game in which the victory often went to the player with the quickest mouse.

AFAIK, the only proper was to play these games is by email, at most 1 turn per day. Players just need to be patient!