Convinced! Now looking for MP game...

Gandalf Parker · #1 February 5th, 2004, 08:35 PM

How often do games start?
I could always find about 1 a month with Dom1. There were probably more but that was fine with me. Gave me a few weeks to lose, some time to decide on a new strategy to try, by then I was ready for a new game.

How long do they take to finish on average?
Well the range runs from hours to months. I would say that most games are played as 1-a-day turns and probably run 3 weeks?

Is the MP internet game stable--how much of a problem is crashing and dropping of players?
I havent seen that problem. There is a strange bug which seems to cause the combat playback to be different than what you have on the map. So far it seems to be from different machines (windows players when a linux machine hosts, that type of thing). Its irritating but not game destroying.

How welcoming is the MP community to new players?
Very. At least in my opinion. Still new territory so I dont THINK we give the impression of the "old guard" being cocky and rude. We are all still fairly equal at being able to get our tails kicked.

Are there many Online games in the U.S. Eastern time zone, and when are sessions scheduled: weeknights, weekend morning, afternoon or evening?
There are some IRC channels for immeadiate fast games. I dont ue them but they are posted here somewhere. I take it by mentioning timezone you want a blitz game where the host processes as soon as the turns are in and it goes all day.

What I say to people considering the purchase is this game (and as yet no one seems to argue) is that IF you can get past the learning curve with the free demo then I can pretty much gaurantee that this game will live on your machine many times longer than any other game of equal price. Dom1 lived on multiple machines of mine for 3 years. I have seen no reason to think Dom2 will not stay active on my box at least until someone creates a Dom3.

Argitoth · #2 February 5th, 2004, 08:52 PM

Timezones has never been a problem for me and I play with both Americans and Finnish in the same game.

And you really shouldn't be picky about different times zones in the US. That is definitely not a problem espeicially on the weekends.

The fastest way to get involved in a network game is to add me to your buddy list and message me saying "YO, GET ME IN A GAME!" and then I'll get you in a game.

I'm always happy to get newbs into a network game.

[ February 05, 2004, 20:03: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

Gandalf Parker · #3 February 5th, 2004, 09:43 PM

Nahh the fastest way to get in a game is to say "HEY Ive got the host mode up and running on my machine IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and port xxxx"

Argitoth · #4 February 5th, 2004, 10:02 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
Nahh the fastest way to get in a game is to say "HEY Ive got the host mode up and running on my machine IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and port xxxx"

I beg to differ! Because you need to wait for people... well I guess you have to do that regardless. But if you message me I'd be happy to do a 1v1 to show you how it's done! You know, just for fun! Don't you know how I run?

Reverend Zombie · #5 February 5th, 2004, 10:03 PM

Are hosted internet games typically finished in a session, or do folks save and resume later?

Argitoth · #6 February 5th, 2004, 10:55 PM

Games that are supposed to finish in one session are called blitz. That's when you get a group of players who are already availible to play Dominions and you go through a whole game. Usually you cannot finish a game in one session so you need to either schedual another session time to resume the game OR you leave the server on and let people take turns slowly over a period of days.

Gandalf Parker · #7 February 5th, 2004, 11:09 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Reverend Zombie:
Are hosted internet games typically finished in a session, or do folks save and resume later?

Most games were hosted on machines running all the time on a permanent connection like DSL or Cable. The turn processing was set to happen once a day giving everyone time to connect, grab their result file, make all the decisions at leisure, then upload their turn file.

Solo games of course go much faster. A blitz game might be setup to try and finish a multiplayer game the same way a solo play game would be done. If it gets late and the game is good they might all decide to quit for the night and start again the next day.