Best MP Civ IV MP maps, CivIV being the best Civ, were either Inner Sea (something like that) or Small Continents (not sure about that name either).
The former was invariably an early game rush fest building up to the doom stacks of axes and catapults, predictably but relatively fast to play.
The latter were best with 1 human and 2 ai per continent, so the game would have a consolidation phase, rushing to take over or subjugate your continent in order to prepare for the eventual global clash. These games rocked, but took forever even using the almighty and frequently desynching PitBoss simultaneous turns.
Yeah, that’s probably the best way for multiplayer Old World as well. Throw in plenty of AI nations for the players to interact with. There’s just too much missing when you take diplomacy out of the equation.
I’m happy to restart for a more interesting scenario, Especially since Tom is besieging one of my cities. His damn warrior was supposed to die early on.
Not having fog of war really changes the game and not for the better in my opinion. Maybe 3 player games with 3 AI might be better? But I don’t really know.
I’m fine with either finishing up the current match, dropping the current match, or doing a rematch with fog and/or AIs. In a rematch I think we’ll probably run into some of the same problems though. Games with high player counts and consecutive player turns are super demanding on players & prone to seizing up if even a single player has a busy week at work, becomes uninterested, etc. etc. In 20 years of gaming I don’t think I’ve ever finished a MP game that has Civ-style turns. Dominions and its concurrent turns, sure, that usually finishes out since players can drop out without blocking the entire game.
I have difficulty finding the line between playful banter and being an asshole, so I was keeping my postings about this game to a minimum. Would be happy to write up an AAR through. :D
I’m up for whatever the group decides, including continuing the current match as well as starting new ones. It would be nice to up the pace a bit. Speaking of which…
I figured out how to get email notifications working! Maybe everyone else knows this, and I’ve just been obtuse… I set my email via the Options Menu from the Main Menu. This apparently doesn’t work? You have to be IN MATCH of the cloud game, then hit the three line button in the upper left, and there is a menu button for turn notifications. When I clicked it, the email field was pre-populated with some kind of GUID. I cleared that, entered my email, finished my turn, and received my first turn notification for today’s turn!
I don’t think I anticipated how no fog of war would interact with the barbarian recruiting abilities (Carthage and Orators). (Those aren’t available in no character games, which is how I played it before without fog.) It kind of sped up the aggression faster than it should have.
Have no idea how the other game is going but I would suggest a fogged restart on the game I’m in if everyone else is up for it @davehemke@tomchick@Sonoftgb@triggercut@RothdaTheTruculent. If anyone wants to drop out this time around, that’s fine, we can look for new players.
