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I toyed with this idea for a while, and came to the conclusion that it probably would not work. Still, I'll put it across ya, and see if you can come up with a solution to how to work it...
Okay, lets assume that Civ3 has the facility to support enormous maps and 64+ players at the same time. Shouldn't it then be possible to construct a multiplayer game type that would allow players to come and go as they please?
My idea goes something like this: A server is set up that will host the game, onto which players log in via some sort of portal system. New players are given two choices: To just get a few settlers and simple units and be placed at a (fertile) point on the map furthest away from all existing players, or to take over the empire of a player leaving the game. Some sort of evening-out system is in place, so that weak, new empires have an advantadge over large, old ones; possibly they could have more turns (as the large empire's turns take longer anyway). The game would never actually end, no victory would be possible, only a score based on (a) how weak you were compared to the average when you joined, and (b) how strong you were compared to the average when you left.
The problem would, of course, be with the timeline, which would have to be infinate or cyclic....
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I don't think anyone would have the patience to play a complete game in one sitting. Empires taken over would, of course, but, er, um... er, nothing.
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Adm.Naismith
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Milano - Italy
Oct 1999
time: 06:12
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Massive multiplayer CIV can work IF:
1) simultaneous turn will be implemented (see
EC3 thread about it for detail);
2) the concept of player as single leader of Civ will be changed into team of players as cooperative leaders
For the latter I mean that a pool of player can subscribe as a team, every one taking care of one game aspect (as council): one for military, one for research, one for civil development and internal politics, one for trade and diplomacy, plus one "council president" for coordination of effort (define how to assign tax revenue, the government, etc.), and ready to act as a reserve.
Starting game every player will have assigned a role, then the related available command (you can't move troops if you are the research leader), plus some "chat like" tool for coordinated actions. Every turn any player in team has a defined timeslot to make order, elsewhere is role is taken for this turn by council president or any other player (by predefined priority or anything else can work).
This way, if a player leave the board, any newcomer can start with the help of the whole team; computer AI will have less decision (just minor civ/barbarians) and must not care to properly replace a human.
Game can speed up at least as fast as one/two turn a day, may be a lot more (it depends if lot of players living in different timezone must be taken in account, sometime we need to sleep  ).
The concept of simultaneous turn will speeds up things a lot, the central server in charge of receive every list of order (kind of a saved list of order, very short file I suppose) can be very powerful and safe (no reload cheat possible, no loss of game data because of a crash  ).
I'm sure it's absolutly too late for Civ3, but I'll love to see Firaxis developing a CIV3net for massive multiplay as I suggest: I bet it can become a success mostly as Ultima is (well, I'm not sure if we could sell any great developed Civ on e-Bay, as Ultima character are  )
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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant
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beyowulf
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Hey anyone remember the game Hundred Years War? It could be like that. Each player is given one settler unit, and told to go 'out there'. Each player founds one city and takes care of it. But each city is made of a nation containing other players. One player might control one city(the capitol) and decide overall strategy, diplomacy, research and luxury allocation.
Whadya think?
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jdlessl
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Jacksonville, USA
Mar 2000
time: 00:12
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I don't think you can use the normal Civ interface for a massively multiplayer Civ game. You'd have to use combinations of Civ and other types of games.
Here's my proposal:
Each civ is composed of many players, each with different responsibilities and abilities. You have one or maybe a couple of players who are actually in charge of the civ (President/Emporer, etc and his chief advisors) and run the game with an interface very similar to the one we're used to. They give out the orders, assign resources to the underlings, conduct international negotiations, allow trade and so forth, etc. Top level players can also decide how much interaction they will allow between their minions. Too little and the civ is inefficient: Mayor of Moscow needs a farm over here, so he has to route the request through a bureaucracy of sorts. Too much and he risks the underlings ganging together and ousting him.
Others players in a civ are put in charge of a city. Their game is closer to SimCity/Caesar and actual city design comes into play here. Commands to build this or that are handed down from on high and the human player decides how best to implement it. If a mayor is not living up to expectations, TPTB can sack him.
Other players can become generals or admirals and are given the task of managing an army or a navy. Combat can thus be taken down to a detailed tactical level as both the players are human (or executing one player's contingency orders if he's not online right now). Combat would be more like The Operational Art of War than Civ.
Furthermore, you can implement comm lag for earlier ages. You tell a commander what to do and he goes off and does it. You have no control over his actions (unless you tag along) and must wait for him to report to you. Any messages you send to him will depend on your relative locations. Same goes for cities far away from the capital. Installing telegraphs and heliographs becomes a top priority.
A really nice one would be a terraforming manager. Cuts back on the micromanagement to a massive degree.
Other jobs for players: spy/assassin, researcher, trader, CEO of a large corporation? It depends on how detailed a level you want the civ to go to. If anyone can think of how a player would perform these roles, please do so! (Machiavelli:The Prince for trader, maybe?)
You could even swap out the rulers with elections by the civ's 'citizens'. Rulers also have to worry about coups (bunch of the military players get together and take decisive action), rebellions (a city's controller gets a better offer from a nearby civ), civil wars (a change in goverment is not supported by some of the cities). Thus a mayor/general/admiral isn't _totally_ bound to the whims of the ruler, but knows he'd better have a good reason for disobeying commands. The reverse is also true for the rulers: if he is ousted in an election and chooses to stay, he'd better hope he has the support of the army.
You could even end up with the same inter-service rivalries with different branches of the military competing for funds and units, which are given or taken away by the head honcho. ie, Admiral Smith's assault aircraft are inferior to the Aztecs and need to be replaced, but General Bob's offensive against Denver has stalled since he has run out of Howitzers.
Keep the time/turn really low so tech doesn't tilt the game too quickly. Maybe a couple of years every day of play for the stone age and real time (or close to it) for the modern age. Also, put in a _very_ detailed tech tree with concurrent researching to spice things up (separate breech and muzzle loaded cannon/rifles, greek fire, proper horse collars, lots of little things that affect how all of the players will do their jobs).
The map would have to be extremely large as well. You want 100+ civs in the same map? This is the place for it.
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Jared Lessl
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beyowulf
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I like idea of having a hug map with maybe a hundred or so civs.
What I am not sure I like is categorising the players too much. Maybe two types. A leader player, and a mayor player.
A leader player is responsible for the capital, and diplomacy, allocating overall resources, and military and civilian units supported by the capital.
Mayor units are responsible for their cities, and military and civillian units supported by the city they're controlling.
Players, if they feel that someone else is not pulling their own weight, will have some method of ousting them, either if the city their controlling is unhappy for a long time, or maybe by a majority vote.
Since the amount of collaboration between players will seriously slow things down, I suggest that unlike a normal game, only one turn take place per day, with a deadline at certain time, at which time the map is universally updated.
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beyowulf
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quote:
Originally posted by airdrik on 11-16-2000 12:12 PM
I don't like the idea of one turn/day because that implies that the collaboration between players will take at least 24/civs hours to figure out what they are going to do. The more civs you have the more realistic it would be, but who says that there are going to be that many civs in one multiplayer game? Unless you are saying that the most time that all the civs can take is 1 day.
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Yeah, thats what I am saying. A nation has one day to get its act together, before the turn is up. This doesn't mean that it will take a day for everything to be setup, just thats the time alloted.
Why this is good. Its good if, say, you want to play a multiplayer civ, but do not have a long stretch of evening to do so. Everyone has different schedules, and your really busy, its nice to be able to set aside a few minutes to do a turn. Would be nice to include a message board, members specific to each nation, so that the nation's leader can issue orders and what not to the members if need be, also
[This message has been edited by beyowulf (edited November 17, 2000).]
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jdlessl
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Jacksonville, USA
Mar 2000
time: 00:12
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The more I think about this, the more I think it's actually doable. The only problem I keep running into is how to implement combat in a realistic fashion. Bear in mind that a map is going to be much larger than normal, and I think it would work better if military units were cheaper and more plentiful and had realistic limits as to what they can and cannot do. For instance, a single militia unit with 90% damage cannot conquer a city of 2 million people, especially with the opposing city's mayor fighting you tooth and nail. Have the units represent real quantities of troops that a commander can organize however he sees fit (ie, two half-strength regiments can be combined into a full-strength one).
Anyway, does someone have ideas as to how combat could be implemented?
Also, this sort of thing is rather different from Civ in that all the players are taking their turns at the same time. IIRC, there was an option to do that in SMAC, though I never actually used it. Can anyone tell me how well those games worked?
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Jared Lessl
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SWPIGWANG The Second
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Well, All I can say is that without either simtanous turn/real time this idea is not going anywhere.
By the way the team idea is just GREAT.
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airdrik
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Nampa, ID, USA
Oct 2000
time: 22:12
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This is a good idea, but not only would the prev. mentioned ideas give advantages to the faster, it would give advantages to those who wait just beyond the reach of everyone else until someone comes into their range at which time, he could strike.
This idea adds more realism, so to speak, because if you have two units that each have 3 movement points then they would move one space at the same time times their three movement points. You could have it so that a unit might move one, wait one, then move one. Thus if someone uses all it's movement points to get to where you are headed, you don't get caught defending, but offending.
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Adm.Naismith
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Milano - Italy
Oct 1999
time: 06:12
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Hmm, just in case there are lazy people around here...
This the abstract from the link I wrote in my previus post: I hope it explain quite well what some of us mean by simultaneous turn.
It's not a "click fest" at all, but simply asynchronous turns where orders are issued using one or more "client module" and are resolved by a "server module". They can work on the same PC (single player and hot seat) as well on different hardware (multiplayer).
quote:
by Adm.Naismith (aka mcostant) and ChrisShaffer
EC3 New Idea #15: Simultaneous Turns of Play
The Problem
The current turn-based model uses an unrealistic sequence, where a player can move units, attack a defender, and repeat. The defender can't properly react
(reinforce, counterattack, etc.). All war declarations have a "Pearl Harbor" feeling, with significant advantages for attackers.
Multiplayer is too difficult.
Abstract
All players (human and AI) receive a turn report, which can be reviewed and replayed as desired.
All players create a set of potential orders for units, cities, and diplomacy.
All players submit orders.
All orders are adjudicated (on schedule or when all players have submitted orders).
Conflicting orders are decided using a rule-based priority system.
Game generates turn reports.
Repeat.
Advantages
More realistic combat model. Forces players to consider both offence and defence.
Eliminates the problem of "rolling attacks" where the defender has little or no opportunity to react. First strike nuclear attacks more difficult.
Practical multiplayer options. In direct-connect mode, simultaneous orders creation saves considerable time. Eliminates the lag problems inherent in PBEM, as games
could be hosted on web or email servers with set turn schedules. Players could receive turn reports, create orders, and submit them to the server for the next adjudication. The AI could create orders for players who do not meet the deadline.
Eliminates most opportunities for cheating in multiplayer.
Increased realism and excitement. In the real world, everyone acts at the same time, they don't wait until their turn.
More tension in the rush to achieve objectives such as wonder building.
Needed to implement this proposal
Development of a priority mechanism to settle conflicting orders, such as movement, resource allocation by competing cities, etc.
Turn reports combining animation and text that allow detailed review of events.
"Replay" of any portion of the turn report as desired by players.
Options for reactive movement and combat. Multiple defensive and offensive postures for units. Method of determining whether a unit is attacking, defending, or
both. For example, a unit could be ordered to "attack and hold," "charge," "attack and advance," "counterattack if attacked," and so forth.
Conclusion
Simultaneous turns of play is more like a strategic level of command, where you make decisions and orders about the general plan, and then things happen according to your overall plan before you (the main commander) can change your mind.
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Ok, now we have a draft of the model. We must add the team playing ability to solve occasional player unavailability and raise the feeling of beeing part of a civilization.
Well, if Firaxis will put the programming effort and some game server site will host the hardware, I'll be happy to do my job, sharing the income!
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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant
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05-11-2000 06:32
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