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Oligarf
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Nato:
I quite like your ideas. It would help the starting location misery. But I can imagine that players with bad starting locations team up against that lucky bastard in the game. So I don't think it necessarily has to mean trouble, but your solution would defenitely help.
Nostromo:
Simultaneous turns are interesting as well, a timer could temper the turn-based part of the game. Using simultaneous turns could also make it possible to make the combat more interesting. Shogun: Total War is a good example of this concept.
Pyrodrew:
Chess is another game than Civ. I hope I don't have to explain that.
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Pyrodrew
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quote:
Originally posted by Oligarf
Chess is another game than Civ. I hope I don't have to explain that. |
Duh! But both are turn-based. When you make a turn-based game into a real-time game you get a *completely* different game. I didn't think I would have to explain that.
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Oligarf
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quote:
Originally posted by Pyrodrew
Duh! But both are turn-based. When you make a turn-based game into a real-time game you get a *completely* different game. I didn't think I would have to explain that. |
You don't have to explain that. But that fact offers a new aspect, important in the real world, called time. I can fight several wars at once in CIV not having to bother about time. In real life that's not the case.
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PerpetualNewbie
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Unless you make some major changes in unit control, I can't imagine MP ever being viable.
For instance, last night I was zooming in on a space race victory, and the Zulu decided to attack, and simultaneously cancel all trading. Lucky me, with no aluminum, and not one single civ with any extra that would trade it for any price. It took me 45 minutes to get my military massed for attacks on several fronts, including 4 transport-based task forces. It was almost 90 minutes before all those strikes were resolved. Surely you would not begrudge me the time to make my decent counterattack, but 15 other people waiting 90 minutes for me to finish up seems like a collosal waste of time. Now if there were MPPs that people took seriously...
Furthermore, I can't even carve out a 1 hour block of uninterrupted time. That is why I had to shelve AOK -- too many demands on my time to commit to even a quick game.
Also, terrain differences are just too extreme to try to do any "fair" start adjustments, IMO. Again, in AO*, you just pop up a granary or storage pit in a place that makes sense now, and you expect to just abandon it when it has served its purpose. If one player gets 3-4 good secondary cities, and I get just desert, I for one, will be trying to figure out which player to give my stuff to, and bail. Politeness is all well and good, but my free time is too scarce to spend hours doing something I'm not enjoying...
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Pyrodrew
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Well said PerpetualNewbie. Unlike RTS, even if TBS has a time limit per turn, I can spend 90% of that time all on multiple battles without decreasing my effectiveness in those battles for the total time given. In RTS, only the area you are giving attention to *at that second* will be at your top performance.
There are far more RTS games out there than TBS, those who have the RTS desires should play those. Sadly, Lords of the Realm3 is being turned into a RTS. We don't need to lose any more TBS for another 'click-fest' RTS experiment that may not even be good.
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Pyrodrew
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quote:
Originally posted by Tormund
A. A turn based game is an infinitely long real time game.
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I disagree with that. In RTS things are in constant movement. Player A is moving his units at the *same time* Player B, C, & D are moving their units. Therefore, if Player A moves his units faster that may change what Player B, C, & D do with their units. This results in players responding to constant changes (no matter how slow it is) rather than constant variables (as TBS is based specifically that turn). A marble rolling down a hill is not the same thing as a marble being repositioned over descending positions on that hill. Likewise, assume the following...
XYZ
OYY
X=Unguarded City with Walls
Y=Grasslands
Z=Your Cavalry Unit
O=My Rifleman
Assuming we had the same reaction speed of moving our units & were both familiar with the scenario... In a RTS scenario game, your Cavalry (moving 3sqs/sec) would most likely gain the Unguarded City 1st compared to my Rifleman (moving 1sq/sec). However, in a TBS scenario game the player who starts 1st would most likely gain that Unguarded City. Thus you end up with possibly 2 different outcomes. If we had different reaction speeds, then the city would more likely go to the person with a quicker reaction speed.
Once the 1st player moves, this directly affects how the other players will move. TBS gives this ever important 1st move randomly or pre-selected by the game players. The slowest player is always last (or atleast never 1st to move) in RTS. In TBS the slowest player has a chance to be 1st.
quote:
I would like to see a MP version of Civilization III that is in real time. |
I wouldn't mind that... as long as Firaxis doesn't sacrafice turnbased MP, the editor, or other prior efforts for it. That & they don't call it Civilization.
Last edited by Pyrodrew on 09-04-2002 at 16:19
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Tormund
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Civilization as a Real Time Multi-Player Turn Based Game?
I'd like to see that!
quote:
Originally posted by Pyrodrew
In RTS things are in constant movement. Player A is moving his units at the *same time* Player B, C, & D are moving their units.
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I don't see why this can't be the case in a real time turn based game.
The way I envision it would work is as follows...
1. Players all have their turn simultaneously. This is a fairer approach because otherwise the person moving first has a consistent advantage over everyone else. Players may agree on a set amount of time to complete their movements to ensure that games can be completed within a reasonable time frame.
2. Once everyone has completed their turn, the changes made by each client (player) are submitted to the server (host).
3. The server allows all moves that result in no conflicts.
4. The server uses its 'set of rules' to resolve any conflicts.
5. The client responds to questions raiased by the server in the conflict resolution process.
6. Return to Step 1.
To recycle Pyrodew's example...
XYZ
OYY
X=Unguarded City with Walls
Y=Grassland
Z=YOUR Cavalry (6.3.3)
O=MY Rifleman (2.4.1) ?!?
Both players wish to occupy the city. So during their turn both players simultaneously request that their unit move into the city. These requests are sent to the server and a conflict is generated. This conflict could be satisfied in any number of ways. My suggestion would be to divide the turn into segments based on the highest number of moves of an individual unit. In this case that would be the cavalry with 3 movement points. In the first third of the turn the cavalry travels one square onto the grassland and the rifleman is a 1/3 of the way into the city. By the second third of the turn the rifleman already has a presence in the city and I believe that this unit should hold the city. The server would then notify the owner of the cavalry and present options to modify their turn movements. The modification however is still restricted to the fact that they have attempted to move into the city, but they do have 2/3 movement points left. The cavalry could attack, retreat or hold its position. In fact this would be the prompt that is presented to the user.
This IMHO would preserve the essence of a turn based game, but enable it to make the transition into the real time game world.
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Oligarf
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Good work Tormund, I like it to see that people are willing to work out an idea. I do realise that my poll is only talking about RTS vs. TBS. As I said before there could be other concepts to use, simultaneous turns, now worked out by Tormund. Personally I am in doubt, because although Pyrodrew has a point with saying that good choices should be rewarded and not the quickest. With simultaneous turns this shouldn't be a problem. But I do think that a great leader isn't only marked by his smart solutions but also in which time he can come up with them.
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Dominae
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quote:
Originally posted by Tormund
I don't see why this can't be the case in a real time turn based game.
This IMHO would preserve the essence of a turn based game, but enable it to make the transition into the real time game world. |
Sorry to say, but this wouldn't work, for various reasons.
First, you wouldn't be preserving the essence of a turn-based game at all. If you think about how the game would be played out, the faster players would be still be rewarded for their reflexes, which definitely isn't in the spirit of TBS.
Second, there are technical issues. First, in tightly packed quarters, your server would be resolving conflicts like there's no tomorrow; the player could be asked repeatedly what he wants his move to be, because his first choices "didn't work". If units A and B are trying to capture a city located at a certain tile, and unit C wants to move into unit B's tile, then you've got some problems with your conflict resolution. I suppose you could work out some sort of "batch mode", but this would break the "real-time" feel of the game. More plausibly the server would resolve such multi-dimensional conflicts by the time of arrival of each request to the server, which again rewards faster players.
Third, there are some moves in TBS games that are strategically sound but that you couldn't do if the game became a weird RTS/TBS hybrid. For example, I may want to move my unit along a road network to the front lines to attack, then retreat. If I take care of this one unit exclusively during this process, all my other movements won't occur until after I'm done. This means that another player could exploit a certain weakness I'd been hoping to address later on in my turn. It seems to me that players would often get penalised for not playing their turn "in the right order". I defy anyone to determine (in real-time) the best turn order for 40+ units against 3+ opponents.
RTS games like Age of Empires avoid these problems because 1) there are way fewer units, 2) the units can be grouped and 3) the units have a certain degree of autonomy. Even so, pathing is still a difficult problem for such games (I've you've ever played the series you'll know what I mean).
Lastly, the players who have come to enjoy TBS do enjoy the turn-based aspect of the game. Taking this away may turn off many dedicated players who want to play MP, but still want to play the same game. RTS Civ3 is a wholly different game.
Dominae
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Oligarf
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Let's make my point again: I never said that Civ should become RTS-only! I just came up with this to provide a multiplayer solution, you haven't heard me talking about the singleplayer experience.
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Shadowlord
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IMHO, Civ III MP should be like Civ II MP - that was fine for me, playing a LAN game. People would move their units on their turns and urgent things (such as assigning production after a city finishes building something), and usually manage their cities and diplomacy and such on other people's turns.
A user-definable time limit also existed in Civ II MP, this would be good in Civ III also.
But no, you shouldn't be able to move your units during other people's turns.
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Dominae
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quote:
Originally posted by Oligarf
Let's make my point again: I never said that Civ should become RTS-only! |
I understand your point. My point is that any attempt to make Civ3 a RTS game for MP purposes creates a completely different game, IMO so different that it won't feel like you're playing Civ3 anymore. Might as well go for other civilization-type RTS games (like the one Brian Reynolds is currently working on).
MP Civ3 should be exactly like SP Civ3, except your opponents are a lot smarter. That's the ideal, of course. I don't think that the TBS format of Civ3 should be sacrificed just satisfy the angry masses who want MP Civ3.
Dominae
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HazieDaVampire
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The British Empire
Apr 2002
time: 05:18
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Ok, I’ll start again
1, the first and second players make there move decisions.
2, The first player presses some kind of ‘Go’ button and his moves take place.
3, The second player is told he can now move and can either continue making moves, or press his ‘go’ button so that his moves take place,
4, once again both the first player and the second player make there move decisions,
3, The first player presses his ‘go’ button and his moves take place.
4, The second player presses his ‘go’ button and his moves take place.
This completely eliminates that boring “GOD CANT HE MOVE” effect that everybody gets while playing a turn based strat! I think you’ll agree this will work with the ‘back’ button I described. You of course can’t press this back button once you know what will have happened because of your moves like.
1. Person has one unit and is wondering if he should attack or retreat, he decides to attack.
2. Player’s unit is killed when he presses the ‘go’ button
3. He can no longer go “AH CRAP “at least I have that back button” because he’s already pressed go, if he COULD press the back button. It would be like seeing into the future!
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Rusty Nail
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Copenhagen
Jan 1970
time: 05:18
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The major problem with civ MP is the time factor. It is next to impossible to get the same people to continue a civ2 MP game on another day for scheduling reasons, so the game often dies early or requires too much time for one sitting. Most people would not want to spend more than a couple of hours at one sitting. So what about an ongoing game that anybody can join (i.e. take over an AI) in a common gaming room, played only during SPECIFIC HOURS on certain days with whoever shows up, so that if a participant WANTS to continue the game, he gets the first right of refusal for his civ if he shows up on time the next scheduled day. Otherwise somebody else or the AI takes over for him (assuming at least one human shows, or maybe at least two humans). The new gamer could look over the ongoing games and the statistics of the competing civs (as in civ2 MP but with more information) and pick the one that looks most interesting for one hour, two hours, whatever. If nobody else shows up, you end up playing against the AI (or leave for another game), but in many cases there would be human opponents, and often the same participants would probably try to continue the next day. But the point is, a no-show does not necessarily ruin the game for the others. Also, particularly good game situations that have been saved (we all have some) could be offered to the community. I think this idea could work with a little thoughtful organization. I would personally find this far more challenging than a single player game even if it required a modest fee to cover the overheads.
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Oligarf
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Shadowlord:
MP CivII wasn't that fantastic. I tried it and although it worked most of the time, you reach a point in the game that moving units takes several minutes, and unexpected happenings could increase the length of turns enormously. TBS in MP is almost impossible unless a system like Hazie proposed is used.
Rusty Nail:
A very nice idea as well, might work better with scenario play because I don't think I can live in a role in an completely random game. I mean that as a new participant in an existing game, you have no idea what a mess you've got yourself in. In a scenario you would have at least some great lines of the story.
HazieDaVampire:
YES!! "GOD, CANT HE MOVE", that's what I meant. Had that recently at a little LAN. Two friends of me and myself thought it would be nice to play Championship Manager on a LAN. It worked, but I and one friend of mine where always looking one way, looking in a way saying to the other friend: "Presh that 'Continue Game' button", it was like he tried to buy the whole world. In RTS is that no problem, someone that is doing to much, will be punished for that.
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Oligarf
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quote:
Originally posted by HazieDaVampire
Hey, i didn't say anything about punishing them (I think you think that i ment that once a player presses 'Go' everybody goes!), It will only go when everybody has got the 'go' button toggled on (It could be maby two colours, red for "Press me and we go" and green for "Ah crap, i need to do that first!", when all have go on green, you see all the turns take place one after another. Then the process starts again! |
What I ment with punishing someone for his actions was this: In TBS someone can fine-tune his empire, he has 'infinite' time. Fine-tuning in RTS is a lot harder, RTS forces you to think about the time, TBS lets you squander it.
So that punishing part had nothing much to do with what you said, and indeed it would be quite mean to let the turn start when not the last one but the first one ready presses GO.
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Oligarf
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quote:
Originally posted by mhaupert
2 words ... UNIX EMPIRE |
Url??? Link??? Is it a game???
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28-03-2002 06:09
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