31-10-2002 06:13									#1
	Players' impressions of Civ3 MP Suffering from ads?

So the million dollar questions is: Now that Civ3 MP has been released what are players impressions? Do games appear to be stable or do they crash/drop players from the game? Has anyone noticed any obvious bugs or design problems with the intial release? Lastly what is everyone's opinion as to the quality of this release; was PtW rushed out the door or did Firaxis take it's time on this one?

I'm holding off on buying PtW until I get some feed back from the critical eye of the descriminating Apolyton user so please make a post and tell us your opinion.

	31-10-2002 07:50									#2
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

REad the very first thread on this forum, so far it doesn't look like it was worth it.

	31-10-2002 08:11									#3
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

The various single player features are impeccable. It's perfectly stable, with no bugs in sight. However the MP does admittedly need a bit more work it would seem.

	31-10-2002 08:43									#4
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

If and when I get PtW, it will be for the single player features. Dial-up would just be to slow.

ACK!

	31-10-2002 10:38									#5
	Get a bigger avatar today!

so how does this simultaneous turns work?

	01-11-2002 01:40									#6
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

I was able to start 2 games yesterday (one as host). Both were very laggy. (I have DSL) I did get to kill someones scout who wandered too close to my warrior though

	01-11-2002 01:48									#7
	Suffering from ads?

ahhhh, the first MP casualty, sniff, sniff

	01-11-2002 02:23									#8
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

Dang, looks like I'll be passing on PTW if the multi-player is that bad... Do they use GameSpy for matchmaking? Yech...

I think Blizzard could make some major money by licensing out battle.net and their servers so that other games could use it.

	01-11-2002 02:53									#9
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

Unfortunately, I have to admit that Multi-player is unusable at this point. I have connected to a game only once, and that time it froze 3 seconds after starting, and the setup screen even crashed once, for no reason. The time it worked was 1v1, and that was with pings under 100.

	01-11-2002 07:09									#10
	Get a bigger avatar today!

well trip finally got a game started and it was in turnless, acutally pretty good, minmual lag and dipoclmny in mp rules, just get people with good pings.

	01-11-2002 07:22									#11
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

The thing lagged to all hell though, so we didn't get anything done. I couldn't even build a city.

	01-11-2002 14:15									#12
	Remove this text

Played a little bit. One game till 2700BC when an error crashed it, lag was alright during it. Another game with not much lag but only like 10-15 turns since we were just testing it. Turn based seems to lag the least, so i'd try that. And not sure if it helps any, but I turned off my animations as well.

	01-11-2002 17:15									#13
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

i think the turnless mode is the future for most mp games its really a genuis mode of playing civ 3

	01-11-2002 19:04									#14
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

With my VERY limited PtW experience - 2 1v1 games where the other player locked up and I won, 1 3 player game where the other players quit due to unbearable lag and I won - I think it seems quite promising. Once all of the lag issues get worked out, it seems like it will be a lot of fun. The 1 v 1 game where the other player locked up, we were playing turnless, fast timer, and accelerated production. I literally had 3 warriors built in 10 seconds, before I even had a chance to switch production. Crazy, but fun.

	01-11-2002 22:08									#15
	Got spare money?

quote: Originally posted by metalhead The 1 v 1 game where the other player locked up, we were playing turnless, fast timer, and accelerated production. I literally had 3 warriors built in 10 seconds, before I even had a chance to switch production. Crazy, but fun.

My God man! What do you do if you have to go to the bathroom?! ...come back in 2 minutes to find out that your entire empire has been over run, or that your city now hosts 150 warriors?!

Nope, I think I'll stick with turn-based, my nerves couldn't take it!

I guess the turnless option are for you younger, hyperactive players...

	01-11-2002 23:15									#16
	Increase Your PM Length

So compared to gameplay in civ2, now does PTW rate?

	01-11-2002 23:45									#17
	laglaglaglaglag Increase Your PM Length

Unreal Tournament can host 16 players sending an inordinate amount of data to the server in a real-time 3D world. Asherons call has 2000 people running about with only the occasional lag. Hell, I can play Towers on Yahoo with 7 other people and click like mad with no problem.

Why can't I play a glorified board game on-line with out mind-numbing lag?!?

Hey Sid, I almost cried when I realized what you did to the program I was waiting forever for. And I thought SimGolf was going to be the only bad game you ever made.

	02-11-2002 02:27									#18
	Re: laglaglaglaglag Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

quote: Originally posted by phelonius Why can't I play a glorified board game on-line with out mind-numbing lag?!?

I imagine the reason is a lack of investment on Firaxis's part. They seem to have tried to do things on the cheap. I'm glade they put the hot keys on sceen and added a few new civs, but, that costs almost nothing to do. The only real addition you get with PtW is the ability to play MP games... which doesn't seem to work for most players.

Heck, CTP2 was released two to three years ago and it's MP actually works and is enjoyable. To bad Civ3 MP is such a none event.

	02-11-2002 09:07									#19
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

From the chat today it seems the lag is from a few things. Lag from how gamespy does things, lag they never really noticed caused by a bunch of people trying to play, and the game will go the same speed as the slowest comp/connection, so a P42.5ghz playing with someone on a P350mhz will still probably be slow. Patch is supposed to fix the problems and improve things, as well as add a direct IP connect, so that you don't have to go through gamespy to play. Read the chat log if its out yet to see more.

	03-11-2002 00:54									#20
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

It looks like Firaxis is making an attempt to make MP usable which is good. However, I'm old fashioned and I don't want to buy a product until I see it in its final form. I think I will wait to buy PtW until the next patch comes out and I can make sure multiplayer really works. Thanks for the help everyone.

	05-11-2002 15:06									#21
	Re: Re: laglaglaglaglag Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

quote: Originally posted by Oerdin I imagine the reason is a lack of investment on Firaxis's part. They seem to have tried to do things on the cheap. I'm glade they put the hot keys on sceen and added a few new civs, but, that costs almost nothing to do. The only real addition you get with PtW is the ability to play MP games... which doesn't seem to work for most players. Heck, CTP2 was released two to three years ago and it's MP actually works and is enjoyable. To bad Civ3 MP is such a none event.

Sheesh!

Firaxis are:
1. responsible for the internet infrastructure and should be able to guarantee connectivity
2. responsible for the specification of PTW users home PC's.

and...
3. the cost of development is so cheap to make it almost neglegble.

and we all know how good the CTP series was out of the box!

..enough said

	06-11-2002 02:52									#22
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

quote: Originally posted by Oerdin However, I'm old fashioned and I don't want to buy a product until I see it in its final form.

How comes you bought CtP2 then?

	06-11-2002 05:14									#23
	Full PM-box? Change here!

quote: Originally posted by metalhead With my VERY limited PtW experience - 2 1v1 games where the other player locked up and I won, 1 3 player game where the other players quit due to unbearable lag and I won - I think it seems quite promising. Once all of the lag issues get worked out, it seems like it will be a lot of fun. The 1 v 1 game where the other player locked up, we were playing turnless, fast timer, and accelerated production. I literally had 3 warriors built in 10 seconds, before I even had a chance to switch production. Crazy, but fun.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showt...&threadid=35785

this thread is about how to play a better than 2 player game.... it's not as complex as you think

	07-11-2002 02:27									#24
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

I tried that, but it gets old pretty fast, since you can only play against others who have uninstalled GameSpy, and finding compatable players with the patch and low PING is tough enough already. I think a lot of problems could be eliminated if everyone entered the PtW multiplayer lobby, instead of launching GameSpy. From what I can tell, GameSpy never launches if you enter MP through PtW. Shouldn't it be the same as uninstalling if the program never launches?

	07-11-2002 06:02									#25
	Remove this text

quote: Shouldn't it be the same as uninstalling if the program never launches?

I believe so.