I'll start out by saying I have only recently come into this franchise owing a super sale on steam to my purchase of galactic civ 2. If I had known about the game sooner I would NEVER have purchased Civ 5. It is better in every way. I have sunk my $99 to support this game’s development and I hope it will meet and exceed the quality of the previous games.

I am EXTREMELY excited about the upcoming online multiplayer abilities of this game. I am hoping that it will exceed all previous attempts to bring this type of strategy game into the online realm. Up to this point there have been some difficulties in implementing this type of game online, most of which have to do with the massive scale of the games. 

For an example of the problems that this game will face we can look at games of this type that require both players to be online to play. You can play a 2 player game on a small map in anywhere between 15 minutes to a few hours which is a good time table for almost anyone. Playing that same map with 4 players will extend that time table just due to the fact that you have to wait for everyone to take their turn, making the game something like an hour min if you last till the end, which is still ok for most. Now let’s get into medium size maps. In 2 player this will take what? Two hours minimum to maybe 5 hours to play? This eliminates this game type for most people on work/school nights and moves it to weekend only games. Make it a 6 player game and it is surely weekend only and not available for those who don't have most of a day free. 2 player massive map battles become impossible for all but the most dedicated of players with the most free time available as they can literally take days worth of time. Add 9+ people into the mix and you need to take a week off of work just to finish one battle. This basically makes massive battles impossible to play and many of the people that play this type of game play it specifically to rock giant maps, which allow the full scope of the games tech tree to be both accessed and needed. 

One option to alleviate this that has been tried is having the ability to save that massive battle so you can play it again later. This to me seems to be an inadequate solution. This solution only really works well for good friends who have similar schedules. It also quickly becomes a pain to have everyone on at once for matches involving more than 2 people because even though we are gamers we have lives. This also makes games with international play and even across time zones difficult and unlikely. There is also the fact that many of the modern gamers are getting older and don't always have enough time to sit down and play for hours at a time even if they really want to. This may cause them to look elsewhere for gaming opportunities.

So what are we to do? Simply restrict the game to small, rush type battles where you don't even really get a chance to get your mojo flowing? If that is the case then I am not sure what there is to attract someone to the multiplayer aspect of this game over an RTS. 

However, I believe there is a real, elegant, and achievable solution to this problem. Simply allow players to take their turn whenever they want or are able. Let me give you an example. You and 2 other people meet up in the game lobby and agree upon the terms of the game through the chat. The game is then started and you get to play the first turn. You then execute your turn and so forth and so on for about an hour. Now you have to go make dinner so after your turn you shut the game off. The other 2 people then take their turn and the game waits for you. When you get up in the morning you turn the game back on, take your turn, then shut it off and finish getting ready for work. At lunch you do the same thing, When you get home everyone in the game happens to be on so you all take few turns then turn in for the night. This type of game play would allow ANYONE to play a massive game. 

To make this work nicely you would have to be able to be playing more than one game at once. 50 would be nice. However many the developers can manage (100,1000,10000!!!!!!) to give us would be great, hopefully no less than 10 so you always have a turn or 2 (or 15) to play when you start up the game. The starting screen would have to give you the ability to see if you have a turn available in any game that you are currently playing as well as the ability to start a new game with standard matchmaking type options. The ability to have multiple games going at once would also be great even when everyone is online for that game. Endgame massive map turns can take a long time per player and with nine players you will be waiting for some time. Wouldn't it be lovely to bust out a quick turn on another game while you wait? One last note on this is that it would be nice to have an in game icon or indicator of some sort that says you have other turns available in other games. 

On the developers side of things the way I see it there are 2 major ways to make this happen. I must preface this by saying that I am not a game developer. However, I have read many blogs, forums, and whatnot from game developers related to the way their games handle certain aspects of their online multiplayer systems. 

The first way is for the map to be held on your computer. This would be the least taxing on the company's servers. Your opponent would take their turn and it would send a little packet of info to the server with the information of what has changed from this turn compared to the last one. When you logged on next, the server would send you this packet and the opponent(s) would take their turn(s), so on and so forth. This system would seem to me to make it easy to cheat since the map is stored locally. The devs could deal with this by making someone or both of you lose if the moves sent by the server don't match up to or are impossible on your map. It would likely have to be that you both lose as it would probably be hard for the game to tell whose map was altered. The game could also just ask the person who is out of sync to retake their turn to try to fix the problem. This would be handy for the occasional transmission/server error. 

The second way to do it is for the map to held server side. This would make it difficult to cheat but it would be more taxing to the company’s servers. The server load may be able to be reduced by having you send all of your moves taken during your turn at once in a single upload instead of as you move each ship and change each piece of production. One thing that you would have to change to make that work is that the autopilot movements would have to be made at the start of the turn instead of the end. You COULD also make it so someone could reset and retake their turn if they mess something up since it is sent all at once. I would be against that since I like it if people can make mistakes, it also stops them from getting free scouting. 

Again I am not a developer and there maybe 100 different more exotic and interesting ways to do this including some combination of what I just stated. The point of this is that it can be done. Honestly, if little android and IOS games can do this, I'm sure a top tier developer such as yourselves can make it happen. I also have some other details to flesh this idea out a bit. 

People in the match will have to agree to certain terms for that match. For instance for 2 player small map games it may be nice to be able to lock the players into that match so that if they leave or shut off the computer they forfeit the game. 

Players will have to agree on how to deal with absent players, the timing of this would start when the players turn is available. Some options of this would likely be:

-If a player doesn't take their turn in X amount of time (hours, days, weeks, months?!!!?) they lose in 2 player and become a computer player or a pre-defined difficulty if in a 3 or more player game

-the player skips their turn if they don't take it in X amount of time. Automatic actions would still take place like tax collecting, building queues, and long movements so they would not be totally screwed but would not be able to assign new actions for that turn. In this case after an agreed upon number of absent turns one of the other methods of dealing with absent players would kick in.

-action against the player is put to a vote with the majority automatically winning so you don’t have to wait for everyone to vote. A good option if you know each other and someone will be a bit late. A window of communication before the vote is taken may be handy. For example, “I’m friends with the person on steam, his flight got in a little late but he will be here soon”. The vote would likely be for: (1) wait for the player, (2) the player loses, (3) the computer takes over for the player, or (4) the skip the players turn as above. End the game with no recorded loss may be another option for the devs to think about, I don’t like it personally.

One last thing is that an interesting side effect of this that could be fun would be if you could also set the turn length super fast, like 5 minutes. It would sort of be like speed chess without the overall time limit. The rest of your turn would skip like above but the new actions you chose would still happen. You probably wouldn’t want to use computer players in larger battles or you would want to make them very  easy if you don’t want to get crushed. This could make for an odd way to play when you are bored.

If you have any questions please respond to my post an I will be happy to answer them as I am able. If any constructive criticism is present to me I will certainly think about it and perhaps change this post accordingly. If you like this idea please post in this thread to give it bump so the devs will take it seriously. Maybe harass the devs about it if you can J. Thanks for reading my rant!!!

TL;DR: Make it so we can take our turn at any time even after the game is shut off and your opponent is not online. Also, allow us to be able to switch between multiple games so you always have a free turn to play.