Mutilplayer Insight.

from GalCiv3 Forums

Game start, thanks to Echelion

I started the game with abundant anomalies, artifacts, planets, habitable planets. Also The larges map possible and 2 Godlike races. I am the Altarians, other player is the Terrans.

The first turn was normal, quickly paid for my second colony ship, and off I went in search for habitable planets.
I bypassed the other planet in my system looking out for something better.

As my survey ship explored, the anomolies and planets seem scarce. Not much out here.

By turn 10 I have seeked out a half dozen stars and so far only a few anomalies and no habitable planets.

Things start to improve I find a class 11 planet, well that's good enough I guess, soon after a class 12 and 13 also are found and colonized.

At this point my empire is still expanding slowly with no big improvements. Wait whats that a class 21, send first colony ship available to that.

Research is going slowly but good, my survey ship now has 20 moves and we're approaching turn 80. All is quiet so far, no races have been found.

Game crashed around turn 82

First attempt to reload game failed with third player joining. I have to appologize, we then continued with out him :(

At turn 85 I now have 8 planets things are going well to this point.

Finally at turn 86 the Drengin are here, I now have met 50% of the races let's see if the UP meets soon, Nope no UP, maybe I have to meet a third and go over 50% or meet 50% of the races not including me. Hah, I stole most of his techs and survey ship in trade :)

Turn 98 and I meet the Iridium Corporation, I steal most of their techs and two survey ships :) I now have met 2 of the 3 other races in the galaxy. Hmmm... Still no UP.

Turn 100 has come, I now have 10 planets and the UP will be meeting finally :)

105 came and went the UP met and the Iridium are way ahead of everyone this sux.

Trade route, finally got my first at turn 109. Here we go.

Turn 114 the Game froze once again :( end of the game for the day.


Extra thoughts/questions...

Multiplayer seems to have taken a back burner as other things have been being worked on.

At this point only 4 players are allowed, either AI or human, being that we can have 6 players in regular game it would be nice to have more AI available.
It would be nice to have communication built into the game, we haven't explored enough of the galaxy to this point to meet each other, so no diplomacy yet.
Does the UP start when any human race meets more than half or just the host?

Edit: sorry didn't realize the 't' function was working chat is in game :)

Bugs/errors

Obviously the CTD around turn 82, first attempt to relaunch game with players back in failed, in lobby when other player joined it made his player go invisible.
A third player joined in, we launched game, players kicked out, game crashed :(

12,773 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

As Seilore said above it kept crashing and the peer to peer connection kept failing or I kept getting Host disconnected msgs.oh btw I only had 8 planets so you were beating me up until it went bye-bye.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

not much difference from 8 to 10 planets :S ,and according to the UP you the Iridium were 1st with 44%, I was second with 26%, You were 3rd with 16% and, the Drengin were 4th with 14%.  So with that being said the Iridium were doing better than you and I combined.  :)

WindowBlinds - Free yourself of the default settings, customize your desktop.
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Day Two, New games...

So I joined and played several games, some with 1 other player some with 2 or 3 other players, in all I was a part of 3 different games.

One main topic is crashing for everyone...  This a common topic in all the games that you would only go through a few turns and the game would either loose connection with a player or the game would lock up, or crash to desktop.

I did edit the post above as I was pointed out my error and in game chat does exist and works now :) . 

I had a fun time and hope to continue playing with other players as time goes on.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Seilore and just finished playing our game as everytime we got to turn 128 it crashed the crashes were mainly peer to peer,host disconnecting,or the chat itself stuffing the game up!

Btw the chat box needs sorting out as I couldn't completely scroll down to read what Seilore was typing and when I clicked on shiplist from planet list the chat would fill the screen entirely vertically.After multiple crashes Seilore and I have decided to scrap that save game and start a new one later afterall colonising the same planet 10 times and not being able to get to a class 20 planet was rather jarring to say the least and this is during the initial colony rush I had 9 planets and kept trying to get my 10th over and over again.Ah well as my good friend Mork would say "Shuzzbutt!" and "Nanoo,nanoo!"

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Echelion, reply 4

Seilore and just finished playing our game as everytime we got to turn 128 it crashed the crashes were mainly peer to peer,host disconnecting,or the chat itself stuffing the game up!
End of Echelion's quote

As he stated submitted ticket XXH-958-53616

Yes, the text box does not scroll correctly, cuts off the bottom row of text when on half box and when the text box is full.  When the text box is full screen top to bottom this doesn't seem to happen, however, it's not clear how to make it go from half screen to full screen text.

Other multiplayer feedback...

Still way to much crashing or unstable connection.

Maybe eventually have an option for a turn timer when you start the game such as 1 minute turn/2/5/10/no time limit.

Have a lobby chat when looking for games.

Have players who join the lobby see multiplayer games in progress...

Have an option to enable or disable the ability for new players to reach out to game in progress to see if they can join game. 

The stats field of pending games is not populating such as Galaxy Size, Num Players, Ping.

On the above topic I'd recommend adding, something that tells you the planets settings. such as Planets (Abundant) means all planet options are abundant, (a generalized scale) As well as a column for Anomalies/Resources combination column or something.  This way if there are multiple possible games to join you can see what game matches your style without joining the game and asking then backing out ect...

Going into diplomacy or scrolling the map when it's not your turn seems to cause sync issues (game freezes crashes)

Adding an option to see it's your turn if in the planet/technology/ideology/diplomacy screens.  If you are in these screens doing things to fill the non-productive time, there is no place to notify you that it's now your turn.  This causes delayed responses to complete your turn keeping other players waiting.

Adding chat to the diplomacy screen, so when you're in diplomacy with another human opponent that you are able to discuss what may or may not work with trading.  Right now it's just adding things/removing things and hope you can find what you're looking for.  If you're looking for a few techs from each other and you both have many that the other doesn't have, you either have to discuss prior to going there or hope that you choose correctly and they do too.

Changing the way diplomacy (tech trading screen) is asked of other human player.  When requesting trade the requester sits in an empty room doing nothing waiting for the other player to accept the request.  I would ask that when you ask for this option you go back to the main display with an added button in the corner that states pending trade conversation waiting for other player.   Same on the person who is being requested instead of the box in the middle of the screen that prevents you to continue doing what you are doing to have a button appear (maybe flash so you can see it) that way when you are done doing what you're in the middle of, you can click and accept the request to enter the trade conversation.

Addition of more players to multiplayer (I understand if you don't want to go more than 4 Human although I'd love it) But, Allow for more AI.  The way I see it is people could get together and stay every night we can play for an hour between this time and this time till game is completed (regular multiplayer group), or weekly ect...  That way you could play longer bigger multiplayer games over weeks/months depending on the group of people playing the game.

Request a time for stardock to play with the people....  Benefits maybe the average player can point out oversights that stardock just doesn't see/notice.  Possibly giving more interaction between the players and Stardock (even though I think you guys do great)  Suggestion maybe a few weeks pick different random players from dev streams and play multiplayer during a dev stream.  Now I would think it would need to be more stable before you could do this but I think it would make for a different twist.  Maybe 3-4 weeks between beta's no-one gets two though always someone new.

I'm sure there is more but, these are my thoughts...

You guys rock see you after your vacation.. :)

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I think you should schedule one of the dev streams to be a multiplayer game with Paul and a couple forum members.  I don't do multiplayer much, but it would be interesting to look over your shoulders and see a game going on.