We just do it.; host games that require it, and regardless if the ranks are thinning, those that do want to play will follow suit.  Just like with Whips galaxy forge custom maps, those that wanted to get a game, when the custom map was the only thing up with skilled players in it, they'd d/l the games, and were patient enough to extract them into the right folders etc. in order to get a game since anyone that was playing was in that game!

so if you're not a smurf how the hell do you prove it?

i would like to back up protoplazm here, Capt. (glorius) did in fact do as he stated. I would also like to add kkrazy again to this list, as a few days ago, we were playing a game that lasted 6 hours, and 5 hours in, he gave up and went afk saying to have fun killing all his planets, which took another hour.

P5 i havent seen you in ages online where have you been???

I find the lack of attention on the smurf issue from IC to be astounding. They know that their MP is coming apart and smurfing is apart of it. Why get online and play against an ass when you can just set the AI to hard and atleast get a semi good game going.

Someone needs to make something like the Banlist that Warcraft 3 Dota users use....

Any programmers up to the task?

Yes if you play the game with certain settings it is much faster.  We usually have games based on eras. In Ancient Era a 5 v 5 match is popular. It is hugely action packed as we play with city elimination 2, meaning you lose 2 cities you die.  The map setup is also very interesting as the 5 are broken up into 2 camps, one of 3 one of 2, and they each face another camp either in North and south side of the map. So it could be 2vs2 in the north, 3v3 in the south, or viceversa. On rare occasions its 2v3 and 3v2.  Lot of strategy invloved here, do you kill north and just defend south. do you send from north to south for a quick kill? And so on.

There are other modes like a CTON, which is an FFA type game. Medieval, Renessance are also kidna popular, not as much as Ancient thou. One City Challange is another format some enjoy.

Also most settings have a game turn limit, usually 120 turns for Ancient. If all sides servive it is decided by points.

Only game that takes really long time is Ironman. Which is a test of endurance more than anything else. Usually clans fight it out allowing for substitutions.  It is very much hated but it is usualyl part of Civ Clan Championship, which is held once a month on a weekend.

That sounds interesting Astax.  How long do these games normally play and do they have a Hotseat ability?  Does it minidump?  What happens if a player drops mid-game or has a computer freeze or crash?  What Civ4 games are required--Beyond the Sword only or one of the other expansions?

Smurfing has hurt the game, but it isn't the real factor that pretty much killed having reasonable online player counts for Sins.  In fact, it's not the minidumps nor players' ability to host games (big problem before 1.1) that killed it.

Rather, the problem is that for whatever reason, the game sold to people who only play it in single player.  Let's do the numbers, if this game sold 1 million copies, which doesn't seem like a bad estimate since it had been previously reported to have sold 600,000 over a year ago, then you would expect far, far, far higher player counts online than anything we've ever seen before.  We acknowledge that it's a good game that at least some people would want to play for a long time.  It thus doesn't seem unreasonable to say that 1% or even half-a-percent of those 1 million buyers would want to come play it online regularly, which is an extremely conservative estimate, which means that we should see 5000 (0.5%) to 10,000 people who would want to play it online over ICO.  However, the highest player counts that I have ever seen are around 280 about two or three months after the game's release.  I know that the game is getting old, but still, during the most popular playing times (weekends) you would hope if not expect to see player counts of 500-1000 people.  Instead you rarely see it surpass 150 people onine at the most busiest times.

So, I don't think it's the minidumps and lack of hosting nor smurfing that killed the game.  Rather, it has something to do with the audience that bought the game, perhaps not your traditional RTS audience.  It could be argued that people's perception of the length of the games is what killed it, but still, you would think that 0.5% or 1% of the purchasers would be curiosu about online multiplayer in spite of that.  I'm really at a loss for being able to explain Sins's failure as an online multiplayer game in terms of player counts.  It can't be the minidumps, smurfing, or the previous lack of hosting because less than 1% of everyone who ever bought the game would have ever experienced that as a problem.  Now, that 1% and 0.5% back-of-the-envelop calculation is very conservative; realistically you would tend to think that 5% or 10% of the buyers would be interested in online multiplayer at some time.

Another possible explanation is that although us dedicated Sins players think it's a great game, in reality it really didn't get its hooks into most people.  It's very possible that people bought it, enjoyed it for a month, and then lost interest.  I know some folks who tried pirated versions of it and then lost interest after a couple games and I know two other guys who bought it and actually did play it online for a little while and then completely lost intrest in the game.

For those reasons, I don't think that smurfing or minidumps or the pre-1.1 hosting problems killed the game for online multiplayer.  I think the problem is more fundamental than that.

U can get used copy. It doesnt tie ur cd key to your gamespy account.

chose woun't leave 5v5, as he was last on his team, and we had all 5.

As i said APART OF IT not The BIGGEST ISSUE. Thats all I have to say Thank you.

As much as I appreciate the anti-smurf argument, back when I still played (Most of you probably don't remember me, pre1.1, forgot my old account pw and email. someone was bugging me to start playing again might buy entrenchment) I was one of two things - kicked for being too good, or only got to play with the newest of players who hadn't heard of me yet, unless I smurfed. The only way I could even play the game was in house with clannies or smurfing after a certain point. It's not like all of us were malicious and trying to grief bad players... if nobody is good enough to play against me on an even level - should I just not play the game, is that your argument? Perhaps if the community had been bigger back then (It sounds as if MP community got even smaller, however.) it would have been possible to pick and choose my opponnents so I could have a challenge. Sadly it was not the case.