When making a game, it boils down to having to make tough choices.

Here's a more realistic question:

Which feature would you rather have more?

[A] Ship Design

[B] Multiplayer

 

I've never really enjoyed multiplayer 4x games, because most of them take one of two approaches to multiplayer:

1) each player takes turns, which means that if you're playing a 4 player game, you spend 75% of your time, on average, waiting for someone else. There have been times I didn't have the patience to wait for someone to finish a single turn of Heroes of Might and Magic, let alone a game like Moo[2|3].

2) make multiplayer different than single player (single player takes turns with the AI, multiplayer is simultaneous).

A few games take a third option, making all play simultaneous.

Never tried PBEM, though I can see that working or not working, depending on how it's implemented. I like big maps and long games, and really can't imagine sitting through the number of round trips it would take to win a military victory on the largest GC1 maps. I can see a few optimizations that would make this more feasible for a 2 player PBEM game, but they all break to various degrees if you want 3 or more human players.

Regarding GC1 and 2, I'd have to say I'm not particularly interested. Other players would hate my tendancy to micromange colonies in CG1 if they had to wait on me. As for GC2, I'd say that it's too early to tell how multiplayer could work. Having fleets might, but won't necessarily will, reduce the need for repeated attacks within the same turn, which is one of the things that make 4x TBS multiplayer drag, not to mention one of the things that simultaneous combat can seriously impact. On the other hand, I haven't seen much in the way of improvements to colony management, which is another big time eater.

If in fact, combat starts taking less time than colony management, it might be possible to split turns into two phases, ship movement/combat, and colony management. There are still a few minor issues with making colony management simultaneous, but at least the issues are much less compared to simultaneous combat.

All said, to me multiplayer for CG2 would be an interesting intellectual idea, but not anything I'd be seriously interested in playing.

The whole debate reminds me about the PvE vs PvP debate in MMORPGs. In every PvE game I know, there are calls for PvP by a vocal minority that think that PvP will add something crucial to the game (analogy: the vocal minority that thinks MP is important to GC2). Some games were designed with PvP in mind, and most of those use PvP as the high end content. (analogy: sacrificing AI for MP). Now, this isn't to say that a game designed with PvP in mind can't be good or even excellent, but shoe-horning it where it doesn't fit often leads to rather bad results. Few of the MMORPGs that I know of that added PvP after release have popular and active PvP servers.

Likewise, while multiplayer is a logical match for just about any real time game, it becomes questionable for turn based games, depending on the design. It works well for turn-based games where all combat orders are given up front, and then everything is resolved in one shot, but for games like CG1, multiplayer turnbased combat would be excruciating. (repeating to myself one hundred times, I will *NOT* write my own turn-based space 4x game with multiplayer just to show how it could be done).

That said, if multiplayer is a realistic expectation for the future, I'd hope that the devs (who I think highly of) would factor it into the planning of the singleplayer game, just far enough to make sure that none of the decisions they make make multiplayer several times harder to implement, or much less enjoyable.

Im so glad Ship Design won the debate over at Stardock...

I surely wont buy it without MP-option.

For those who said "moo2 multiplayer wasnt optimal". With the new 1.4 patch (developed by LordBrazen) dos-version (orion2.exe !) Multiplayer works fine. Even online. (The win version orion95.exe is laggy like hell. Therefore we just use dos.)

You find the details here:
http://masteroforion2.blogspot.com

(Look for the kali guide there)

There are at moment roundabout 50 active players on kali. In the last 2 years (I just started online after moo3 sucked hardcore) I saw more than 1000 players there.

I dont know how many play MP offline in a LAN. But GC1 wasnt that popular compared to moo2. And the missing MP might be a reason. Because MP generates replayability!!!!

For everyone who is stomping their feet over MP not being in for release and how you won't buy it without MP... you realize it's way too late in development to add it in and still make an early '06 release right? Your "I won't buy it" threats might have had some semblance of power months and months back... but with the last beta coming up in about a month or so, it's pointless now.

The best you can do now is lobby for an MP expansion.

As I noticed GC2, I was sure it has MP, I really thoughtet MP would be standard today .

I cant belive that there´s no MP in times of Internet + DSL-Technologie ....
Imo its a huge step into Stone Age to make a game without MP.

I dont care about a SP-mode, I would pay the most attention to MP.
Games like half life (CS), ut04 or WOW ... have a huge success cos u can play it over inet.

I really hope GC2 supports MP.

PS: Since ´97 there´s no better game than moo2 for MP in that gerne ... ! It´s quite easy, clone MoO2 gameplay, make some fresh new graphics and u´ll have success. F.e. games like half live (CS), CIV ... have ~same gameplay only in newer covers with better graphics ... why there´s noone who do this with moo2 ? MoO3 was a huge disaster ... !

www.moo2.de.vu

same gameplay only in newer covers with better graphics

Want a game just like MoO2, with better graphics? Just play MoO2 while watching Star Wars.

Games like half life (CS), ut04 or WOW ... have a huge success cos u can play it over inet.

Well two of those are first person shooters, fast paced and designed to be purely MP (counter strike that is, not HL) while the third is designed by definition to be online muliti-player. All three are rubbish single player and none of them are the same genre as GC2. They work because they have different strengths.

Well, I'll jump on the "multiplayer for an expansion" bandwagon. I was a huge MOO2 LAN player back in the day. I played and enjoyed Gal Civ I but it didn't receive much replayability from me because of the lack of MP. For that reason I didn't bother with any of the expansions.

Gal Civ 2 looks like it will have enough new features to get me to buy it, and I'm enough of a realist to know that something as sweeping as MP can't feasibly be done before its release, but I would give its expansions much more serious consideration if MP was a feature that could be added down the road.

Just cross your fingers and hope for expension if you really want multiplayer, because that's the only way we'll get it. I got no problem with that

Why threaten.

It is a fact that unill there is PBEM I have reason to get it.

Economics 099. If you have what I want I buy it.

If there is not enough wants then it is not made.

Well, I'll jump on the "multiplayer for an expansion" bandwagon. I was a huge MOO2 LAN player back in the day. I played and enjoyed Gal Civ I but it didn't receive much replayability from me because of the lack of MP. For that reason I didn't bother with any of the expansions. Gal Civ 2 looks like it will have enough new features to get me to buy it, and I'm enough of a realist to know that something as sweeping as MP can't feasibly be done before its release, but I would give its expansions much more serious consideration if MP was a feature that could be added down the road.

I get the feeling that a multi player expansion is a strong possibility. Assuming ofc all these people demanding mp modes will put their money where their mouth is come pre-order time. If they don't it wont happen.

First want is spaced base so if GCII has MP then it fits the bill and updates in SDC can improve ship design.

Civ 4 will have MP but not space based.

I want to see what is released.

by Frogboy [Stardock]

Stardock's other PC games -- Stellar Frontier, The Political Machine, The Corporate Machine, Trials of Battle, were all multiplayer too. But even when the games are designed with multiplayer in mind, it's a pretty small # that actually play it that way.

Please don't take this as an insult, as I view your company as top-notch, but honestly, I'd have no interest in playing any of those games in multiplay mode either. However, I would totally want to play a 4x game as multiplay. Applying your experience from those games to GalCiv2 is not comparing apples to apples.

by Frogboy [Stardock]

I remember when MOO 3 came out, hardly anyone was playing it multiplayer and that was a game that really benefited from it since it had serious AI problems at first.

You forgot to mention that MOO3 was a case study in how not to build a game - it was a disaster in just about every aspect, from the user interface design, to the AI, to the manual. About the only thing that wasn't a complete failure was the ground combat. So your statement here doesn't really mean anything other than that people in general weren't playing the game, and it probably wasn't just multiplayer, but singlelplayer too. I know I returned mine the very next day.

by Frogboy [Stardock]

We did do a survey with over 2000 GalCIv I players, it wasn't even close. +90% said it wasn't important to them that GalCiv II have multiplayer. We also had a survey on "which of the following features would you like to see most in GalCiv II" in which 1866 users responded.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't your surveys only allow the respondents to make a single selection? Given that type of setup, I'd never select multiplayer as THE top thing I'd want in the game - that would be ship design. But it would have been my second choice. Drawing your guidance from such a flawed survey isn't the best way to determine what the fans really want in the game.

If you did have a multi-choice survey, then please accept my apologies - like I said, I'm trying to recall as best I can.

by Frogboy [Stardock]

When making a game, it boils down to having to make tough choices. Here's a more realistic question: Which feature would you rather have more? [ A ] Ship Design [ B ]Multiplayer

Come on - that's not realistic and you know it, and it's a little disingenuous of you to try to play it off as such. That's like asking, "What would you rather have, air or your legs?" Obviously air. But I also really, really like having legs. My response to this is the same as my reply to your previous quote - giving people a single choice when ranking is going to give you misleading results because I don't expect that most people see multiplayer as THE most important thing in a 4x game. But I believe it is viewed as more important than your polls (which sound flawed) may have lead you to believe.

Look, no one is denying that ship design isn't going to be awesome - I'm sure probably everyone is looking forward to it - me included. But you know what's even more fun than designing cool ships to beat the computer with? Designing cool ships to beat your friends over the head with. And hearing their replies when they say, "Whoa, when I saw your awesome new battleship I about peed my pants!"

Yes, the game with no ship design wouldn't be as much fun. Totally agreed. But the game with the addition of multiplayer would also be more fun than without - and you might find yourself surprised by how many will buy your multiplayer add-on.

Yes; I give up lots of graphics so I can play SMAC and SMAX PBEMs.

Come on - that's not realistic and you know it

You run the company? If not, then you can't say that that is not what the decision would have come down to.

There are games that can be easily adapted to multiplayer, or even depend on it. Then there are games that aren't. It's already been stated that adding MP would have taken 15% of the budget by itself. So, that means that either MP would have had to add 15% to the projected revenue, which it wouldn't in their experience, or budget cuts would have had to have been made in other areas. The area that would have been cut might have been ship design (since GC1 had nothing like it, it would not have been a step backwards, unlike many other areas they could have cut). Frogboy is in a much better position than you to say that ship design would have been cut if they included MP.

Then there's the impact on the rest of the game in order to make multplayer fun. Lets face it, noone's going to enjoy beating their friends at a game where for a 4 player game, you're only playing 25% of the time, the rest of the time you're twiddling your thumbs. Simultaneous moves reduces that issue, but radically changes the game, and GC really wasn't set up for it, so it wouldn't translate well. Which means that you either have two entirely different ways of playing the game (single user, taking turns vs multiplayer free for all), or you wind up imposing MP design decisions on single player games.

From everything Stardock have said on this they had a choice. Ship design or Multiplayer. They had enough time and money to develop one, they could not do both.

Multiplayer is a viable add on feature through an expansion pack, reviewers don't slate strategy games for not coming with a multiplayer mode, however take away the ship design and GC2 loses a major selling point from both its single player and multi player modes. For that it would get a less good review and poor reviews adversly effect sales. If the base game doesnt sell well then no-one would buy the expansion. On the other hand, a single player only game is reviewed on the strength of its single player experience.

If you cant do it all you have to decide what is most important, and that was to make the single player as strong as possible. If all goes well, the multiplayer becomes the main selling point of a GC2 expansion.

reviewers don't slate strategy games for not coming with a multiplayer mode, however take away the ship design and GC2 loses a major selling point from both its single player and multi player modes

Agreed, which is why I said that I would have chosen ship design as my top choice as well. However, if I had been given a second choide, i would have chosen multiplayer. Like I said, if I recall correctly, the Stardock surveys only gave people a single choice of what they viewed as important. I believe that had people been able to rank their preferences, then mutliplayer very likely would have rated in the top three.

You guys want to beat me up over me having a problem with them drawing conclusions by giving people a single choice, then go ahead - we're all entitled to our opinions. If I'm recalling correctly, the way Stardock surveyed peoples' opinions is a horrible way to survey peoples' preferences, and to see what I view as a flawed sampling technique continue to be brought up in defense of their decision to not include multiplay in the base game just amazes me every single time.

So I felt compelled to call out Frogboy on some of his questionable comments. That's why these forums are here, right? For discussion...

@ VagabondNomad

thx for your background info.

I agree with your nice posts! (especially any reference to the moo3-junk is a red herring.)

...and the way these guys here aggregate preferences...unbelievable.

Might as well chime in here.

I mostly play games solitaire, so I appreciate Stardock's commitment to producing an enjoyable, single-player player game with a solid AI. Poor AI has ruined many games for me. Therefore, I agree with Stardock's priorities regarding GC2.

However, I do play some games PBEM--particularly Space Empires IV. Unquestionably, as much as I love SEIV, the AI leaves a lot to be desired, and I might well have tired of it quickly if it weren't for the multi-player options. As it is, my single-player games of SEIV are primarily to experiment with new things to use against human opponents. I particularly appreciated the PBEM capability while I was deployed in Afghanistan. The whole time I was gone, I was playing SEIV with my brother back home [I also have played with my son, who's in Japan]. It helped the time over there go by, and helped me to feel less isolated from my family while I was gone. Now that I'm back home, occasionally when I'm at my brother's, we'll pick up our PBEM game and hot seat it for a while, then continue afterward via PBEM.

Sure, a game like SEIV or GC2 might be a bore via LAN, but PBEM makes it possible to enjoy a turn whenever it's convenient. So, I'd definitely vote for multiplayer in an expansion, particularly PBEM and hotseat. I'm not a prgrammer, but, while LAN or TCP/ IP capability might involve a fair amount of work, is the same true for PBEM?

P.P.S. I think it is telling that 11% (205.26 people) chose multiplayer above the others listed, it's hard to chose anything over the option to design your own ships (that is way to cool a feature). I see the 11% as significantly high.

its about making the most amount of people happy as possible, just like 10% of a nation may vote for a party (and 1 million people is alot) but unless it is the majority they havnt won. Stardock is wanting to make the most amount of people happy as pausable and there goin to make 14% more people happy by having customisable ships

Don't worry, after release, we'll put up a pre-order form to see if there's interest -- as in dollar interest -- in a multiplayer add-on. 

I've been making games for over a decade and on top of that, let me just say that game developers talk to each other quite a bit.  And the consensus is, multiplayer in a 4X game is a luxury. It doesn't really make a big addition in sales.

You add in multiplayer when you are looking for a major checkbox to add in.  In GalCiv II's case, we had plenty of checkbox features.  Ship Design wasn't in GalCiv I for instance.  Fleet battles weren't in GalCiv I.  These are major investments in time. 

And at the end of the day, I don't want to play GalCiv II multiplayer. So I'm not inclined to support it. I've yet to play a turn based game that was enjoyable (for me) multiplayer.

I would be a lot more inclined to take the Galciv II engine and make an RTS version that has multiplayer.

I don't care what anybody says. GalCiv2 would sell a heck lot more if multiplayer was included. That is simply a fact! Welcome to the future...get with the program. Why play the computer when you can play your friend across the world?!

Bickfutted, I can understand your passion. There are several things I'm passionate about in the games I play, and I seldom get exactly what I want as well. The difference here, I think, is that I accept that just because I'm certain that feature X would improve game Y, and that many people I talk to agree, that doesn't mean that it would actually be good for the game. Yes, I'd like to see multiplayer in GC2, but not if it means giving up anything else major, which it would.

How many turn based 4x games out there got a major boost in sales from multiplayer? Sure, you can say that MOO2 is still popular because it has multiplayer, but were does that popularity put it on sales charts?

From what Frogboy is saying, the industry doesn't think that multiplayer is key to sales, and my view of the game industry tends to agree. Multiplayer is critical for first person shooters and RTS games (which also is where MP has the least impact in game mechanics). But frankly, the only time I've played turn-based multiplayer games and not found it painful was when I was playing hotseat with someone and we were kibitzing. Otherwise, I'm bored out of my mind while waiting for the other player to finish their moves.

About "Welcome to the future...get with the program." I'd have to say that if you look at market share, realtime games are as much the future, if not more so, than multiplayer, so if you're going to chide Stardock for not making the game multiplayer from the get go, then you should also chide them for bothering to make a turn-based game in the first place.

To answer your question "Why play the computer when you can play your friend across the world?!"

1) Because this is a turn based game, and I don't want to wait for another human to make decisions. The GC AI makes most of its decisions while I'm making my turn, so the majority of my time playing the game against the computer is spent actually playing the game.

2) (Corallary to #1) Because I don't want to feel guilty if I'm in the middle of my turn and something comes up (wife calls me into another room, pizza shows up at the door, have to go to the bathroom, or one of the cats is puking on the carpet and I have to clean it up) forcing me to not finish my turn until later, sometimes much later.

3) Because the GC1 AI is good enough to give me a challenging game, and I don't expect any less from the GC2 AI. This is probably true for 95% of the people that bought GC1. Also, it sounds like the GC2 AI is going to be better than the CG1 AI is.

4) Because I don't have that many friends that play space based 4x TBS games, so I'd rather fire up a game when I want to rather than when I can coordinate a time with someone else. Playing against people I don't know has other potential downsides.

5) Because it's about fun, not trying to prove I'm better than someone else or other forms of one-upmanship.

6) Because most human players don't have the patience for huge/gigantic maps, which are my preferred maps.

7) Because having an unfinished game while I wait for someone else to find free time in their life can be extremely annoying. GC isn't a game that can be knocked out in an hour, usually not even in an evening unless you're playing a fairly small map. Most multiplayer online games can be played in an hour or two at most.

I on the other hand enjoy having to deal with illogial humans. It makes me think.

As far as pre order MP when available. We will see if I have not been hijacked by another game.