Multi-player game Length?

[unmerged(878)]

Does anyone know approximately how long a multi-player game would take to play? Assuming that there are about 4 players? Could a game be done over a weekend period or would it take upwards of 100 hours of game play to finish a game?

 

[Oranje]

Well in 100 hours you could get somewhere ok.
In a full GC there's 300 years, which vould result in 3 years, or 36 months in 60 minutes of gameplay.
That's a little under 2 minutes a month.
I would say that is about right for MP, if you don't want to pause the game a lot.

What it boils down to is that in my view (but I haven't done any MP game sofar) you can forget playing a GC in just one weekend.
There are a couple of shorter scenarios though, maybe you could try to complete one of those?


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greetings, Oranje
Link to my EU fanpage, includes a FAQ section

Common sense is the set of prejudices acquired at age eighteen.
Albert Einstein

[This message has been edited by Oranje (edited 09-02-2001).]

 

[BiB]

Yes, just play the scenario's. There are some great ones and may last less than 100 years.

 

[unmerged(325)]

Originally posted by Furtive:
Does anyone know approximately how long a multi-player game would take to play? Assuming that there are about 4 players? Could a game be done over a weekend period or would it take upwards of 100 hours of game play to finish a game?

That is an easy question to answer. Because of heavy lagg on the host an average multiplayer session takes about 5 minutes

 

[unmerged(628)]

If you played at a fast game setting without pausing how bad would it be in multiplayer? Sure things are going fast, but they are going fast for everyone. Would you just respond in a less than timely manner to events or would the whole game come apart for lack of control?

I'm thinking here of the 1 minute = 4 months speed setting.

 

[Oranje]

Originally posted by Ice Sickle:
If you played at a fast game setting without pausing how bad would it be in multiplayer? Sure things are going fast, but they are going fast for everyone. Would you just respond in a less than timely manner to events or would the whole game come apart for lack of control?

I'm thinking here of the 1 minute = 4 months speed setting.

I don't know.
That speed is just about the maximum I can handle in a single player game, if not at war. Mostly I play at a more leasurely pace.
But maybe it's just the old age setting in

On the other hand, I've seen Johan say in the forum some time back that the game needs (much) more bandwith at high speed, so lags and crashes get more likely then.

On the other hand, why not settle for just one piece of the cake at a time?
What's wrong with playing say just 30 or 50 years at a time?
I would say it makes for even more fun then.

greetings, Oranje

 

[unmerged(703)]

I would say that anything faster than 2 month per minutes would make the game boring and you would most probably have large difficulties to handle a large country in war with 3-4 fronts (which will happen if you are a war mongler ;-)

The game is most fun at 1 month per minute and at that pace you might even have time to handle COT:s......

On a normal game you will need to handle one settler, one diplomate and one trader per 2 month. You will have to browse through your provinces at least once a year.
If you are discovering with explorers and conquistadores you will need to attend them on a monthly basis (or you might loose them fast).
Pirates will need a bi-monthly monitoring (if you don't just ignore them) and the natives needs to be attended if you are trying to have co-existing colonies ;-)

Add to this the mandatory coffee (beer for the adult gamer ;-) and snacks, lunches, 30 second toilet visits and 'yes darling' conversations needed to get away with the game at all ;-)

4 month per minute and Paradox might get a law suit from your family after the heart attack ;-)

My advise: 1 month per minute, play in 3 hours batches........

I am trying tonight ;-)


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bmolsson
*Just passing by*

 

[unmerged(628)]

We will play on the Internet and that can be at a more leasurely pace but I'm planning an upcoming gaming event (Friday through Sunday). This about the 18th such event I've planned and we find that in general more than 4 hours per game is too long for our setting. It's generally more saticefying when you play more short games rather than 1-3 long ones. We could maybe play 2 session during the weekend so that leaves us still with less than 8 hours. Not much time for EU.

We don't have to finish a scenario but we do want to get past the beginning and get into some warring and colonizing etc.

Anyway, that's the time motivator.

 

[unmerged(767)]

I have played a couple of multiplayer games now, all with 2 humans in a grand campaign setting..ISDN and cable, both Dutch, so as good as internet connections can get.

And i must say i am not very happy with it. Not with the potential of playing in multiplayer mode, actually it positively surprised me by its high playability and the strategic options..

But the crashes and crappy interface will even scare off the most fanatic online player.
Some examples:
- chat uses shift F12, lines are blue and easily missed. Type numbers and the chat changes from visible to not visible, so you are chatting to yourself sometimes
- after a crash the player joining needs to load a 2 mb file, only host saves
- no way to change game speed during the game
- crashes happen a lot. Our game crasehd when we tried to brake off sieges (3 times) or when using F6 (reports)...Besides the connection dips..
- all in all, we never played the games further than 20 years max....

MMAI

 

[unmerged(628)]

You can get around the chat thing by using a low bandwidth voice program (Battlecom or Roger Wilco).

The saved game thing is a pain.

And the breaking off siege thing scares the daylights out of me!

Thanks for the report.