PEBACiv - Game 4

[Bill]

My only problem with MMO's is that they can be a huge investment of time if you get to enjoying them, which I have in the past. There are tons, and I mean heaping tons of free ones out there if we were so inclined as well as the obvious pay ones but they seem to me like the type of game that you can't just play a couple nights in a week. That is why I don't believe they are our best option, but if we decide on an MMO I don't mind giving it a crack.

I do not like the time commitment MMOs require, so I would definitely be against them.


EDIT: I am also open to continuing with Civ or waiting to see if it improves later in the year.

[Bill]

I have been playing some of the Paradox games (Europa Universalis III, Hearts of Iron, etc..). I think some of those games have multi-player options, but there's a bit of a learning curve. I don't remember folks complaining on those forums, so I think they are pretty stable and a group of dedicated guys willing to meet on a regular basis is what works best for those games.

I've heard these are good, though I have not played any of them. Though I have also heard they are hard, but that does not scare me.

[John]

It sounds like there's still desire to give Civ V another shot. Alright then, let's do that. We'll meet again Thursday night to see if whatever prevented us from playing yesterday has cleared up. In the meantime, I recommend that everyone run both the "Verify Integrity of Game Cache" and "Defragment Cache Files" functions on Civ V from their Steam --> Civ V --> [right-click] Properties menu.

[Lions]

My only problem with MMO's is that they can be a huge investment of time if you get to enjoying them, which I have in the past. There are tons, and I mean heaping tons of free ones out there if we were so inclined as well as the obvious pay ones but they seem to me like the type of game that you can't just play a couple nights in a week. That is why I don't believe they are our best option, but if we decide on an MMO I don't mind giving it a crack.

I do not like the time commitment MMOs require, so I would definitely be against them.

I think it depends a bit on the MMO, but I played a fair amount of WoW and found that the time commitment really is up to you in that one. Playing 5-10 hours a week max (often no more than 1-2 hours in a week) I didn't advance as fast as a number of my friends who played all the time. That said, if you're committed to gaming with a group of friends during a regular time slot, it's not that hard to have one character that you play only with the people you're grouped with. That way, you don't as easily get way ahead of the people who miss a session, and they can catch up on their own time. Most people who play those games have multiple characters anyway.

The nice thing about an RTS is that you usually can complete a game in a single 2-4 hour session depending on how things go, so each session provides a fresh start for everyone. I haven't played one in a while, but was big into Age of Empires and the original StarCraft.

[Bill]

Yeah, I guess in that sense, i would not be against an MMO. I guess I am opposed more to the free web browser games that require you to log in multiple times per day. I don't want to do those.

[John]

Yeah, Frank is right that it really depends on what MMO you're talking about. Some are incredible time sinks; others, not so much. Again, as a Guild Wars vet, I can vouch that that game is very light on the time commitment front. At least with the original, you'd play out missions that usually lasted around 30 minutes, perhaps an hour in long cases. You could stretch that out if you really wanted to smell the roses or speed it up if you wanted to blow on through, but basically, it allowed you to play the game in chunks of time that weren't too demanding (which is one of the reasons I'm looking at the sequel as a possible game for us in the future).

I do share Bill's concern about huge time-sink MMOs. I've got no plans on expanding our sessions beyond the current 8-11 p.m. ET on Mondays/Thursdays, so anything we take up needs to fit into that time frame. I think Diablo III and Guild Wars 2 will both work on that front, but they're both a ways off.

In the here and now, we're going to give Civ V another chance this Thursday. Hopefully we'll be able to connect and play this time around. In terms of alternative multiplayer games if we ultimately deem Civ V a loss, I've been looking over some options this evening. One that stands out to me was mentioned earlier by Dan: Sins of a Solar Empire. I'm on record as saying that I'm terrible at RTS games; however, SoaSE seems to run at a less frantic pace than most RTSs. It's actually more akin to 4x strategy games. It's been out for a long time and has thus had plenty of time to mature into a stable product. It's also very well supported, with frequent patches and lots of additional user-made content. I'm definitely seeing the possibilities, but I'll let the group weigh in on whether they think it would be a good fallback in case Civ V fails us.

[Hitmen]

I am all for Sins of the Solar Empire if it comes around to it. But i just wanted to get the warning out there that I remember having many, MANY lag issues once the game got big. I would play with my brothers a lot in multiplayer games and if you did not have a real solid gaming PC, once the maps got bigger and the forces got larger, the game got real tough to play because of the demand on the computer.

But then again it has been awhile since I have played it and I do have a newer custom built machine since I last played so I do not believe it would be an issue for me. Although I am not sure of the computers that some of our other league mates run as I know some people consider OOTP taxing for their computers.

If everyone could run it fine, I would be down to play it in a heartbeat.

[John]

I actually played SoaSE a little bit on my old rig, which was built in 2005 and was hideously outdated by the time the game was released. It ran okay for me - not superb, but then nothing was going to be superb on that computer, and it was certainly playable. Now that the game has been out for three years, I think that technology has caught up to it. I'm guessing our gaming group members have newer, better computers than my old 2005 rig that I was able to play SoaSE acceptably on, so I'm thinking the tech specs won't be a huge barrier. Please correct me if I'm wrong, though, and you're gaming on a truly ancient rig!

[Hitmen]

Did you get a chance to play multiplayer on the old rig John? Or we talking solo play? Because on the old rig I could play solo without much issue on lower settings. But mulitplayer was a whole other beast.

[John]

No, I just played solo on the old computer. But again, it was really old! I'm guessing it was way more prehistoric than anything our group is using right now. For the record, here are Sins of a Solar Empire's system requirements:

Minimum Requirements:

• Windows XP SP2 / Windows Vista / Windows 7
• 1.8 GHz Single-Core Processor
• 512 MB RAM (1 GB for Windows Vista)
• 128 MB DirectX 9 3D Video Card (Radeon 9600 / GeForce FX 6600 and above)
• DirectX 9.0c Compatible Sound Card
• DVD-ROM Drive
• 3 GB Hard Drive Space
• Keyboard and Mouse
• DirectX 9.0c

Recommended Requirements:

• 2.2 GHz Dual- or Quad-Core Processor
• 1 GB RAM (2 GB for Windows Vista)
• 256 MB DirectX 9 3D Video Card (Radeon X1600 / GeForce 7600 and above)

[John]

How do you like that! We figured out that Jason needed to restart his Steam client to get things working. After that, we were good to go! Well, some of us were obviously more good to go than others... Bill and the Aztecs are taking advantage of the fact that they only have one neighbor (Dan of Siam) to contend with. The rest of us are packed in like sardines. You've got to think it's only a matter of time before nerves get a little raw and somebody picks a fight with somebody else. We may find out Monday when we hold our next session.

[Hitmen]

I am just happy we managed to get the game going again. I just don't think there are many game available at the moment that would work with what the group is looking for in a game. Now if they could only fix some of these damn issues to make each night even more smooth we could get through the games even quicker

But as I mentioned in game, we need to do other maps other than continents. We seem to get this land mass disparity stuff often enough

[Bill]

I think you are making more of the land disparity thing than is really true. I only have 4 cities and two of them are fairly marginal. It's not like I'm spread all over the universe. Though I'm all for pangaea or some other land-based map. Continents get a little boring just because there are 100 turns when you have to stop exploring. The tiny islands or archipelago maps are even worse - I hate those.

I also firmly believe the game score is not very indicative of what's going on.

Lastly, I think the Aztecs will finally make contact with other civilizations in the coming years (i.e. next session). Do not be alarmed by the war paint on our faces and our thirst for sacrificial beings.

[DanD]

I vote for everyone validating game cache and defragging the game cache before every session That seemed to work for us last night?

I guess one benefit of there only having two Civilizations on one continent is that there is less fighting for natural resources. The Siamese and Aztecs have pretty much kept to themselves, and we've had zero border disputes.

[Jason]

I bet there is plenty of currently uninhabited land out there. We just have not explored that well yet...