When can we expect to see multiplayer?

Very much probably only in GC3. Except if they decide to include a 3rd expansion with Hotseat which I very much doubt.

Thing is, there is many things in the game that don't translate well to Multiplayer and thus, making the game mutliplayer would require even more work than just, you know, adding multiplayer.

The short answer is probably "whenever it's profitable to do so". Stardock has done countless polls and such in response to the vocal minority that's asking for multiplayer, and only a small segment of the player base is interested.

The way I've seen the numbers thrown around, the price of adding multiplayer is substantial, and would come at the cost of many other features that would improve the single player game. Not to mention the fact that many mechanics simply don't translate to multiplayer well!

when you play a different game...

sorry, but time and again SD has said it won't happen.

Yep, if you don't like not having it , SD has made it clear that they are willing to lose you over it, as they feel they'd lose more customers by having fewer features in the game for single-player.

Also, GC2 in MP would likely be very broken very quickly. Espionage being the main problem.

It does feel like Stardock is crusading a bit with some of the comments- which isn't necessarily a good thing. Odds are I wouldn't play MP, so I don't think it will effect me- as long as the AI can handle things on my computer.

Probaly never for this game... Not that i care. EXCEPT!!! Hot-seat. Only two players. Single player rules would fit IMO. Okay maybe if your friend becomes super civ... But otherwise fine i think.

Just asking. I'm kinda too new so I havent seen any polls on multiplayer.

Hopefully never - he said selfishly. I don't and would never play this type of game MP, and any time spent designing, developing, or supporting MP would take away from the SP game, something I'd never want to see happen.

I believe in a recent preview for the upcoming expansion Brad said that *maybe* they'd do MP in GalCiv III, which would likely be several years from now.

GalCiv is amongst some of the best quality to be found in single player gaming, due to the tight focus on single player and AI. There are tons and tons of other games, many having weak and mediocre SP, that either support or feature MP.

btw Scot, Airoh's my favorite character on Avatar

"the stomach is called the sea of qi, only in my case it's more like a vast ocean!"

It sounds like, once they have a general MP infrastructure constructed for Society, they plan to implement it in future titles (since a pre-existing MP structure means they don't have to expend a lot of time and resources on adding the feature and can continue to produce a high quality SP experience). I get the sense that means GC3, which is fine since GC2 isn't well designed for MP anyway.

I have always been in favor of some form of multiplayer but with the caveat that single player functionality not be compromised.

In all reality I would probably want to play a one on one multiplayer game perhaps once in my life. I don't think a multi multiplayer game holds any interest for me at all. The games are so long even on small maps that I can't see that anyone would do it more than once.

The AI is the perfect opponent. They don't quit when it's obvious they will inevitably lose. They don't get mad about it either. They don't attempt to rush you and then quit ten turns into the game once it's clear their rush will fail. Every point brought out in the OP of the Galactic Civilizations: The case for no multiplayer thread is the god's awful truth.

Still, all in all, as long as single player functionality was not compromised, yes, I would like to see multiplayer and I probably would play it, once.

That is the only reason I want multiplayer for this, except maybe with three pcs

I see quite a few comments like this when bringing up a multiplayer option. I can understand the position of staunchly standing by keeping the game only single player. It does help focus the development. But I think employing some type of multiplayer would add to the playerbase.

Likely though, the game would have to alter its play to being a series of steps in each turn, where several phases are completed simultaneously. You have a build phase, an economic phase, a diplomacy phase, and finally a ship order phase. And very likely, that would involve giving orders to ships (patrol this area, engage highest number of ships in range, etc) by having that done simultaneously for all the players. I think this could be done, but the game would change pretty dramatically. Right now it is pretty easy paced where a player can see the outcome of a fleet battle, and then adjust his tactics for that turn. In a multiplayer game, likely you would have to commit to several plans of action and hope for the best.

I think it would fall under another version of Galciv, but hopefully they will look into tweaking with the game to give it some multiplayer functionality or create a variant form of the game. I'd love a hot seat or email turn-based game (Battlefront's Combat Mission series is a great example). Hopefully after the next expansion they might look into putting out a multiplayer variant of the game.

My guess would be in a future sequel.

The turn-based fantasy strategy game we're working on will have it as well as The Political Machine 2008 (and Sins of a Solar Empire has it).  So if we do a GalCiv III that would be the time to look at using the existing tech.

The reason why multiplayer isn't well favored by many people is because they know, from bitter experience, that multiplayer (which is used by a tiny % of the market in a TBS game) can often come at the expense of the single player experience (both in terms of budget as well as "game balancing").

And that is a reason I very much agree with.  When GalCiv II: Twilight of the Arnor comes out and you see someone cheesing the high scores in the tournament mode, that is just a glimmer of the horror multiplayer would have brought.

I certainly wouldn't mind seeing multiplayer in GC2, but I wouldn't want it if it meant the singleplayer experience would be affected. I think playing GalCiv online against a friend or two would be fun, but it's not something I would do all that often -- I only rarely play MP matches, including strategy games.

I bought GCII when it first came out. I never played the earlier versions, but I love MOO, I love Civ, somthing like GalCiv sounded awesome. Overall the game is damn cool. But no multiplayer means I do not play it. I have not played it in a long time, and it only lasted about a month after I bought it. I have not bought any of the expansions, nor do I plan to.

I don't understand why there is such an attitude against multiplayer. This is 2007, not having multiplyer is like not having an email addres, or a web site. It is just crazy. I even read a huge post by the a developer who was trying very hard to convince himself that choosing to not do multiplayer is the right decision. Clearly the decision makers in this project do not have their pulse on the modern game market.

After buying GalCivII: Dread Lords, I was forced to go out and buy Space Empires V, which did offer multiplayer. Which BTW, works like total crap.

Civ4 and it's expansions show how GOOD multiplayer can be implemented in turn based stategy game. Turns are taken simotaneously. I can END my turn which allows me to keep doing things as well as alerting the other players that I am waiting on them. Once all the player have ended their turns, then the next turn is executed. Brilliant.

Unfortunately I just came back to this web site as I got an email about the upcoming expansion. Sadly it doesn't look like this is going to bring multiplayer either. I guess it's another expansion I will not be buying, and GalCivII will continue to sit on my shelf unplayed, unless of course one of you wants to buy my copy.

I highly urge you the developers, realize what year it is. Cell phones have been here a while, we have hybrid cars, the interweb's tubes are everywhere. Multiplayer is a required feature for games.

No it isn't. If it were, it would not be listed a feature (e.g. "Saves and loads games", "displays to screen", "allows user input"). It would be nice to have it. But we only have so many people on the game team (and, by "so many", I mean "so few"), and it has consistently failed to be the top priority.

Firaxis is about three times our size (compare Civ IV credits with GalCiv II credits). That is the main reason why they are able to provide a high-quality, multiplayer 4X game with a great single player experience as well.

I would also like to see multiplayer, which is one battle I'm fighting with my friends trying to talk them into getting into the game, however, I have for the most part excepted that this isn't going to happen in GCII. If they could add it without affecting the SP game and without using up a lot of time and money I'm sure they would have figured something out by now.
The main thing I would like to hopefully see in if they do a GCIII a multiplayer option in that. I've played some other TBSG before and mind you they weren't to high in depth however, with some limitations were fun GCII is a great game the way it is and is getting better with TA. If in the future they are able to do a multiplayer I'll be all for it but, right now I'm happy with the game the way it is
Thanks Stardock for listening and I'm hoping in the future this might be a possibility

Never

GalCiv Revolution?

You wouldn't know it by the good consumer support, fully loaded expansions with the many updates we get with Galciv2. We did get a huge expansion with Civ4 BTS though.

P.S I beleive Civilization Revolution is going in the right direction for multiplayer and not a long game like civ4 or Galciv2. (Civ4 multiplayer to me isn't all what it crack up to be.) Long TBS games needs to focus on single player just as Stardock did with Galciv2 while Revolution has the promise of making a true multiplayer civ game by simplifying the game in order for it to be played in a short amount of time.

A couple other notes:

Bioshock doesn't have multiplayer and it's a FPS.

Oblivion doesn't have multiplayer and it's both first person and an RPG.

So someone arguing that it's "required" is not reasonable.

Multiplayer only makes sense if the cost to develop and support a feature is significantly exceeded by the revenue generated. There's no evidence to support that in GalCiv II.

Only when the cost of developing the feature is distributed over multiple games can we really justify it.

So The Political Machine 2008 will have it and so will the fantasy strategy game.

God, Oblivion would so rock with multiplayer. Given the robust toolset the devs provided for modding that game, if it had MP functionality it would easily become the new Neverwinter Nights for player generated content MP rpg action...especially since Obsidian stunk up the multiplayer angle in NWN 2.

Just saying.

multiplayer is a cool idea, but i think it would be unrealistic, who would want 2 be stuck playing a turn-based game with som1 who taks, 10, 15, 20 min per turn?

Well there are some things that can be done to alleviate this problem. You can basically open everything up to the off turn players except ship movements. So they can play around with ship designs, planets and all that while they wait.

Also another ingenious feature of a multiplayer could be an 'overwatch'. An overwatch works by off turn ships with movement points left being enabled with various auto responses that they can perform in response to enemy ship activity even though it is not their turn! that would add a totally new dimention to the game!!

Also you might consider that the lack of support for multiplay is directly because this is a single player game. Which means that people who like multiplayer havn't bought the game and therefor are not here to have their say! There could well be a huge volume of untapped customers ripe and ready for galcive's multiplayer to catch their interest??

I'm very bummed. I bought this game thinking it was multi player.

..compete with players from around world"
Editors Choice .. gamespy

And reviews on amazon saying for gamers that like civIII but not civIV MOO2, but not MOO3
Both multiplayer games.

What's worse is after playing a small game I recommended it to a friend that has moved away as a new game we could play online we're getting tired of playing civIII. Masters of Orion II was a great hotseat game. I would have never ever guessed

I can see from StarDock's employee comments on this page that they do not believe Multi player is important.

Any one know a good multi player strategy game that doesn't require a cray supercomputer ? This one's going back on the shelf I'd return it if I could but you can't return software even if you feel you were duped.