It's sad, but this great game doesn't have nearly the number of people playing it online as it deserves, so you have to be patient to find a game.  Best bets are between 3 pm and 10 pm U.S. EST and especially on the weekends.  I think you also have a better chance of finding newer players on the weekends.

100% agree with you.

Disdain of munchkins is what keeps me away from online competitive gaming in general.

I never actually had a internet connection until recently, that was my only deterent.  Personally, i love ICO now that i can actually play.  And i have to admit it is quite a bit more challenging than i thought.  (Though my last game was vanilla, Vasari vs Advent, and the other guy spammed Illums/Guardians and 3 Halcyons.  That Illum bug has got to go, 20 cracked my Skirantra's shield in about 20 sec.)

Overall it was a good game.  I did have to surrender after he killed my fleet though, i only got 1 of his caps, he killed 5 of mine. (Had 3, replaced 2 dead from first fight.)

I'll try to float around more publicly on ICO, and see if I can't find a few matches at some point.

As I have no reputation on ICO yet, I've made a fresh profile for public games, you can catch me from time to time as:

DuneRunner

10 points if you can catch the reference in that name!

I don't quite qualify as a noob, but neither am I hardcore nor anywhere near pro. Honestly, I'm rather average. I do not spam, I do not rush, I do not flavor of the month; and I play the Vasari almost exclusively. I prefer games of a decent length and I am willing to play games over multiple sessions (saved games). I prefer opponents who share a similar mindset, and I will not abide playing with jerks.

That said, here I am. I hope to see some of you in game!

-Itharus

I will look for you online. You sound like me minus the Vasair part. Ugh, alien scum. LOL, TEC diehard here.

TBH, I cant wait for everyone to get Ready to Play. I have the beta and am curious if I will match up to any of my fellow Sinners. If not that what add friend is for!!!!

Munchkins?

Itharus, you sound like my kind of player.  I'll look for you online.  What time do you usually play?

@ Screenshot: ...wow.

Edit: I don't really have a set time, but if I had to peg one, I'd say most commonly on the weekends, probably late afternoon-ish pacific time.

Edit 2: I play Entrenchment 99.98% of the time, so I probably won't be on the vanilla ICO much.

i couldnt find a game that was open, guess ill look  again another time

I think you'll find that there are fewer "munchkins" out there than what you might think and that there are even adult players, some of whom have kids.  Regardless, you shouldn't let munchkins and other types of asses keep you from enjoying the playground.

Yeah, just pick the slides are your fort and dont let others on them with the super secret password!

And if the password is 'new england clam chowder', be sure to ask if it's the red can or the blue can... because you never can be too careful .

Dude, STOP SPAMMING.

All the regular multiplayer gamers who actually post here can plainly see your thread, so you're not actually achieving anything but pissing us off by doing this.

Don't necro old posts to link to your own thread

It's good that this thread was revived so that newer players can see it and get their angst and fears about online multiplayer off their chests.  This is the one thread where the Chiken spam isn't bothering me.

Well, since the necromancer allready cast his spell.....

I've been playing a lot online lately.

However, this is partly because I like the social aspects of playing as well as the fights. You can talk, lay plans, and see them smashed or succeed,

To illustrate, Napoleon Total War. Me and a friend started playing, he Prussia, me Russia. I started fighting the Ottoman empire, he joined in, and I asked him to help kill an ottoman army that was creeping towards Kiev. He rerouted to attack that. We usually cooperate.

Now, in Napoleon, you have a strange but interesting - even good - solution to the problem 'downtime' during tactical battles. Basically, a player not involved in the current fight can take over for the AI.

Of course, there is a risk of ... divided objectives. When he fought to help me defend, my incentive to trounce him on the battlefield is not all that great, but I put that aside well enough. He had too large forces for the small ottoman force to defeat, but I did manage to destroy a couple of high value units. We did have a gentleman's agreement not to use artillery on generals. (cannons seem to be good snipers.).

Later, when I attacked and he played defensive for the ottomans, I flanked his armies, and basically annihilated a huge army with just symbolic losses. Six artillery batteries forced him to engage or flee - and as he couldn't mass his forces (flanked) they were destroyed piecemeal, usually before firing a shot. And he couldn't run, as he was defending a city.

And he was furious, and frustrated, ranting about how he never won a fight without having tremendous overweight in forces.

That's okay, really, I'd be annoyed myself at a few of those, but that was while we were fighting cooperatively. If it'd been VS, it'd be even worse. I don't play games to grind someone into the dust, I play them to have fun - and it's not fun to have your friends annoyed at you for crushing them, or being annoyed at them, for that matter.

So, basically, I play singleplayer or multiplayer (coop) almost exclusively.

Is that because I am afraid of experienced players? No, not at all. It's just that that's not what I play the games for.

I do think that with the release of Trinity, we have seen some newer players online for Diplomacy.

 I LOVE Online play! I dare not try it on this though lol... I know there are gonna be players out there most of the skilled guys that will play this game just with 1 unit, just with a huge fleet rush as soon as possible etc, honestly thats now how -I- want to play, or ever learn how to play.

 I play this game for all its intricacies, I like taking planet by planet etc, taking my time building up making a resource empire, renaming crap even lol. I don't think I'll -ever- play this online because I am sure the only people playing it atm are rape hound hard core RTS'ers that do this for a living lol. That and I don't want to learn the "No no this is how you win, you spam this unit as much as possible after doing this!" Not how the game should be played.

Not fear...I don't mind losing at all.  It's the bash-and-trash players that keep me offline (that and lack of long play periods). It's no fun when you come on to play with the intention of picking up pointers and learning and the person playing has memorized every attribute and stat of every unit and simply sees how fast he can crush you without giving you a tip or helpful comment along the way.  I played chess a lot when I was younger and the worst thing you could do was attract a new player and then beat them with absolute dominance on their very first game.  Most new players would quit if beat repeatedly in their first few games without some sort of teaching from their opponent.  You learn more in chess and improve faster playing better opponents--but you learn almost nothing from a vastly superior opponent who beats you in a few moves. these two quotes from above sum it up well:

Some of us like strategy--the long game with the slow build and consolidation and others like tactical games--their whole goal is just to win.  Playing is ninety percent of the fun, winning is only ten percent for the strategic player.  The tactical player just wants to see how fast and much he can win.  His win-loss ratio is as important to him as playing the game iself.  That is pretty boring to a strategic player.

Lol--this thread does smell earthy.

Most of the 5v5 games are played on the huge random single star map which puts opposing players close to one another, resulting in early game rushing.  However, if you're into custom Galaxy Forge-made maps and are patient and willing to help other people obtain them, you can play games where it's impossible to really rush.  It's just something you learn to handle and deal with.  Many games go on for 1.5+ hours, so obviously many players do make it to the later game.  You will always have to think about strategy, rush or no rush.

There are a significant number of newer players out there along with the pros.  I think you would be surprised to see just how many are out there.  What's kind of ironic is that if all of the single players who would like to play online but who were afraid of the pros would just get online and play they could probably drown out the population of pro players by a 3 or 4 to 1 margin.

Give it a try.  Yes, there is unit spamming and rushing, but the online game also adds many strategic elements--especially intricate strategic elements--that just are not present and cannot really be present in the single player game.  You also get team play based elements added.  Also, if you do get beaten, try to take it as a learning experience--it's really the only way to get better.  Much of what I learned about the game's strategy and tactics came from getting whooped and from studying replays and learning from my mistakes.  It's a blow to the ego at the time but it makes you a tougher and more experienced player long term.

You know guys, you can host new player only games.  The best way to keep the pros out is to put up a game with settings the pros wouldn't like.  Try hosting games with "Normal" speed for all speed attributes.  If you want to play at faster speeds, wait until it fills, ask the other people if fast is OK, and then up the speeds.

Maybe what we need is some sort of a "New Players" Club.  This would be a list of names new players are playing under, updated daily.  Everyone on the list could add the names to their friends list.  Then host friends only games.

I really do think most pros will respect a game titled "5v5 noobs only".

Sounds like a good idea.  Havinga noob server up on a regular basis would be much more fun than trial and error match-ups.

 Honestly this sounds interesting.. I may go for it lol.