We just do it.; host games that require it, and regardless if the ranks are thinning, those that do want to play will follow suit.  Just like with Whips galaxy forge custom maps, those that wanted to get a game, when the custom map was the only thing up with skilled players in it, they'd d/l the games, and were patient enough to extract them into the right folders etc. in order to get a game since anyone that was playing was in that game!

Plz add Capt. (Glorius) in bold letters to the list.  He basically flaunted the fact that he was not going to quit even though he was the last of his 5 member team.  Elrosh and I had to slug it out for over another hour through ai's to take him out.  All the while other 5s games were forming.  Complete and utter horsesh*t!

so if you're not a smurf how the hell do you prove it?

so if you're not a smurf how the hell do you prove it?

i would like to back up protoplazm here, Capt. (glorius) did in fact do as he stated. I would also like to add kkrazy again to this list, as a few days ago, we were playing a game that lasted 6 hours, and 5 hours in, he gave up and went afk saying to have fun killing all his planets, which took another hour.

updated blacklist

P5 i havent seen you in ages online where have you been???

P5,

Didn't see Captain (Glorius)

plz add him. thx

I find the lack of attention on the smurf issue from IC to be astounding. They know that their MP is coming apart and smurfing is apart of it. Why get online and play against an ass when you can just set the AI to hard and atleast get a semi good game going.

There is a way to stop smurfing and other bad behavior, but it is not easy. Civ4 had same problems, and players made a very successful ladder  which cut down on shenangians by a lot.

Someone needs to make something like the Banlist that Warcraft 3 Dota users use....

Any programmers up to the task?

I didn't know it was possible to play a regular 4x game like Civ4 in online multiplayer.  Wouldn't it take 40 hours?  How does it work?  Is there some sort of RTS-like mod for it?

Yes if you play the game with certain settings it is much faster.  We usually have games based on eras. In Ancient Era a 5 v 5 match is popular. It is hugely action packed as we play with city elimination 2, meaning you lose 2 cities you die.  The map setup is also very interesting as the 5 are broken up into 2 camps, one of 3 one of 2, and they each face another camp either in North and south side of the map. So it could be 2vs2 in the north, 3v3 in the south, or viceversa. On rare occasions its 2v3 and 3v2.  Lot of strategy invloved here, do you kill north and just defend south. do you send from north to south for a quick kill? And so on.

There are other modes like a CTON, which is an FFA type game. Medieval, Renessance are also kidna popular, not as much as Ancient thou. One City Challange is another format some enjoy.

Also most settings have a game turn limit, usually 120 turns for Ancient. If all sides servive it is decided by points.

Only game that takes really long time is Ironman. Which is a test of endurance more than anything else. Usually clans fight it out allowing for substitutions.  It is very much hated but it is usualyl part of Civ Clan Championship, which is held once a month on a weekend.

I would like to add [_]Howler to this list. I just finished a 3v3 with him in it, after his two partners got killed/left, he proceded to go afk while my team was forced to spend another 20 minutes to finsih off his worlds. Venlesto and major lag can attest to this.

That sounds interesting Astax.  How long do these games normally play and do they have a Hotseat ability?  Does it minidump?  What happens if a player drops mid-game or has a computer freeze or crash?  What Civ4 games are required--Beyond the Sword only or one of the other expansions?

Beyond the sword is what we play. The games go on anywhere from 30 minutes if someone dies to a warrior lol to 4 hours.  We don't use hotseat, as that would require all players to be in your house and it would take ages. We all do simultaneous turns.  If a player drops we wait for them to rejoin. If a player has to leave the team has 10 mintues to find a sub or continue with AI.

Smurfing has hurt the game, but it isn't the real factor that pretty much killed having reasonable online player counts for Sins.  In fact, it's not the minidumps nor players' ability to host games (big problem before 1.1) that killed it.

Rather, the problem is that for whatever reason, the game sold to people who only play it in single player.  Let's do the numbers, if this game sold 1 million copies, which doesn't seem like a bad estimate since it had been previously reported to have sold 600,000 over a year ago, then you would expect far, far, far higher player counts online than anything we've ever seen before.  We acknowledge that it's a good game that at least some people would want to play for a long time.  It thus doesn't seem unreasonable to say that 1% or even half-a-percent of those 1 million buyers would want to come play it online regularly, which is an extremely conservative estimate, which means that we should see 5000 (0.5%) to 10,000 people who would want to play it online over ICO.  However, the highest player counts that I have ever seen are around 280 about two or three months after the game's release.  I know that the game is getting old, but still, during the most popular playing times (weekends) you would hope if not expect to see player counts of 500-1000 people.  Instead you rarely see it surpass 150 people onine at the most busiest times.

So, I don't think it's the minidumps and lack of hosting nor smurfing that killed the game.  Rather, it has something to do with the audience that bought the game, perhaps not your traditional RTS audience.  It could be argued that people's perception of the length of the games is what killed it, but still, you would think that 0.5% or 1% of the purchasers would be curiosu about online multiplayer in spite of that.  I'm really at a loss for being able to explain Sins's failure as an online multiplayer game in terms of player counts.  It can't be the minidumps, smurfing, or the previous lack of hosting because less than 1% of everyone who ever bought the game would have ever experienced that as a problem.  Now, that 1% and 0.5% back-of-the-envelop calculation is very conservative; realistically you would tend to think that 5% or 10% of the buyers would be interested in online multiplayer at some time.

Another possible explanation is that although us dedicated Sins players think it's a great game, in reality it really didn't get its hooks into most people.  It's very possible that people bought it, enjoyed it for a month, and then lost interest.  I know some folks who tried pirated versions of it and then lost interest after a couple games and I know two other guys who bought it and actually did play it online for a little while and then completely lost intrest in the game.

For those reasons, I don't think that smurfing or minidumps or the pre-1.1 hosting problems killed the game for online multiplayer.  I think the problem is more fundamental than that.

Maybe I'll check it out if I can find a cheap copy of Civ4 + BTS.  Does it require having a CD key to play online (aka, don't buy a used copy)?

U can get used copy. It doesnt tie ur cd key to your gamespy account.

Probably because Sins doesn't play like a traditional RTS.  They, perhaps, expected it to play like StarCraft or C&C.  Not some hybrid 4X/RTS variant, or somesuch.  Or, people now have certain expectations as to what online play would be like (asshats, ragequitters, disconnects, smurfing, cheating, exploits etc.) and avoided it entirely.  While not fair, I can understand this attitude towards online play.  Sorry to derail the thread.

chose woun't leave 5v5, as he was last on his team, and we had all 5.

yeah chose drug the game out for an extra 2 hours after all his team left...every time i was about to just leave the game he would say something that annoyed me, for instance he thinks he is the best player in sins, how he is better then me super girl, slacka and our other team mates put together.  his allies realized they didnt have a chance once they saw i beat my guy n1m beat his guy and supergirl had his guy beat, chose won and so did his other teammate wacka wacka who killed slacka early in the game, but chose still had a bit to go before he was done with his guy and super already destroeyed the wackas fleet so there wasnt a chance and chose's 4 teammates realized that and left.  after 30 min of him not leaving slacka left from our team which slacka lost to wacka wacka early in the game but he got a cap out so he wasnt totally out of the game.  then after an hour n1m left then too...super slacka and n1m went afk for most of those 2 hours or how ever long they figured they would have come back to a win because they thought chose would be reasonable and leave....no he didnt so by the time they came back their worlds were gone by the computers and so i created a few fleets and started taking over worlds 2-3 at a time and as soon as i had about 2/3s of the map he pulled his plug, i was just bsing most of the first hour thinking he was gonna leave so i was jsut chasing his fleet and taking his worlds not really caring most of the time, but then when i realised he wasnt gonna leave was when i decided to actually finish it by massing illums with  planet killers and was holding the other side of the map with a fleet of 15 drones.  but seriously 2 hours is really annoying and uncalled for.  the computers had ecos up and fleets going for them so it was me vs chose and 3 computers...and i still won, everytime i was like f^&$ it and i was about to leave he would say something about how good he is and all that and would talk alot of s^*%, so i was about to just go afk and make him  conquer all the worlds to win but i didnt want to give him the win so a game that started around 130-145 am my time ended around 430-445 my time...r we serious is that called for??? i wont play any more games with chose and he isnt allowed in any of my games so i hope he likes smurfing cause thats the only way in for him.  if you know any of his smurfs feel free to post them so that i can kick them from my games also...thanks

As i said APART OF IT not The BIGGEST ISSUE. Thats all I have to say Thank you.

That's true about Chose, he does that often. Some time ago our team of 4 had to kill all of his SBed planets because he wouldn't quit.

As much as I appreciate the anti-smurf argument, back when I still played (Most of you probably don't remember me, pre1.1, forgot my old account pw and email. someone was bugging me to start playing again might buy entrenchment) I was one of two things - kicked for being too good, or only got to play with the newest of players who hadn't heard of me yet, unless I smurfed. The only way I could even play the game was in house with clannies or smurfing after a certain point. It's not like all of us were malicious and trying to grief bad players... if nobody is good enough to play against me on an even level - should I just not play the game, is that your argument? Perhaps if the community had been bigger back then (It sounds as if MP community got even smaller, however.) it would have been possible to pick and choose my opponnents so I could have a challenge. Sadly it was not the case.