beta feedback: questions about MP and units with lots of movement

Are you sure turns are simultaneous ? They are for the tactical battles, not for the cloth map.

If they aren't simultaneous, it will be a nightmare to play a 8 player game. Even if each player use 2 min for their turn, this means than only 4 turns will be played in one hour. And you will wait other player for  88% of the game length

BTW, I think to have read somewhere that there could be up to 32 players.

Im pretty sure it will be Simultaneous. If its like most other TBS games (well honestly, I only have MP experience with BTS), then there will be a slight lag, and a combination of a faster computer, faster internet connection, and "fast moves" will decide who is to grab the goody hut first.

Also, at least on the strategic map, mobile units will have a great advantage. Luckily for us, we fight in TACTICAL battles, so you can't simply fast-move a victory "thank god".

I remember moving a giant army of horsearchers onto City C. Before they even knew what was going on, City C was taken and destroyed (I *might* have captured it). See, they were in the build screen for City C, trying to decide what to build next. The Civ 4 interface was *awful* by the way, espcially for the degree of complexity that FFH required, or at least suggested, that you include in your combat strategies.

So in these cases, it was always best to have a giant stack that did one thing. Like Spectre Spamming Mages/Vampires, or Fireball Spamming Firebows/Golems, Or HorseArchers that moved hella-fast.

In addition, when you lose a city you are currently "INSIDE" your game crashes. So when I took his city that he was still making changes with, he crashed and we *would* of rehosted, but he was already pretty much dead. That was his capital IIRC.

That game was known as another "Hippus Raze the World" game. Somehow the Doviello Player and Lanun player really check-mated each other, so by the time I got to them, I didn't actually die. In fact, it would have been alot worse for me if the Lanun army was actually in their cities. See, they were off fighting the Doviello and I razed their cities .....

Anyways, CIV 4 interface, horrible for FFH2. You almost always had to save build-ques for the end of your turn, (minimize popups) and alot of the time you had to turn off unit cycling just so that you could select your whole army before the UI selected some lame soldier half the map away. Also, with later patches the Ctrl+# function stopped working for groups of units, so you couldn't even "KEEP" a coherent army, you had to reselect them every time.

The only winning factor was that clicking "alt" would select all units. Although it was SOMEONE's brilliant Idea to have Alt favor naval and aerial units. So if you had ONE HAWK it would just select the hawk, instead of your 10 hunters, 20 axemen, and 5 catapults. .... same goes for Coastal Cities with ONE GALLEY.

Spammable magic was an almost sure fire winner. Mainly because Fireballs and Spectres = free units per turn. There is really nothing other than a pre-built army that can compete with that. Spammable magic means that you can build a unit from scratch and it will have a spell. Fire Golems, Vampires, Arcane Barges, Firebows all had this.

At this point, nobody knows the answers. Presumably when beta 2 is near we'll get a dev journal about multiplayer, that'd be the best place to ask.

Buy caltrops. A lot of them.

IIRC i asked about this and frogboy said the turns would be default simultaneous.

Having round robin turns in MP with more than 3 people in a 4x game makes the game totaly unplayable, unless you like PBEM and plan on taking years to finish a small map.

And if a unit gets lots of moves, isn't that just an advantage you have accumulated? as long as everyone has the same chance to get the super movers, it should be fine.

I guess it will depends how simultaneous turn will be implemented: are players giving orders and then the turn proceed with all movements (like in dominions 3 where you can only move into an adjacent province) ?

Most simultaneous turns are basically, everyone takes their turn at the same time. But typically most folks agree not to attack each other for 15-30 seconds or whatever. And the turn only ends when everyone clicks end turn. So you could order your unit to move, and he would move, and meanwhile someone else could be moving their unit at the exact same time. But then since he said it was the default, i assume you will also be able to to set it to round robin. But i doubt many will play MP in round robin style, even if that is the classic system, because any game with more than 2-3 people just takes forever in round robin.

If you want a good example of simultaneous turns, go pick up age of wonders. Very good game.