Online campaigns, a fairly simple solution.

[mac89]

This is my thought how to create an online-campaign, according to my explanation you will have none of the problems that people would suggest such as Endless campaigns.

Why cant they put up some servers? For the campaign, a person just accesses a server if there is a free spot and can select one of the factions that isnt occupied (let them be controlled by the AI when not occupied).
This way you can have a continous campaign that doesnt last ages. you could set a time limit on who long people can think about their moves so if somebody abbodons his pc but leaves it on his turn will automaticly be executed. After 2 or 3 times he will be kicked of the server and be replaced by AI/
If you can only set units to low quality (if you have a not so good pc) this shouldnt matter like in custom battles.
You should ofcourse have the same version of the game! :laughing:
But you should allow private servers if you do, if you want to just play with your friends.

This is pretty viable in my opinion, also wouldnt be that hard to put into works.
What kinda of flaws could be in this system?

[Lusted]

Well the main one is would people be willing to hang around whilst 2 other people fight it out, because whilst they do that you can't do anything. So you could end up with people fighting multiple battles per turn whilst everyone else just sits around doing nothing.

[mac89]

Yes i hadnt thought of that. obviously. :laughing:

but before dismissing this, couldnt they make some kind of detection system that analyses what battles will be fought and executes several games at a time.
If someone whouldnt get attacked, theyd have to wait though.
But a solution would be to have either automatic battles or giving the ones that dont have anything to do a training battle with the AI presenting one of his (enemy )neighbours

[John Wayne]

I think that something like that would be to difficult to make at this point in time. Maybe sometime in the future, but not now.

[westy159]

A spectator option for battles that you are not in but another player is? Me and my brother would love a MP campaign mode even if it meant waiting around a bit.

[Lusted]

Yes but what if another player fought 7 battles in a turn? That could take an hour, if not more, would you be willing to wait around for that long?

[Ewan]

also wat if u had 3 or 4 factions, then each faction had 2 battles per turn and each battle took an average of 10 mins are u sure u would be willing to wait that long just to say do a 2 minuit turn of just moving troops around
the only way i see this workin is if u had auto resolve battle

[mac89]

Yep the absolute problem lies with the custom battles.
The only sort of campaign that wouldnt have this problem is a 2 player campaign

[drak10687]

so why not just have 2 pp campaigns, still better then nothing

[Lord Kal]

I agreee, although if you're going to allow 2 people you may as well allow all the people as well. With 20-player campaigns it'd be ridiculously slow, but someone would want to. 2 and 3-player campaigns, on the other hand, I think would become very popular indeed.

[hsimoorb]

Good points. I think it's be more fair and move faster if all battles had to be autoresolved unless they involved both human players. Even a 2 player campaign would be cool like that, but realy it would be much better if every faction could be controlled by a human player.

IDEA ----> Make Multiplayer clan based. You know how people do joint AAR? It could work like that, only real time, where a campaign could go on 24-7, where each faction would be controlled by an association like a clan. If only player gets bored, another clan memeber takes over, keeping the human element of each faction constant throughout the game. What'dya think? It might be hard to get players together to organize a clan that would have players available 4-7 to keep a match going...

[Legione]

I've thought about this before and the only way that I could see online campaigns working is by making appointments lol. Like e-mail set up a time and the players meet up for like a hour a day for example, 1 turn should only take like 5-10 minutes max and when the battles are about to commence both (or more) players are there to fight. Campaigns which have more than like 4 players online I don't see as fun because the waiting would just be too tremendous. If there ever will be online campaigns in a TW game I don't see them as being pick-up-and-play style at all. It's would take two people who at least kinda know each other to arange online meetings.

Sounds weird kinda... lol like a dungeon and dragon kinda thing... meetings... but that's the only way I see it working while preserving the gameplay of the campaign.

[John Wayne]

Isn't there already a multiplayer caimpaign mod out there for RTW? I am pretty darn shure I saw it once, maybe a year or so ago, and it seemed like a good idea.

[lightbringer418]

the campaign for rtw was a "make a move, then email your campaign files to me so i can make a move and email it back" system.

they already said they at least have some sort of series of battles for multiplayers to do.

[Favre]

Yes but what if another player fought 7 battles in a turn? That could take an hour, if not more, would you be willing to wait around for that long?

I'd like to see a Saveable multiplayer-lan campaign. This way you can play it with a friend or someone. Its simple in this way, 2 human controlled factions , played over lan, and saveable.

Obviously I understand how hard it is to incorporate a multiplayer campaign and that's why i think it would be a cool idea to do this way.

[Ewan]

well lookin at civ4 , there mulitplayer system in theory is alot easier yet they spent alonngggg time doin this.
i would rather see CA spend time on something such A.I then a multiplayer ( that most ppl wouldnt use anyway )

[{nF}remix]

I still think the best way to implement this is to have simple 1v1 historical scenarios with only 2 factions on the map.

Such as France vs England in the Hundred Years' War

[thomonkey]

the best way to do this is to have 1 vs 1, with like 4 provinces each, and like maybe a buffer zone in between with AI, but only battles between the 2 human players will be played out. THere are no flaws to this system. Nobody is waiting around, and you get whole TW experience.

[Ewan]

this would still mostlikly require alot of code to do and players might find the campagn map a bit brong and just opt for battles

[thomonkey]

ithink this would be the only way to do it though. I think you might be able to do 4 players, but then youd hvae to wait around for a little. Not too much though.
if you could simulateneous turns thered be no waiting.
And you if you move past an enemy during simultaneous turns, a battle starts.