A couple questions on multiplayer.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

My buddy is picking up Rome II in the next week or so we can do a co-op multiplayer grand campaign.

I had a few questions on compatibility that either the team or players might be able to answer.

I'll be playing Rome, and we'll be using the all factions playable mod so he can play as Knossos (with Massila as a back up if afp doesn't work in mp).
We'll also be using LAN play if that's an option.

1: I already figure this is a yes, but both players have to have the exact same sub mods right?
Edit: Would that include things like GEM since they are visual only?

2: Is the all factions playable sub mod multiplayer compatible?

3: How do reforms work with two players and AI instead of just one player an AI? Will that be an issue?

4: How do battles play when one person has a great computer that can run it well, and the other one not so great but can play it half decently? Will his less powerful computer slow down the battles on my end?

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, appreciate any if anyone can answer some or all of my questions here.

[Ygraine]

1. Yes.

4. If one has fps stuttering, the battle slows down for both.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

1. Yes.

4. If one has fps stuttering, the battle slows down for both.

That answers two questions so far, thank you.

[Dresden]

I haven't done as much testing with multiplayer as others. However, reforms should work the same as they would in a normal game. However, if you are the same culture then you may end up locking the other player's recruitment if you hit them early.

The submod should be multiplayer compatible, but I have heard of some submods causing desyncs. That would shouldn't but I can't promise.

[Kman124]

Just to summarize my experience:

My friend and I are at around turn 160
I'm the Arevaci and he's the Arverni; we're currently fighting both Rome and the Nervi right now and to our surprise its actually somewhat interesting.

He's playing from Germany, I'm in the USA. He's got a decent gaming laptop, I have a good gaming desktop. We're usually able to play battles involving 4-5 full stacks with little lag at high settings for him, ultra/very high for me and medium unit size; we've noticed that our internet connection impacts lag more than our computers' performance.

The mods we use are DEI, Dresden's multiplayer fix from another thread, Guaranteed Major factions, and rush cinematic music. We've also had FLAM, faster combat and animation speed, and a few others going at the same time in previous campaigns.

We encounter the occasional desync or CTD, but are able to either reload the same turn and continue or just reload a turn or two back (which sucks after winning badass battles). Still, right now is one of the most stable multiplayer games we've had.

One important thing we noticed months ago (back in mid-2014 we'd play co-op with ToonTotalWar's all-in-one mod a lot) that still seems to hold true is that starting the game closer together minimizes the amount of issues you deal with; because we like being different cultures when we're allies, this also has the benefit of creating some interesting starting situations. Overall, Co-op + this mod is an insane amount of fun though, most fun I've had in TW since Third Age mod coop hotseat; only thing we miss is the formation animations but of course we understand why they're out.

Hope this helps

[Ritterlichvon86]

My buddy is picking up Rome II in the next week or so we can do a co-op multiplayer grand campaign.

I had a few questions on compatibility that either the team or players might be able to answer.

I'll be playing Rome, and we'll be using the all factions playable mod so he can play as Knossos (with Massila as a back up if afp doesn't work in mp).
We'll also be using LAN play if that's an option.

1: I already figure this is a yes, but both players have to have the exact same sub mods right?
Edit: Would that include things like GEM since they are visual only?

2: Is the all factions playable sub mod multiplayer compatible?

3: How do reforms work with two players and AI instead of just one player an AI? Will that be an issue?

4: How do battles play when one person has a great computer that can run it well, and the other one not so great but can play it half decently? Will his less powerful computer slow down the battles on my end?

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, appreciate any if anyone can answer some or all of my questions here.

Only use all factions playable mod if it is an official DeI submod updated after January 11th. Otherwise you'll run into crashes, desyncs, and other weird issues.

1. Yes, all the same. GEM is a no-go. The need to alt-tab during the session to do anything else means you'll desync the MPC. You'll be locked out from Steam, and browser, while playing. If you both can hold the discipline, that's fine. A desync creeps in, might not be notices directly, but appear turns later.

2. Only if it has been updated after the latest DeI release, you must check that on your own. Remember that you both must use the Standalone version, downloadable from the TWC DeI main thread. Avoid Steam WS.

3. The reforms work as they should, with both player factions having the player triggers, and the AI getting the AI triggers. However, as Dresden mentioned, issues may appear if you are both of the same culture. Always make sure to play different cultures, or ask for a submod-pack that activates player reforms based on turn-number only.

4. Yes, the battles will stay in sync, so if one computer is slower, the other will become slower too.

5. Play with houserules, like: Diplomatic option "Join war against..." is illegal to use (can be detected by the lack of war-event message), 2-2-5 (2 military allies, 2 defensive allies, 5 trade agreements). "2-2-5, no join war" is a pretty common set. The reason is that a player can make easy money by selling trade agreements, join war against to a) avoid alliances b) gankspam the other player with AI armies c) get loads of money by joining into wars far across the map. For example, playing Egypt, a player can make 25000 through these in turn 0.



P.S. Personally, I even use these houserules in Singleplayer, as the game gets way too easy with +15k income per turn due to 20 trade agreements, other cash influx (at one point the AI will start paying you huge amounts of cash for trade, NAPs, join war against..., alliances, etc. , and everyone will love your faction and never attack, and endless amounts of alliances forming. It just kills the late medium to endgame. It gets way too easy... diplomacy is broken in R2.

[Ygraine]

Only use all factions playable mod if it is an official DeI submod updated after January 11th. Otherwise you'll run into crashes, desyncs, and other weird issues.

1. Yes, all the same. GEM is a no-go. The need to alt-tab during the session to do anything else means you'll desync the MPC. You'll be locked out from Steam, and browser, while playing. If you both can hold the discipline, that's fine. A desync creeps in, might not be notices directly, but appear turns later.

2. Only if it has been updated after the latest DeI release, you must check that on your own. Remember that you both must use the Standalone version, downloadable from the TWC DeI main thread. Avoid Steam WS.

3. The reforms work as they should, with both player factions having the player triggers, and the AI getting the AI triggers. However, as Dresden mentioned, issues may appear if you are both of the same culture. Always make sure to play different cultures, or ask for a submod-pack that activates player reforms based on turn-number only.

4. Yes, the battles will stay in sync, so if one computer is slower, the other will become slower too.

5. Play with houserules, like: Diplomatic option "Join war against..." is illegal to use (can be detected by the lack of war-event message), 2-2-5 (2 military allies, 2 defensive allies, 5 trade agreements). "2-2-5, no join war" is a pretty common set. The reason is that a player can make easy money by selling trade agreements, join war against to a) avoid alliances b) gankspam the other player with AI armies c) get loads of money by joining into wars far across the map. For example, playing Egypt, a player can make 25000 through these in turn 0.



P.S. Personally, I even use these houserules in Singleplayer, as the game gets way too easy with +15k income per turn due to 20 trade agreements, other cash influx (at one point the AI will start paying you huge amounts of cash for trade, NAPs, join war against..., alliances, etc. , and everyone will love your faction and never attack, and endless amounts of alliances forming. It just kills the late medium to endgame. It gets way too easy... diplomacy is broken in R2.

GEM works just fine in multiplayer campaign. Why is it a no-go? I've played 2 different campaigns with two different people - all 3 of us had GEM and there were no issues.

So far I noticed that alt-tabbing on campaign map is fine - but doing it in battles will result in desyncs (units getting stuck etc). Browsing through Steam in-game overlay is fine and won't desync the game.

[Ritterlichvon86]

GEM works just fine in multiplayer campaign. Why is it a no-go? I've played 2 different campaigns with two different people - all 3 of us had GEM and there were no issues.

Because it is hard to uninstall for people that don't use it (delete all manually, re-verify the game), and people tend to use different versions without knowing how to fix it, thus cannot join each other's campaign, alt-tab out during the game even if you've talked about it before. Most players are like this:

So far I noticed that alt-tabbing on campaign map is fine - but doing it in battles will result in desyncs (units getting stuck etc). Browsing through Steam in-game overlay is fine and won't desync the game.

It is not, it will screw up reforms and more. Yes, doing it in battles will result in desyncs and/or crashes. GEM does not allow browsing through Steam in-game overlay, as the latter is disabled.

[Ygraine]

Because it is hard to uninstall for people that don't use it (delete all manually, re-verify the game), and people tend to use different versions without knowing how to fix it, thus cannot join each other's campaign, alt-tab out during the game even if you've talked about it before. Most players are like this:



It is not, it will screw up reforms and more. Yes, doing it in battles will result in desyncs and/or crashes. GEM does not allow browsing through Steam in-game overlay, as the latter is disabled.

I see, for us it was rather simple. You just follow Luciferhawks instructions and make sure both parties updated it.

How does it screw up reforms? I alt-tabbed probably 50 times in campaign, and we still had reforms - didn't notice any particular issues after 140 turns~. There's a version of GEM that has working Steam-overlay.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

Thanks for the extensive answers here Dresden and Ritterlichvon.

I avoid steam like the plague when possible, so everything we get will be off of the forums here and official only (I'll be forgoing my Rome 1 music mod sadly, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for a co op campaign).

So I should just uninstall GEM? I had heard that was a head ache, but I'll figure it out. Main problem is I have a bandwidth cap on my net, so I do not want to have to reinstall all of Rome II if at all possible. I won't be able to use the internet for the rest of the month if I have to do that.
The alternative seems to be to just ensure we don't tab out (he'll have his laptop right next to me, so we can remind each other no tabbing).

Rome and Knossos/Massila are Italian and Greek culture respectively, so the only apparent issues with reforms will be non existent for us, good to hear that.

And yeah, I play with some house rules as well to make it easier on me. Generally avoiding alliances when possible. I don't limit trade routes though simply because my playstyle really thrives on having a large influx of cash, constantly expanding armies and building up settlements every turn means I don't start getting 10k + per turn until about turn 100-120. Before then I sit at around 5-6k per turn on average (but am using my treasury up just as quickly).


Okay. So to summarize.

Be 100% strict on not tabbing out, or just remove all visual mods entirely. Only use the bare minimum needed for play (DeI and all factions playable) with everything downloaded directly from the forums and made sure to be completely up to date.


Well I'll let the forum know how it goes once he's got it and we fire a campaign up. Really looking forward to this!

[Ivan_Moscavich]

That's actually pretty helpful, thanks Kman.

Knossos isn't 'that' far from Rome, and Massila is obviously right next to Rome so either way that should be a benefit it sounds like.

One question I guess I didn't really ask is, does Rome II work well with an LAN game, can you even do it that way? Or do you have to use whatever multiplayer set up Steam uses to connect players?

The occasionally crash won't bug us, even when it happens in single player I just boot it back up and carry on. Heck, sometimes crashes can be helpful. Get up and walk around while the game reloads after six hours of playtime!

I'm very glad to hear that it is stable with multiple full stacks. That was something I was slightly concerned with.

[Teukros]

I usually play with my brother on lan the multiplayer campaign, so you should't have any problems, although a few months ago we couldn't start on LAN (don't know the reason, the bug just disappeared).

[Ivan_Moscavich]

I actually just ran into a potential issue. While looking how mp games are set up with the all factions playable mod. The selectable list of factions is.... screwy.

Infact if I unselect Rome I can't reselect it. Also I can't seem to select Knossos (the faction he was going as).

So the options are either to have a small sub mod that only adds Knossos as a playable faction, or, for him to play another factions. As long as I don't touch the faction list on all factions playable it stays defaulted to Rome.

I noticed this ins custom battles too, there are so many factions I cant select them all.