Hot stuff incoming!
 

Seriously, stop making up titles to make the content look more interesting. The thing is, 2K seems to think this is good news: the next big patch will contain hotseat multiplayer? Hot or not?

Why would I want hotseat? My wife doesn't like computer games and my daughter is probably ;) a bit too young for CiV...

IMHO this isn't hot at all, they should put their energy in real improvements to CiV... :(

I'm with stupid. [wavey] Will there ever be decent MP in Civ 5?

Hotseat is at least a pre-step to real MP...

So, slightly better than cold...

I'm here, why'd you start a thread about me?

This just convinced me to leave civ in its box for another year.

Hotseat. Great, we're going back to the 90's folks.

Next patch will include DOS support as well, I heard. We'll be creating our own custom bat files to set DOS configurations that free up enough memory in our first 64MB mem bank so we can start the game. After that we'll do some jumper setting so our soundcard will work with our mobo and then we'll fire up our 14k4 modem to connect to this new thing called the internet. I heard they're working on browsers now that will make that internet graphical, how cool is that????

That is a big step IMO. If hotseat can be implemented so can PBEM and PB. The mechanics behind all these are the same just different framing and timing. At least with hotseat, it can be tested easily and the rest are technicalities. As I understood, this would be a separate feature from regular MP with completely new coding. That is one of the reasons it took so long.

Apparently, they thought that hotseat, PBEM, and PB are not needed at all and their crooked MP will be sufficient. Now they realize they were wrong and are trying to right that.

I think, there are still big differences between PBEM and pitboss (especially as you can play simultaneously), but you are right from Hotseat to PBEM, there is a small step.

My personal opinion is that Civ5 is the shame of the 4X video game industry.

They released a game in 2010 without proper multi-player ??? [uglyham] That is totally laughable. And to think that the single-player game is total crap...

So yes, this news is a middle-finger to all the longtime fans. I'm glad I stopped following the gaming industry, even though I'm partly sad to see such an excellent franchise being ruined like it is today.

If I want a hotseat I'll eat from the Indian take-away a day before.

No. The middle finger is called Civ World.

That's all true, but the problem with imbalances remain. Now this isn't that different from Civ III where we started MP on this forum games with AI and after a while the MP evolved to no AI/extra rules concerning DoW as it's too imbalanced in it's out of the box state. Same for AI and CS in Civ V. Play no AI, no CS and MP can be ok I presume.

I'll make some indonesian food next time you're over then. :D

Why, because the efforts are going there instead of ciV or because it is bad or both?

Well its a start but we'll see what happens in the future. But it just shows what a great job they did with civ4 by comparisson

At least the first, likely the second as well.