Civ4 and simultaneous moves
 

I know it's a bit late to have such a discussion, since it deals with primary development (or at least I suppose), but anyway...

Being a Diplomacy player (the board game, not diplo in Civ !) and having played the LAN at Beam's, I was wondering whether it could be nice to have a Civ game that would still be turn-based of course, but provided a simulaneous moves feature. I mean : which would be the only way to play, not just an option (such options suck, you gotta decide !). Of course I'm not thinking of simultaneous moves in the same way as the LAN, where you QUICKLY have to decide whether to move first or last on several points of the map, and where you can sneak-attack your foe because he has already moved his units on this turn while you were pretending to have a beer. This would be ridiculous.

But I'm thinking of the way Diplomacy is set up : every player chats with everyone, then writes down orders, sends them to a referee, and then all moves are done ("solved") together at the same time. In Civ we would have :
- beginning of turn, each player can do some diplo in F4 (translate it into SP as well...), and check all kind of stuff ;
- then it's time for the units moving phase, each player gives movement orders (or not) to every unit on the map ;
- then it's time for the order solving phase, strict and clear rules are applied (like in Diplomacy), battles are fought, exploration is made, capturing cities are processed... all of this at the same time ;
- then it's time for the MM phase, each player can adjust every parameter, and also can do some diplo in F4, and prepare for the following turn ;
- finally the program manages the inter-turn, which only entails stuff like food, production, science, culture, etc... but no unit moving, even barbarian !!

I reckon it would need some tuning to get a good engine (what happens when 2 civs build the same wonder on the same turn ? etc...), but I think it could be feasible. The good thing is that there is no roster order anymore, which makes the game fairer for everyone, and it looks less like a chess board, where each civ moves after one another. It would of course need massive rethinking, like attack/defense in unit values, but if the game mechanics adapted to this new and more realistic way of doing, it can only add to the experience.

Now, I'm not saying it is better no matter what. I think it could be a worthy idea, at least in multiplayer games (and possibly PBEMs). I'm not sure how the AI could do the diplo with humans on board... I've never seen an AI play Diplomacy. [mischief] And some people might prefer the chess-like approach anyway.

This is what I was searching last night, but couldn't find it. I may just have never talked about it here.


EDIT : [bump]

Well, it shall surtainly not speed up the game. And since the (almost) only sellable products are the ones you don't have to think, I think it wouldn't be a commercially viable product. Which means you can forget it.

But hey, feel free to start some programming :D

I recently played an MP game against my brother (and finally won! :D), but when we started combatting we switched from simultaneous to turn based. Then I noticed turn based isn't as bad as it seems: when it's your turn you should only move your units and end the turn. Then while the other is moving his units you can micromanage! [yeah]

Now micromanaging takes a bit longer than moving units (sometimes a lot), so with two persons you should be careful. But with three or four it'll certainly work out perfectly. ;) With more you might still have to wait (unless your nick is "Kemal" [tongue]).

My only wish for Civ4 concerning MP is that turn based play should have the same interface as single player and not like simultaneous as it is in Civ3. I really hate it. [sad] For some reason the programmers thought they had to change certain things for MP to make it go faster - they also did this in Civ2 - but it in fact only means people have to check things they otherwise didn't have to check; they didn't realize the game itself was already optimized for speed, with optional governors, automated workers, etc.

By the way, there is an unbelievably beautiful chick opposite to me in the computer room! [eek]

Does she like guys with purple hair?

Shall I ask? [lol]

Only if you are quite sure that she is not a vetkluif

Melifluous

Beats my bold english boss in front of me I imagine.

[rotfl] was "bold" a typo [whipped]

Hmm, usually I have PP opposite of me [coool]

I'm afraid it wasn't.......