How does multiplayer work?

[sandman25dcsss]

We are trying to play a cooperative multiplayer game over LAN (as team vs AI opponents), simultaneous turns.
If I check setting like "Spectate battle" (sorry, I use non-English version and don't know how it's called there) and my teammate fights netrals, I am forced to spectate his battle. I cannot exit the screen to continue doing my turn.
If we change the setting to "Never spectate", my teammate cannot do anything (units don't move over strategic maps, he cannot enter town/research screen etc.) and there is a label "An independent battle is happening" (again, I translated it literally so maybe it is a bit different in English version) at the top right corner of the strategy map. When my fight is over, my teammate again can manage his turn.
But my turn is not blocked when my teammate fights some neutrals, maybe because I am host and he just connected to the game.
Is it expected? How do people play multiplayer games?

[MrNo]

I don't play MP, but I've seen this explained often enough to have a good idea of it.

While a battle is occurring, the rest of the game has to lock up. No actions can be taken. It's unfortunate, but necessary (see bottom).

So there are basically 2 ways people play:
1. PBEM: take all the time you want on independent turns, it's not like your opponent is sitting there waiting for you. But combats with other players are impossible.

2. Live MP: Auto-battle all independent fights, manual battle all fights between players.

House rules do, of course, apply. There's at least one MP group around that has a set of rules to minimize abuses of each mode's flaws, though I'm not well acquainted with what they are. I assume most of them revolve around "don't be a ♥♥♥♥" types of things.

There's been a couple of threads about *why* this is, but I still find this one from back in 2014 to be the most concise:

http://aow.triumph.net/forums/topic/major-issue-multiplayer-manualtactical-combat/

4th post down by Tombles, one of Triumph's devs.

Sidenote: This has been addressed slightly in the upcoming sequel, by adding a PBEM-like mode that allows hot-join into Live MP.

[sikbok]

Hi,


No worries about the translation, those are pretty close : )>

AoW3 is a turn based strategy at heart. Yes, we have simultaneous turn mode, but even that still has people waiting for other people's actions to complete.
Typically this is so fast you hardly notice, but doing combat manually is where it does become noticeable.

We had a look at changing how this works - for AoW:Planetfall - but haven't managed yet, because it's not an easy change to make.

In multiplayer, people typically watch other people's battles - I enjoy a bit of friendly banter via voice or text chat, or a chance to grab a drink and food - or people use auto combat. People often have house rules for which battles to manual - the important ones - and which to auto - scout fights.

For a co-op comp-stomp, if you are allies you can both be in a battle if you both have an army next to the army being attacked.

Edit: Doh, Ninja'ed by MrNo : D>

[MrNo]

By a matter of seconds too. The notification popped up immediately after I hit post.

[sandman25dcsss]

I see, thank you for the replies!
That's unfortunate, we have played many hot-seat games but my teammate was complaining that it takes much more time for me to play a turn than it does for him so we hoped simultaneous turns would reduce the problem. Back to hot-seat then :)

[sikbok]

Originally posted by MrNo:

By a matter of seconds too. The notification popped up immediately after I hit post.

Lol, just my luck ; )>
Nice post MrNo, as usual : D>

Originally posted by sandman25dcsss:

I see, thank you for the replies!
That's unfortunate, we have played many hot-seat games but my teammate was complaining that it takes much more time for me to play a turn than it does for him so we hoped simultaneous turns would reduce the problem. Back to hot-seat then :)

Won't help in AoW3, but we'll keep looking into what we can do for you here in our future games.

Please note the 'fighting battles together' for coop. I had a lot of run doing those. PBEM might also be something to try, unless you like playing with company more.

[sandman25dcsss]

Thank you, we'll try pbem.