multiplayer against yourself

[zeitbauer]

any way to set up a ghost friend on steam so you could mulitplayer yourself till you go blind?

[zeitbauer]

just started a multplayer game for the first time ever -- set it as private, and it opened onto a landscape and it's just been drifiting around and carrying my profile logo with it. is it waiting for a friend to join the game so it can start?

[Ardelo]

well I don't think you are supposed to play multiplayer by yourself, I haven't tried though. But the score should be earned against real players! ;)

[Skybreaker]

Hi there.
Yes, if you want to play all alone, start a free game in single-player.
For multiplayer you need at least one more human players. ;)
-cheers

[Dray Prescot]

Sometimes when you are playing a game with mutiple computer controlled players (i.e. most games except two player ones) you want to try out how things work with allied strategies, or alternatively you want to try certain out opposing stategies. Also your schedule might be a little too erratic or subject to a lot of outside interruptions (I am taking care of my father and mother in their mid 80s) for a real mutiplayer game. Also players who are used to playing board games often had to play mutiple positions to make the game work.

A couple of months ago I was playing Europa Universalis IV which has very many independent computer controlled countries, and I wanted to try playing an alliance between Castille and Burgundy. The problem was that the computer controlled Burgundy keep doing stupid things that dragged me into losing wars if I wanted to keep his alliance and my relatively good diplomatic reputation amongst all the other countries. So I was trying to switch back and forth between controlling two counties in the same game.

I like the EU games but my biggest complaint about them (going all the way back to EU I ) is they have made it much too expensive to do internal developement: when you are playing a game that goes by one day at a time, you don't like to make investments that can take 50 to 70 years, i.e. 15,000 to 20,000 days, to pay themselves off.

A differrent good but dated (1998) game in the genre including GAM was Imperialism 1 and 2. Another good but dated (1990s to 2006) game system in this genre was Caesar 1,2,3,and 4. I like games that concentrate on the economic building up of a country, where the warfare is not constant. The classic was, of course, Civilization (and Alpha Centauri). I also like the Patrician series which GAM is related to (same game developer also). I have not (yet) tried Grand Ages Rome. I having been playing computer games for over 30 years (starting in the Apple 2 era, an Apple 2GS was my second computer), and was playing board games for another 10 years before that. Many of our present computer games developed out of board games. I also spent about 15 years in the play by mail community (late 1970s to early 1990s). Many of those play by mail games are related to later computer games.

[zeitbauer]

yes, imperialism was a very fun game, as were the early civ games. and, yes, sometimes you want to expand your experience, like playing chess against yourself. the person who mentioned 'score'? -- i don't know what you're talking about, because a 'score' in a game like this is meaningless. i just want to make the best system and watch it walk through its processes.

i've discovered in googling that it's not possible to play this game or some others like it in multiplayer on one screen, one computer. some people want that so they can play with friends in the same room together and have only one computer. i suppose i can laptop and LAN a multiplayer into existence with my desktop... but, it's not that important though and there's not enough depth -- which is why i'd want to multiplay -- in this game to be worth the effort.

[Ardelo]

The only difference between singleplayer and multiplayer is in multiplayer you may face real opponents instead of AI and there is a score at the end of the game. It is completely fine that you don't care about the score at all, my line of thought was that the OP simply wanted to play against himself to get score because I couldn't see any other reason to play a real time strategy game against yourself or your friend on the same computer when the game progress every second.
It is not turn based like Civ 5, but if you do play with players, you may switch countries in the middle of a game by loading a multiplayer save and switching the spots around. If you fairly want to play against your friends in a RTS game you should get another computer(laptop) in a lan session just as you have to do with most other RTS games. I was simply confused to what you were actually trying to accomplish by playing a multiplayer game with yourself and none else instead of simply playing single player game. Didn't really make sense to me that's all.

[Dray Prescot]

When you want to try out a particular strategy against another particular strategy, it is a lot easier to do it yourself than having to wait for who knows how many games for it to happen, so that you can try it, and even then you might not be playing the right position in the game to try it, the oppurtunity may have come for one of the computer players.

This is one reason that I tend to keep a lot of saved games, so that I can go back to try out various strategies against things that have already happened to me or that I saw happen to another AI player in one of my games.

I tend to do a lot of replaying in the early stages of learning a new game. For example, I have not yet gotten past the mission in Chapter 2 of the campaign where you have to acquire Izmir for the Patriarch.

[Ardelo]

Originally posted by Dray Prescot:

When you want to try out a particular strategy against another particular strategy, it is a lot easier to do it yourself than having to wait for who knows how many games for it to happen, so that you can try it, and even then you might not be playing the right position in the game to try it, the oppurtunity may have come for one of the computer players.

This is one reason that I tend to keep a lot of saved games, so that I can go back to try out various strategies against things that have already happened to me or that I saw happen to another AI player in one of my games.

I tend to do a lot of replaying in the early stages of learning a new game. For example, I have not yet gotten past the mission in Chapter 2 of the campaign where you have to acquire Izmir for the Patriarch.

Yes, having many saves and replaying them is completely fine and a good idea to see what happens on the map. I don't see how this is a reason to play alone in a multiplayer game though. In a singleplayer game you can start wherever you want to check out the map and try strategies, you can choose how much cash you want to start with and all the other usual stuff. All of this works just fine in a singleplayer game, I don't see why you would want to do this in a multiplayer game which is what the topic was about. But there is a lot of different strategies to apply depending on where you start and what you want to achieve depending on game settings :)

[zeitbauer]

i wanted to play multiplayer being both opponents simply to forge alliences and make a strong model of a medieval interregional trading system. for one thing, i could focus on different industries in each region/realm, and not have to be completely self-sufficient.

i've already 'won' the game, several times on 'pro'... it's boring to win in a game that feels like it's made for middle-schoolers wearing camelot armor.

let me clarify: if the game were less balanced for multiple players one of my regions might be impoverished in some way -- no minerals or grain, something radically hindering. and, instead of having to play a conquest game, my second player self might develop his country into an astute trading player -- finding and exploiting some one thing nobody else wants to spend that much energy on at the game's beginning. that would be interesting.

[Dray Prescot]

Building on the above comments (agreeing with), the main reason to be able to hot seat, i.e. play two positions at the same time, is to try out team or allied multi player stategies in a game where there are a lot of positions (AI or human) being played at the same time in the same game, such as Europa Universalis.

Question, when multiplayer games of GAM are being played, how many different positions are being played in a typical mutiplayer game?

If you are trying out single player strategies, then saved games will usually be adequate, if you want to try out strategies against various opposing strategies. Although it would still be useful, if you can control the strategies and options that both sides are using.

[zeitbauer]

i don't want to 'win', i want to construct a trade system which mimics medieaval trade systems. nobody wins, it's just everyone keeping afloat. realistic co-dependencies between cities would be ideal -- little games where each region is self-sufficent in order to be balanced in a multiplayer game is not realistically medieval.

[Ardelo]

Originally posted by zeitbauer:

i don't want to 'win', i want to construct a trade system which mimics medieaval trade systems. nobody wins, it's just everyone keeping afloat. realistic co-dependencies between cities would be ideal -- little games where each region is self-sufficent in order to be balanced in a multiplayer game is not realistically medieval.

One day you will realise that this is a game intended to bring amusement, not to accurately portray medieval times. People died like flies in medieval times and in general it wasn't that funny with all the horrible things that went around. If you want to construct trade with yourself as more than country or cities outside of your control then maybe this game is simply not for you, what you're looking for sounds a lot more like europa universalis. Multiplayer against yourself simply doesn't make sense because multiplayer indicate more than one player, against yourself indicates one. It's contradictory. Doesn't quite pan out.

Maybe set your goal to conquer the entire europe and then you can have individual trade systems in specific regions that are self supplied, this is entire possible to set up as one player in a single player game. You can impose constrictions of yourself to make it harder if that is what you're after. Not really sure what the issue is about here, if you figure it out then do tell me because what you write is alltogether very confusing.

[Dray Prescot]

There is a difference between playing for a score or achievements, and playing to test strategies.

Different regions probably have different sources of fish, meat, grain, etc., but they usually have something to fill their roles in each region.

What is more unrealistic is so much land based trade in GAM. Land trade was so difficult (expensive) for most of history that only the most valuable, unique, and small quantity goods went long distances and it was hard to transport large quantities even short distances and make a profit. Water based trade could go much longer distances but were limited to places close to those seas and rivers which could only draw on limited areas close by via land.

I do wonder about the lack of olives and olive oil in GAM. Trade in olive oil was big in the Mediterranean more than a 1400 years before the time period of this game. Some of the luxury goods such as olive oil really were only available to produce in limited areas. I find myself wondering about the sources of furs and the need for them in the middle and southern parts of the map in GAM. Then there were differences caused by religion between Christian and Moslem areas regarding diet restrictions on alcoholic beverages and pork. GAM does not have any of the trade in silk and spices coming in from the Far East that certain areas, mostly Moslem, controlled.

So there are a lot of goods that could be added to GAM. The problem is how many goods do you want to model in the economy of the game. A lot of goods that are only available in certain rare locations could make it even harder to keep your towns happy. Would you want to deal in 40 goods, for instance?

Another point is that rulers often drew most of their revenue from port fees and heavy taxes on certain items such as salt. Many countries taxed salt heavily all the way into the 1800s.

Also rulers who wanted to ruin competing ports (that they could not conquer) with their large port fees for goods being transferred through those ports would often set up free ports (or free cities) nearby.

[zeitbauer]

i'm not testing anything, because i'm only playing to watch the processes unfold. i don't care about the seig in ostland or some crap like that. i'm just a merchant trader building a network, so i'm very sympa to what you're saying about land trade. but, i don't think the developers or most anyone care about historical accuracy in this game. it's mostly a transport game, with personalities and soldiers, but without the micro-management tools that a railroad sim like Railroad Tycoon has, and the game pretty much just bumbles on till you win or lose.

custom taxes were the rule, and the only reason really to acquire a city would be for tax and for the elimination of a customs toll. i don't mind a simplicity of goods, i only mind that they're not traded in any realistic manner. i'd go with one good -- cows, say, and what's done with them. if the game were smart that'd allow a lot of variation -- meat, hide, chemical for tanning and salt for preserving...

and, some regions just don't have some things, and that's a trading opportunity, but one which really isn't part of this game either.