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View Full Version : How to impliment a 6 player multiplayer campaign in shogun2 that runs quickly



Swoosh So
11-27-2010, 07:02
All players take their turn at the same time but have a movement only phase where each player moves their armies in turn..... after all thats the only reason you need players to take turns seperate is the movement of armies/agents.

So say a 5 minute turn and 6 players, every player builds stuff and does whatever else except moving armies in that 5 minutes theres then a settable movement phase at the end of the turn like say 1 min each of the 6 players gets 1 minute to move their armies in turn so 5+6 minutes = 11 minutes per turn for a 6player campaign CANNOT grumble at that.... 5 turns per hour for a 6 player campaign. Thats just as fast as the 2 player campaign at the moment excluding the battles when a battle takes place it would pause the countdown in that players movement phase untill the battle is completed. But the battles are great fun and noone cares how long they take.

Each player in effect gets 6 minutes to take their turn within that 11 minute turn 5 minutes to build queue set taxes etc and 1 minute to move troops you could also extend the movement phase of each player to 1 min 30 and this would give 14 minute turns 4 per hour but also consider that some turns players will not take their full alloted time and may finish their movement phase early is some cases a player will not have to move troops at all that turn or they will simply move with a previous turns move queue when u move the unit over a distance that will take longer than 1 turn.

Also i expect shogun 2 to have reinforcement rules like mtw2 which would also speed the game up as all armies would be deployed at the battle start.

It would be upto CA to tailor the campaigns also to make them quicker, ie a lack of ai factions would be great (6 players anyway who needs ai?) In ntw the campaigns are just copy pasted from single player would be nice in shogun 2 if they were specifically tailored for MPC too.

Currently in NTW with 5 minute turns a campaign turn takes 10 minutes - 5 mins for each player, with the system i outline above (which gives the players an EXTRA minute in each turn) the shogun2 6 player campaign takes 11 minutes, 5 player - 10 minutes 4 player - 9 minutes 3 player - 8 minutes 2 player - 7 minutes.

Now i play 3 minute turns in the NTW campaign and can keep things moving well in the system above for shogun 2 that would be 9 minutes per turn for 6 players (6 turns per hour) 7 minutes for 4 players (8 turns per hour) and 5 minutes for 2 players (12 turns per hour) per turn.

I would expect with the system outlined here that some 6 player campaigns may even be finished in a single night if all parties have around 3-4 hours to play, often mp campaigns will be decided with one player or side conceding defeat its not like you have to wipe the whole map there comes a point where its not possible to make a comeback this can be very early in the campaign due to player mistakes or later in the campaign if the campaign has been hard fought.

What do u guys think? and can u also think of ideas to improve this sytem or have ideas of your own?

So to summarise:

Player Campaign

Each turn has 2 phases

Phase 1 : All players have 5 minutes (or whatever the host sets) to build and recruit and do all activities besides moving armies/agents.
Phase 2 : All players take 1 minute (or whatever the host sets) to move their armies/agents. like turns are currently done player 1 takes 1 minute then player 2 starts then 3 then 4 etc

Total turn time: 11 minutes

Turns per hour : 5

pevergreen
11-27-2010, 15:32
I think in theory, yes, but you're missing a point.

All the TW games have been done on a turn based system.

I can't see it working without the two phases you've seperated being in one. Maybe if it was all turn based, but happened at the same time. Armies would pause for battle when met or something.

Do we even know if they are planning for more than 1v1 MPC?

Swoosh So
11-27-2010, 17:06
Its not that big a change already players can build during an opponents turn, the movement phase would work just like normal turns just theres this phase before it where all players build/construct. The phases are basically just one turn but theres 2 parts. btw maybe a bad word for them "phase".

Swoosh So
11-27-2010, 17:11
also if ca just did the turns the normal way say 5 mins per player were looking at 30 mins per turn, i think thats great but i can imagine some people wont but tbh its a mp campaign 30 mins for a turn isent so bad also players often finish turns early as they ahve don e all they can. Also experienced campaigners should be able to set turn lmits at 3 mins so 18 mins per turn which is really nice and thats with nothing added just the way CA have it in NTW at the moment.

pevergreen
11-27-2010, 17:25
I agree there needs to be a way to cut down, but it has to function inside the parameters given.

The engine may not be capable of handling what you suggest.

What I am really hoping for is simple persistant campaigns. You start one with, say: Yourself, friend #1 and friend #2. If its under the system of: player 1 takes turn, player 2 turn, player 3 turn, then what I want is to be able to play my turn, and because its fully integrated with steam, when my friend #1 comes on, he can just play his turn, then friend #2. That gives the option of playing straight away live, or if timezones/time doesnt fit, play turns when you get to them. When a battle comes, either auto-resolve or wait until the applicable people are there.

The main problem with multi-person campaigns is the waiting time if you dont auto-resolve a battle. For anyone not involved, its just dead time. And to see (watch the battle) is an advantage, as you may not know what units/tech the other players have.

Swoosh So
11-27-2010, 17:34
The engine can handle it as it already does it to an extent you can build and queue stuff while your opponent moves, i wouldent worry about people not active in the battles speccing them thats too nitpicky and keeps all involved so they dont get bored. Id be quite happy with the current campaign system just with more players as i dont really worry about the time as some people do. People who play the campaigns should expect them to last a while and i dont see a problem with it just throwing some other ideas around incase CA worry about the times also. Like i say campaigns are usually not fought out to the last province it comes to a stage where a player concedes defeat or some objective is met so they really can be quite short affairs.

Magyar Khan
11-28-2010, 15:21
in the excellent boardgame samurai swords players can use koku to "buy" initiative....

Magyar Khan
11-28-2010, 15:23
and a 1 vs 1 campaign where u can play clan vs clan and assign battles to players of teh clan to be battled would be nice too... and much easier... just make sure that every battle in the campaigngame can be outputed and be played by a different set of players.... in this campaigngenerals can be played by clan-members....

Nikodil
11-28-2010, 22:19
TBH I haven't spent much time with campaigns since STW, but IMHO some critical features would be:

offline persistence - given that it's turn based and can take a long time to play (especially if intertwined with battles) it's hard to require all players to stay online all the time. Some kind of steam-based persistence would be nice.

team based - to be able to move smoothly forward it's hard to depend on the devotion of single players. clans vs clans (or ad-hoc teams) would be much better (and more fun too).

non-haltable - a team going afk for a longer period should not halt the game, auto-resoving or ai could be used to make sure that it moves forward.

As I said I haven't played much campaing, but without these features wouldn't MPC be too demanding (in terms of devotion) for the "average" player?

Magyar Khan
11-29-2010, 01:54
Time wouldnt be a problem for tailormade mp campaign where we can play clanbased one turn a day or so.... and where the generated battles can be played by anyone assigned by the particpated clan..... make a battle "outputable" and its outcome "inputable"

Swoosh So
11-29-2010, 07:56
I wouldent actually mind a 6-8 player campaign with the current MP campaign setup i dont think it really matters how long it takes as long as the campaigns are implimented well and fun.

ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88
11-29-2010, 22:57
MP campaigns do take a long time Swoosh. How would you do a 6 or 8 person game?

Tempiic
11-30-2010, 00:51
Dunno, all this sounds like lots of time taken away from the mp team that is supposedly to code a better mp experience (I think) :)

Its only like 3 months...

Swoosh So
11-30-2010, 18:20
MP campaigns do not take a long time warmann... i can have a campaign finished in the time it takes me to host 4 decent online battles considering all the drops rule explaining and other s(*&te that goes on with arranging battles. When did you play a mp campaign? you said you had not.. if it took along time then you were playing passive both of you.

ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88
12-01-2010, 17:21
A few months ago. It took a hour to do 3 turns. I can get a good 1v1 done in the time I waste with MPC.

Swoosh So
12-01-2010, 23:37
3 turns in an hour? what were u doing? Pro tip set turn limit to 3-5 minutes.

ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88
12-02-2010, 00:35
Then lets play and you can prove to me how fast they can go. :laugh4:



Meh, to much work. Regular MP games are better anyhow. :book: