Dude, Internet play doesn't work for games with more than one. and even then they usually drop out. If you ever ping over 150 ms, you might as well hot seat it, lan or email.

In LAN play there is serious lag still. It appears the game replicates itself amongst all the peers. It does not appear to be a client/server architecture. Hence, every machine is bogged down constantly recieving and processing information. Warning message dialogs from the game inhibit your play, and must be turned off.

The "turnless" mode of play is a joke. Their play testers should be shot for allowing the crap that goes on in it, like your selected unit changing because your turn rolls, and you not being able to set the game clock time beyond three stupidly abstract settings, slow, normal, and fast.

Try a "fast" clock turnless game on a Lan. The machine is so busy starting the next turn, you are never able to play.

Regicide is stupid, because when you conquer the last king, you don't win. Instead, you have to "retire" to end the game. Who the Hell let that get by?

The multiplayer game interface looks like it was written over 10 years ago. The developers learned nothing from all the multiplayer products out there. There are no version numbers for hosts or clients wishing to join. You are sucked into a chat room with 5 scroling chat lines, and the entire WORLD is in the room too. You cannot ignore players. You cannat list to see who's on...one chat spammer will render the chat line useless.

Also, I cannot enter the IP of the host machine to join a game. You HAVE to go throught the ridiculous chat to make it work.

How many days would it take to play Civ3 via hotseat?

All in all a PISS POOR PRODUCT from a Grade A software company.

Why wasn't this information in the preview? Because it says "Powered by Gamespy" in the chatroom. 'Nuff said.

"I have no idea what they are smoking at Firaxis, but they did not test their software"

I've always found the best multiplayer mode is hot seat anyways. I'm going to give internet play a run once some of my friends have time to pick up the exp pack.

I have no idea what they are smoking at Firaxis, but they did not test their software.

EDIT: mis-speeled words

This comment was edited on Oct 31, 01:19.

I guess blues human after all...

hmmmm multiplayer Civ3... Picked this up today, there goes even more of my free time. I like the idea of e-mail games, but I wish there was a way to send it without quitting the game. Like you chould play for an hour just e-mailing back and forth, and then stop. Not having to load the game every time would be a lot better.

That's it, you're fired. I will not allow you to work your ass off and give us free information updated regularly if one time out of a thousand you screw the patch version up. Now I want you to spend sometime thinking about what you've done.

(Yeah I'm really that bored right now. It did entertain me for awhile so I feel better. :D)

{And because I've seen some strange things taken as real online I'm going to stress for the humor-impared that this is a joke. Thank you.}

Doh! Thanks

Hey Blue, it looks like the PTW patch is actually stamped as 1.04f, not 1.29f.

www.o2tent.com

1.29f is the current version of the origional game. I wonder what's going on over there...

www.o2tent.com