Multiplayer - Hot Seat, Internet, LAN?

[Lanarius]

Hello there,

I got a few questions regarding your plans on the multiplayer, since it basicly will be a key feature:

How will it work?

I know from other threads, that you have decided on a realtime system for campaign etc. so there won't be a Hot Seat mode (would also take way to long to get something done)
Because of that i guess we have to have some other connection, but I don't know how sophisticated you are at using netcode.
LAN seems to be the easiest way, but allowing the player to create dedicated servers or playing online in general is, at least in my mind, something totally different to set up.

Maybe in the future even playing over Steam and those servers? (given THEY work)

I know this won't be implemented for a long time, but how far do you think it will go?

I just hope we don't have to send around savegames per email to play a campaign with our friends, like you needed to do in older Total War games. As long as the system will not die and get out of sync as soon as the game starts (referring to The Guild 2) I'll be a very happy camper.

yours

Lanarius

[Daffyflyer]

Just the typical sort of real-time, player hosted LAN/Internet multiplayer, we've even had a test version of the lobby server working since over a year ago now.

We should be able to get it to load saved games for all players with no issues, so no emailing saved games! (Did you really have to do that with Total War?! )

[Juno8]

what so we can play against you then? sweet!

[Lanarius]

Alright, thank you very much for that information. Good to know that it will work at some point.
It would be awesome if you manage to make that work with all the data that have to be exchanged or maybe just have some boiled down stuff. You'll get that right, I'm pretty sure in that.
Also it will be so much less awkward if you can just save, walk away and then come back later for some more

PS: yes, I think in Medieval 2: Total War or so (i guess all the ones before Napoleon, but not sure) there was no way to play on the campaign map (only set Battles) against/with each other. You would both choose faction and one would make a turn and then send the savegame to ones friend, so he could continue on that. I never got around to try that and there is some more stuff to be done before it works >.<

[Daffyflyer]

Yeah, it'll be a proper network multiplayer implementation with save game support, don't worry about that