Matrix Games Forums

I'm reading here that the PBEM game uses instant combat option; it certainly allows for completing a multiplayer game within reasonable amount of time, but I feel the lack of detailed combat reduces considerably the flavor of play. Information on the game site has it that there is no TCP/IP play option, but in one of the posts here the possibility of network game is mentioned, it was also included in the Forge of Freedom. So, eventually, is there a possibility to play game with one human oponent over Internet?

add my name to the list of players who would like this feature as well. cant see how it would work though, unless u just played with 2 players.

PBEM doesn't have detailed combat because it would take an insane amount of time to get through the game if players had to e-mail back and forth a few dozen turns in a battle on top of all the month-by-month strategic turns. So this was not included in the game. (You can definitely impact the results of battles, though, since special abilities and upgrades are included in the calculations. So just because you're playing a PBEM game doesn't mean that you should ignore these.)

As for TCP/IP, here's the deal: the COG/FOF engine was built several years ago using a Microsoft library that turns out to be buggy, and Microsoft abandoned it instead of perfecting it. The result is that a small number of our customers who wish to play TCP/IP -- we don't know how small, but my estimate would be in the 3-10% range, based on comments in the FOF forum -- are unable to, and there is nothing we can do about it short of spending weeks and weeks completely rebuilding the engine around new code libraries. Since a poll we once took shows that only a small number of customers play TCP/IP games (I think it was around 5%) we decided that the best thing to do would be to leave the code in, but not officially support it. So when you fire up COG:EE you can choose to play a "Remote" game, and there is a pretty good chance you will have success. But since we cannot guarantee it, and don't want customers to be disappointed when they are among the minority who are unable to, networked play is not supported.

short of spending weeks and weeks completely rebuilding the engine around new code libraries.

For FOF I actually spent "weeks and weeks" looking into replacing the DirectPlay 4.0 libraries with, even say, DirectPlay 5.0.  The problem is that there is a big shift in programming architecture between 4.0 and 5.0.  I spent just three weeks reading up on the issues, looking at alternatives, and figuring out how much work it would take to rewrite the code!


If there is enough interest, we would love to do standalone detailed battle games that are PBEM compatible; we'd have to rework the turn structure to make detailed combat either IGOUGO or WEGO.

Thank you for the answers .