Want an easy way to play Civ V online? Say hello to Giant Multiplayer Robot!

[m4stermel]

Ever tried to do an email game of hotseat in Civilization V? Not the easiest thing to put together or maintain. It takes lots of repetitive work, and gets even more complicated if someone decides to stop taking their turns. And standard multiplayer? Sure, it’s fun, but simultaneous turns makes it a different game, and it’s a hassle to have everyone online at once.

Well, we didn’t think this was cool, so we made a new service called Giant Multiplayer Robot. It’s a simple (and free!) way to play hotseat games over the internet, either with people you know or with complete strangers.

Here’s what we’ve got cooked up right now, with more features coming in the future:

• Play hotseat games over the internet without exchanging emails or keeping track of whose turn is next
• Login through Steam – no need for yet another online account
• Browse public games to play with strangers or invite your friends to private games
• Lock your turns from being messed with by setting an in-game password on our website. Want to change the password later? Your new password will instantly apply in every game you’re in
• Desktop app that manages downloading and uploading your save files automatically (it’s also the only way to use the service for now, but we hope to make website-only an option later on)
• A player can leave a game at any time. In your game, they’ll be turned into an AI player (in the future, you’ll be able to votekick players too, if someone’s really trying to ruin your game)
• Notifications for when it’s your turn via our website, email, and/or the desktop app
• Play in up to 10 games at once for free (our server can only handle so much – but if you help us out with our costs, we’ll let you play in as many games as you want!)

Anyway, if you want to give it a shot or find out more, we’re going beta right now! Just head to multiplayerrobot.com. If you run into any problems or have questions, feel free to contact us.

[DWishR]

Holy crap! You guys are amazing! Thanks for putting in all the effort to get this set up.

I'm going to mention pitboss here since this is a viable alternative until they finally patch it into the game. And I've been searching civ 5 pitboss for days and found nothing as useful as this.

THANK YOU!

[m4stermel]

Thanks DWishR, you're absolutely welcome! GMR definitely makes Civ V multiplayer simpler right now but it's no replacement for pitboss. Hopefully Firaxis and 2K will see the this as a sign of the enourmous interest there is and implement something we can all use!

[Mysterio]

When creating a game, I'm finding that inputting someone's Steam account name into the search field doesn't return anything. I've tried it several times in Chrome, Firefox, and IE with several different Steam users. Is this a known bug?

EDIT: Never mind!

[cnahr]

GMR works really amazingly well. Great job, I hope lots more people become aware of it!

[m4stermel]

Excellent, I'm glad it's working so well for you guys! I know we're having a blast using it

[m4stermel]

Hey everyone just a heads up that GMR will be offline for about 1 hour tomorrow night (June 6, 2012) starting at 9:00pm MDT (8pm PDT, 11pm EDT, 3am GMT). We're switching hosting providers again as our current one has been pretty crappy. We expect no data loss during the process, however the website and the desktop app will be unavailable during this time.

We hope that this doesn't seriously interfere with anyone's Civ needs. Thank you all for your continued support and patience as we make GMR into an excellent service for CiV players everywhere!

[m4stermel]

Hey guys, as 2K_Greg said existing save files might not load or work correctly after the patch as units and civs get shuffled around. I assume this means that they're changing the internal Unique IDs of those items. If this is indeed the case I assume Civ V will fail to load existing GMR save games just like any others.

I'll be looking into as soon as the patch goes live. There's a chance we can have GMR auto-update the civ IDs inside of the save file to the new ones expected by the patch. I doubt we'll be able to fix any problems with the units though.

<rant>
This is honestly pretty sad behavior on 2K's part! Firstly as a software developer myself I highly doubt that it wouldn't have been possible for them to keep the civs and units consistent while adding additional content. Secondly, if they are planning on releasing a patch with such major implications on players' existing games they should give considerably more notice than one day!

Unfortunately it tends to be the case with software companies (and software developers in general), that they follow the path of least resistance. I know I'm not perfect either, but I always strive to provide the most transparent and quality user experience possible in all the work that I do. I would expect the same thing from a large company like 2K/Firaxis.
</rant>

Anyway, if any of you didn't see 2K Greg's post you can find it here: http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread...t-saved-games!

[m4stermel]

In preparation for the release of Gods & Kings next week we've made some changes to GMR! Here's a list of what's been updated, let us know what you think!

• Games are now either Civilization V or Civilization V: Gods & Kings. An icon to the left of the game's name indicates which.
• DLC civs can be enabled/disabled for a game. If DLC is enabled the text "(DLC)" will appear in white to the right of the game's name. The game's host can toggle whether it's enabled before the game starts.
• If a game does not have DLC enabled you will not be able to select DLC civs when joining that game or changing your civ for it.
• When joining a game or changing your civilization the list of available civs will be filtered to only include those civs for the version of game it is (Vanilla or G&K). G&K civs aren't in our database yet, but will be shortly after it's released.
• The 'Join Game' and 'Change Civilization' screens have been updated to show the current game roster.
• The "Start a new game" box has been updated to allow you to select Vanilla or G&K, and whether DLC is allowed.