A (short) case for Un-animated Unit Battles

[MrBright01]

I have been scanning this section of the forums and while agree with much of it, I have to wonder how important the combat animations are to the multiplayer experience.

At first, yes, I found it jarring for my unit to suddenly be dead or injured, with no visual feedback aside from red and green numbers and a shiny light where my swordsmen once stood. But now I actually enjoy it, because it forces me to deal with the conditions I have right here and now, without waiting for a pile of attack animations to complete. It ads a nice sort of tactical clarity for me (Here is what you have, deal with it.) It also lets me finish my turn of battles fast enough that my hippie wife is just finishing her empire micromanaging as I complete my turn.

Another thought is, what would animated battles do to lower end computers? That is a question, because I have no relevant information, but I imagine more then a couple of battles going at once could cause severe chugging.

If they could get the animations to run quickly and all at once for everyone, awesome, and it'll be a nice cosmetic boost to my MP games. Or even an option to turn it off or on as preferred. But really, I would rather they spent that effort elsewhere for now (I REALLY wish I could save Multiplayer Games on demand, but that's a different thread).

[CoreDave]

First off I don't think anyone is saying that animations should be forced on everyone in multiplayer. Everyone is in fact asking for an option (host controlled), which pretty much addresses all your points against.

Secondly you may have gotten used to it and even prefer it but the majority seem to want them pretty badly (myself included). So I would say this is a top priority for that reason. It is also quite shameful that it isn't ingame already given how basic a feature it is.

Thirdly you can already save on demand in multiplayer (not that you need to as the autosave occurs every turn). Hit ctrl s to bring up the save window. The only fiddly bit is renaming the save file and copying it into your multiplayer autosave folder, but like I said its not required due to the game autosaving every turn. All that said given that it already works it is probably a very easy fix to make the save feature work without messing around so I doubt very much adding it will detract from efforts to get the multiplayer animations working.

[Azoulix]

Animation is NOT that important. with a bit of info when battle occure it will be fine.
BUT one thing is anoying, is the fact that ship do not show wich way they are moving. It is confusing when so have some of them a bit every when.
It would help a lot to remember where that ship was going if it was pointing in that direction.

[MrBright01]

First off I don't think anyone is saying that animations should be forced on everyone in multiplayer. Everyone is in fact asking for an option (host controlled), which pretty much addresses all your points against.

At no point do I suggest anyone is saying that animations should be forced on everyone in multiplayer.

... which pretty much addresses all your points against.

Let me reiterate: Is this the priority? I just read that giant list-o-"bugs" they got going, and while some of them (read: the vast majority) consist of "I do not like this, change it," they did point out some valid bug issues.

Oh, and a valid multiplayer save function would not require any out-of-game editing. However, I did just notice today the fact that yes, it autosaves every turn (I had thought it was every 10 turns like I have set on single player, but I hit the 1900's for once and saw the truth,) so yes, that opinion is retracted.

Oh, and forum posters =/= majority of game players. Ever. So you can hardly speak as if every Civ gamer but me is clamoring for multiplayer animations. You assume it's an easy fix to activate that option, but what if they tested it, and having all that running crashes the host half the time? What if it killed lower end computer gamers? We don't know why they do not have MP animations, and to assume it's only because they are too lazy to do a simple program change is a disservice.

Now, if they release the feature in a DLC or expac, THEN we'll talk.