This made me smile. Thanks OP. Personally, I'd hate playing this game on multiplayer. I'd be constantly yelled at for watching TV and not noticing it's my turn.

I find this incredibly amusing. You know nothing about programing, and therefore have no idea how easy or hard this would actually be, then assume that it much be very simple, for no apparent reason, and ask someone else to prove what you've assumed to be true.

I'm no real programmer either, although I have dabbled with some minor coding, but I can tell you that it seems to me that a LOT of MAJOR changes would have to be built into the engine to support this. I don't really know, because I don't know enough specifics about how the engine was built, but I doubt it to be any simple task.

Plus the fact that you can actually do stuff while the AI moves, the diplomacy would have to be recoded completely, ship designs, logos, consistency check on data files, AI interaction with multiple human opponents, the whining of the 'imba' MP crowd who can't deal with a game that has actual differences between races, host/client communication, the host component itself, cheatproofing, ...

As an actual software developer, I find the assumption that MP is something that could be modded in, or would be easy to include simply hilarious.

Sorry, I have this thing about lying. As a programmer, I know the technical arguments, and they all work against what you say. That is, the people with the knowledge of how networked games work all know that it is in no way "very simple."

Your entire argument is grounded in ignorance.

I would love to see a multiplayer environment, just for playing with friends, but it would be a TON of work.

* You would need a dedicated server application or let them host a game from the client.

* You would have to add in:
Chat, Some kind of new viable trading, Server Side checking to prevent cheating (ideally), Concurrent moves (I think the AI moves AFTER you do, I'm not sure), Save/Load support on the server and letting the client join, transmitting the maps to the clients, transmitting AI moves to the clients, sharing ship designs, so on and so forth ....

Brad has also mentioned the UI changes and class balancing that would be an issue.

Absolutely - they went through a living Hell providing it on first release, causing a near Rebellion in the Fan Base. They had issues in the practical areas of the needs of team/game coordinators, hand off's to AI when a player dumped out, and a Huge Network layer/IP/multi firewall issue they had underestimated as it was their first multi-player. Throw in an underestimated server capacity to run it, and I would not like to have been a tech/dev in the middle of that lot sorting it out. 11 out of 10 to them though, sort it they did, but it took months to settle properly.

It was that saga that first threw me into GalCiv - had never even considered it before then, *bows five times to Stardock Central in humble penance *

Now GalCiv is my main game - they say good things often come out of nightmares if you look hard enough. Still enjoy playing CivIV single player, great game, but that's normally only when I want a break from Torian prolls swarming all over my space - geez those guys breed like flys

Regards
Zy

Dang. That'll teach him to ask a question  

From what I've gathered on other threads about this topic, especially "The Case for no Multiplayer" posted by Frogboy, it will never happen. It would basically take an entire new game for MP, one that is totally seperate from the current one which has good AIs. In order to make a MP game, the AI becomes inadequate.

Don't get down on yourself Slurple. A lot of people, myself included have no idea whta it takes to implement something like multiplayer into a game. With a lot of todays games having SDKs and all sorts of modding tools it can lead one to believe that modders can do just about anything with a game nowadays. GC2 is not one though that allows modders to have access to the source code, so anything that ambitious is just not possible and I think even if it were, it would be beyond the capabilities of all but the best of the best.

Never underestimate the modding community. MP mods have been made for games that were never intended for MP. GTA for example. Someone even managed to make a multiplayer mod for Oblivion. However it was barely functional, and the creator stopped working on it. Nevertheless, it did allow players to connect and interact with each other.

Why not give us the tools and let us try? Unless of course this would require the source code.

I remember playing PTO II (SNES TBS game) with my little brother, where we'd have two systems set up, with two different games running. I'd do my turn on one system while he did his on the other, then switch. God that got confusing after a while!

I haven't slept for several days, and I think its because Brad will not acknowledge this thread.

There's no point in Brad's answering this thread. He's already done so in multiple other places. It's not possible to "give us the tools." He'd have to give us the source code and someone would have to re-write most of the game. There are so many reasons that either one won't happen that it's near ridiculous.

If it's been done for other games, it's simply because the engine of the other games made it possible. This game has no such capability.

Give up on making GalCiv2 multiplayable and work on pursuading them to put that feature into GalCiv3.