Early Exclusive: Civilization VI to release February 9th for Linux with a discount, NVIDIA only for now

Uhh, what's up with that non-fully-crossplatform multiplayer? I understand if there are issues with deterministic RTS engines, math could be slightly different on each platform and in the end the butterfly effect causes heavy desyncs. But in a turn-based strategy?.. Weird. The Steam page doesn't have a "Crossplatfom multiplayer" badge, however, in the system requirements there's a footnote "Additional Notes: NOTICE: It is possible for Mac and PC to become out of sync during updates or patches. Within this short time period, Mac users will only be able to play other Mac users." So, the Mac users can play with the Windows users and Linux users can play only with Mac users. What would happen then if a Mac user hosts a game and then both Linux and Windows users connect? Something's wrong here.

Thanks for the update, Liam. I have an AMD RX 480 but I am thinking about getting Civ VI despite the lack of official support. Does Aspyre give any indication about the state of the game on AMD?

Quoting: rkfgUhh, what's up with that non-fully-crossplatform multiplayer?

As noted, I will have more information on that in the interview that will be ready after the release.

Quoting: KohriasThanks for the update, Liam. I have an AMD RX 480 but I am thinking about getting Civ VI despite the lack of official support. Does Aspyre give any indication about the state of the game on AMD?

Will have info on that at release.


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 6 February 2017 at 2:15 pm UTC

Quoting: GuestAlthough I do find the reviews still very mixed.

It's the recent ones which are mixed, overall reviews are fine. After DXMD I started to actually read the negative reviews, because it turns out often people rage over quite silly subjects like DLCs or preorders. The game itself could be fine.

Quoting: rkfgUhh, what's up with that non-fully-crossplatform multiplayer? I understand if there are issues with deterministic RTS engines, math could be slightly different on each platform and in the end the butterfly effect causes heavy desyncs. But in a turn-based strategy?.. Weird.

Pretty sure Civ 6 multiplayer games have an odd simultaneous turn system where everybody makes their moves at the same time during any given turn, and the game only progresses to the next round once everybody has clicked the "End Turn" button.

Quoting: rkfgUhh, what's up with that non-fully-crossplatform multiplayer? I understand if there are issues with deterministic RTS engines, math could be slightly different on each platform and in the end the butterfly effect causes heavy desyncs. But in a turn-based strategy?.. Weird.

Yeah, it's definitely weird nowadays. I know that the Loki port of SMAC couldn't do cross-platform multiplayer because the protocol that was used on the Windows version literally sent in-memory objects over the wire to the far end (or something along those lines, anyway), which of course would require basically the exact same code on both ends. I can't imagine anything like that happening nowadays, though.

QuoteThe Steam page doesn't have a "Crossplatfom multiplayer" badge, however, in the system requirements there's a footnote "Additional Notes: NOTICE: It is possible for Mac and PC to become out of sync during updates or patches. Within this short time period, Mac users will only be able to play other Mac users." So, the Mac users can play with the Windows users and Linux users can play only with Mac users. What would happen then if a Mac user hosts a game and then both Linux and Windows users connect? Something's wrong here.

Well, generally with that kind of thing, the systems will just refuse to talk to each other if the versions don't match. That, at least, makes sense - you'd want to have the same game version number for everyone playing the game, otherwise you could have all sorts of weird unintended and unpredictable behavior. There've been many other multiplayer games which have that kind of restriction as well.

Quoting: apocalyptechI can't imagine anything like that happening nowadays, though.

Huh, Java does that in some enterprise frameworks. I remember there was a vulnerability recently that allowed a client to send an arbitrary serialized object (with the actual code, IIRC) to a server and pwn it. I hope games don't do it.

Quoting: apocalyptechWell, generally with that kind of thing, the systems will just refuse to talk to each other if the versions don't match.

True, but if Mac⇔Windows work and Mac⇔Linux work as well, they should all have the same version number. I hope it'll get resolved soon anyway, I believe in Aspyr.

Quoting: GuestAwesome news :) about time! :D

Although I do find the reviews still very mixed.
Just have to see for myself anyway.

I think that if you are a fan of the Civ series you almost have to get it just to try the new flavor. It is definitely unique enough in the strategic building/planning sense (for a Civ game) to give you a reason to start a new game.

In some ways it seems like a bit of overkill (torturing yourself to squeeze the modifier lemon dry), or it may be that I just have a hard time going with the flow knowing choices have a bit more consequence when it comes to research and building. I don't love the game the way that I loved its predecessor when I started playing it, but agreeing with another poster, warts and all it still seems hard to justify a truly negative review about gameplay. Unless you hate surprise war. :)

If it's not compatible with Windows for multi-player then I won't buy this game.

I'll just continue to play Civ 5 with friends.


Last edited by Aryvandaar on 6 February 2017 at 2:58 pm UTC

Aspyr have now tweeted to confirm :) https://twitter.com/AspyrMedia/status/828619257189634048

Quoting: rkfg... I understand if there are issues with deterministic RTS engines, math could be slightly different on each platform and in the end the butterfly effect causes heavy desyncs. But in a turn-based strategy?.. Weird. ...

It is the same problem, it just (usually) has to do with the randomizer instead of the trigonometry. Wine has also struggled with getting this right in the past. As an example, rand() from MSVC is particularly crappy while the glibc version has a lot more randomness. Wine gets around this by implementing the crappy MSVC algorithm when an app tries to use MSVC's rand(), but this is not the only way to get random numbers. So, unless you capture all the ways that an application does its math differently on different platforms then you're going to have a problem.

No AMD-Support ... that makes me sad ... :(

QuoteRequired specifications
[...]
CPU Speed: 2.93 GHz

I like the precision of that requirement. ;)

Quoting: compholioIt is the same problem, it just (usually) has to do with the randomizer instead of the trigonometry.

Wow, I've never heard of that. I presumed, in TBS the host has authority so it does all the random stuff and then just sends the numbers back to the clients. Deterministic engines are made to fight excessive bandwidth and accompanying lags if you have hundreds of units that are constantly moving. Not the case for TBS I guess... Still, an interesting reason for incompatibility.

Quoting: rkfgUhh, what's up with that non-fully-crossplatform multiplayer? I understand if there are issues with deterministic RTS engines, math could be slightly different on each platform and in the end the butterfly effect causes heavy desyncs. But in a turn-based strategy?.. Weird. The Steam page doesn't have a "Crossplatfom multiplayer" badge, however, in the system requirements there's a footnote "Additional Notes: NOTICE: It is possible for Mac and PC to become out of sync during updates or patches. Within this short time period, Mac users will only be able to play other Mac users." So, the Mac users can play with the Windows users and Linux users can play only with Mac users. What would happen then if a Mac user hosts a game and then both Linux and Windows users connect? Something's wrong here.

Apologies, our wording for the Blog post makes it sound like it will only be compatible with Mac. We fully intend to have cross-platform multiplayer between all platforms, but that didnt make it for launch.

Quoting: rkfg

Quoting: GuestAlthough I do find the reviews still very mixed.

It's the recent ones which are mixed, overall reviews are fine. After DXMD I started to actually read the negative reviews, because it turns out often people rage over quite silly subjects like DLCs or preorders. The game itself could be fine.

This seems to be a total disease of most reviewing systems as of late: People abusing reviews to make a political statement against a studio, instead of judging the GAME. As much as we might hate some DRM systems or DLC practices, but criticism aimed at that has nothing to do with the quality of the game. By all means, people can mention it in the text, but they really should stay away from downgrading a game's score because of it. It's unfair to people who want to get an impression about a game's quality.

I hear the AI sucks. I guess I will find out. It always bothered me that the higher difficulty levels in Civ V gave bonuses because it just meant that I couldn't win earlier.

Quoting: BreezeI hear the AI sucks. I guess I will find out. It always bothered me that the higher difficulty levels in Civ V gave bonuses because it just meant that I couldn't win earlier.

Yeah, the devs said they'd make the AI less stupid, but from what I've heard, it's anything but. The diplomacy engine still seems to make the same completely dumb "We have been friends for 1000 years? No, we're at WAR now!!!" decisions it made back in Civ I.

I hope that the game works well with AMD Phenom II processor.

Quoting: rkfg...
Wow, I've never heard of that. I presumed, in TBS the host has authority so it does all the random stuff and then just sends the numbers back to the clients. Deterministic engines are made to fight excessive bandwidth and accompanying lags if you have hundreds of units that are constantly moving. Not the case for TBS I guess... Still, an interesting reason for incompatibility.

The standard rand() implementation on any system is not actually random, it is very predictable. This is used to great advantage in many games, since by properly seeding the randomizer you can get consistent behavior without transmitting the full state between systems.

So, lets say you have a treasure chest and you want to make sure it always has the same contents no matter who opens it and without transmitting the contents to everyone. All you have to do is seed the randomizer with an ID for the treasure chest, if you do that then you just need to use the output of the randomizer to determine the contents. This means you don't have to transmit "plate mail (with all associated properties), sword (same deal), amulet (having fun yet?)", you just send "seed X" and all clients will run through the same randomization algorithm (calling srand() and then rand() an appropriate number of times).

If, however, your randomizer works differently on different platforms then you run into trouble. The problem you run into is that periodically you want to verify that a client didn't cheat, so every once in a while you send a hash of your state data - if any client mismatches then somebody cheated (or there's a platform difference). In my experience with Wine and RTS games this actually has to do with bugs in MSVC's trigonometry* instead of random number generation, but there are plenty of ways to get a state mismatch.

* This is frequently an interaction between MSVC's calculation technique and a processor bug.


Last edited by compholio on 6 February 2017 at 7:19 pm UTC