I just completed my first multi-player game. A friend and I played in cooperative mode in a small disk universe with two opponents on normal. We are both casual players.



The game performed admirably; there were no errors of any kind. It worked out that he got into a lot of fighting early while I was able to work on developing my empire. I took the lead in FIDS and research, and I was last in military. He took the lead in military and overall power. As he was able to expand his empire at the expense of one of our enemies, he eventually surpassed me in FIDS. In the end I maintained my lead in research and had the most powerful military.



It would have been interesting if we went to war with each other at the end since we both had different advantages. However, it's just not in our nature to turn on each other.



The game was played without the expansion.

My friend and I have played two more games since our first.



The game froze once in game 2 and several times in game 3.



However, I think I might have been causing this issue myself. After I hit end turn, the computer would move its fleets, and I sometimes would have time to attack its fleet. This would allow me to attack again with my fleet in the coming turn. In hindsight, this might have (probably?) caused the freezes when my friend and I ended our next turn.

Game 4 was a success with no freezes. Of course, I didn't attack any computer fleets once I hit end turn. However, I did continue to do other things. Does anyone know if there is a correlation between attacking enemy fleets after hitting end turn and freezes?

It's probably the de-sync issue. Used to be so bad that MP was un-playable. De-sync, in case you don't know, is kind of like MP lag in FPS games, not really the same cause but a similar effect. Except De-sync doesn't clear up on its own and you usually have to save and re-host to fix it.





Maybe the devs should ask (.../pay lol) one of the Warzone 2100 devs who developed a method for perfect sync in MP games. (No im not advertising the other game )

My friend and I continue to enjoy ES multiplayer. My friend didn't like disharmony when we tried it, so we have been staying with vanilla.



We average probably one crash per game, and we can easily recover with the most recent autosave. I no longer attack enemy fleets after I end my turn, so I think that helps with stability.

I must say my recent foray into MP has also been mostly successful!



Biggest obstacle so far is people with varying setting preferences. One game ended up with 180 second turn timer on a HUGE map with FAST game speed...I was in a huge lead but I made peace and politely left because I could not take my turns as I wanted them because I kept running out of time.