I wonder how long a 9-man Gigantic multiplayer match would take.

*sniffs* Hey, who exhumed the dead horse?

The sad fact of the matter is that this game is perfect, with the except that it is not multiplayer.

No, that's an opinion.
Let me show you what a fact looks like.

FACT: The game wouldn't have been "perfect" if Stardock would have spent a third of their resources on multiplayer.

FACT: The game wouldn't have been "perfect" if Stardock would have spent a third of their resources on multiplayer.

Hit the nail on the head.

Just to clarify there are ways of measuring how many actually play LAN games. Polls, market research, etc (which like everything has a margin of error)

If there was a huge majority that played turn based strategy games over LAN or the internet then resources wouldve been devoted to this. However then we wouldnt be seeing posts like this, for two reasons. 1) Multiplayer would be an included feature, rendering this post obsolete. 2) Some that made posts like this wouldnt be playing the game in the first place because by adding multiplayer other features would have suffered, creating a different sub standard singleplayer and multiplayer (if there was one) experience.

Developers dont have infinite resources, just like the spending sliders in Gal Civ, you cant push them all to 100%. (the sliders in this case being resources spent on singleplayer and multiplayer).

Still my question stands, what is the point of the post?

there is no way to justify the statement that not many people would not play this game in a multiplayer mode

A case of one opening their mouth without knowing jack. But to enlighten YET AGAIN, it was stated that there is possiblity of a Multiplayer Expension depending if the preorders for the expension sell well. That will show you if there is an interest in "multiplayer mode." And if those preorders only sell at a rate of 10% compared to the retail,w ill that cause you to be satisfied as to why there was no multiplayer? I woudl think atleast 50% of the retail players woudl have to preorder multiplayer expension for it to be even taken seriously. Stardock is a tiny software developer. They didnt have resources to add multiplayer jsut so they could say their game has it. Nor did they have the people to work on it ad still meet the game release date. And the games they make don't support them wholeheartedly, probably most of their cash coems from the desktop software they develop.

People are stupid. If one race/ship design/tech is overpowered. Then build that tech.
It's a no brainier if both sides are using the same overpowered strategy then logically they cancel out. Sure it would be nice if mass drivers/lasers/missiles all had the same level of usefulness. But not being balanced doesn't mean you can't put out a multiplayer version.
Maybe there would be more people complaining about missiles vs. beam weapons but we can just call them stupid and move on
Besides with multiplayer there would be less people complaining about the AI being stupid


P.S.
MMORPGs are different, they have be balance because you obviously can't switch from priest to warrior at the drop of a hat if you discover that one is better then the other.

Its ever so easy to say in retrospect "Oh all they have to do is such and such" when your not the one going to actually doing it.

There are so many other multiplayer games out there, the market is saturated with them, singleplayer games have taken a huge hit with the rise of broadband. Shifting deman and developer focus into this expanding market. Hate to say this but im sure that those that actually want multiplayer or something to play over LAN can find one of the 100's of games that have been released over the past few years that not only support it with a vengeance but are orientated and focused on it.

If you want a singleplayer experince but Gal Civ II, if you want a multiplayer experience buy a different game. Its been made abundantly clear that this is a singleplayer game from every possible angle. To reference another game, its like being outraged over The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion being a singleplayer game and not an MMO. Some types of games or particular games are best suited to being singleplayer.

Perhaps not, but balacing everything so that you don't have people screaming OMG, WTF unbalanced, NERF IT!!!! would take a third, hell maybe a lot more. What you don't realize is that while things play well in the single player game, it will almost never go well in multiplayer.

Another nail hit on the head. I remember how much of the conversation in the Warcraft forums was about balance issues, largely driven by multiplayer concerns. Most of that didn't mean squat to someone like me, who only played it as a singleplayer game. So it's not just as simple as adding a subroutine that sends data over the network.

A single player game can afford to have different balance issues (see the earlier thread on the Yor being "unbalanced"), which can make the game more interesting and challenging to play.

Iam crossing my fingers that Stardock will add multiplayer with an expansion.

I enjoy GC2 the way it is, but would really love multiplayer too

Just an interesting statistic for someone to consider:

If GalCiv II had shipped with any sort of LAN or Internet multiplayer, how much time would have been spent "fixing" exploits, cheats, cheese that only affects multiplayer players as opposed to doing things like tweaking the economy, enhancing the computer AI, putting in the fleet manager, creating new start up options, putting in the modding UI, etc.?

There's only so many people available to code.  Something else would have had to be dropped.

its hammer time oh oh oh oh oh, here comes the hammer... lol ty frogboy

If there was multiplayer how would the following things be handled?

- Diplomacy techs. There would be almost entirely useless in multiplayer, aside from researching the ability to make alliances.

- What do you do about mid game scenarios where everything you need to do is queued up and you just need to click the turn button a few times? I can see that being annoying when you've got even a few turns to wait and the other players are spending 10+ minutes per turn.

- For that matter how do you handle the "downtime" when it's not your turn in any case? I mean it's bad enough to play RISK or Axis and Allies with a bunch of people, I can't imagine how long a game would drag out with the added complexity of GCII.

The only way I could see multiplayer working is if the game was moved more towards a real-time model, maybe with a set time for a turn, within which a ship can move it's set number of spaces, etc. Or, a real-time model where each day is a turn like the old Tradewars 2002 BBS game.