As you know, Civilization is the greatest gaming franchise in the history of gaming, but the newest iteration, despite its many massive improvements—like hex grids and the elimination of stacking—had a single glaringly massive flaw: no non-synchronous multi-player mode. The only way to play a multi-player game was to sit at the PC for 78 hours straight or find a scheduled time that all the players could make it to every week, which is hard enough to schedule for a few people (much less a full game of 12). If one person is missing that week, no one can play. Civ fans everywhere have been lamenting this for two years, while the devs promise that non-synchronous multi-player is coming ‘eventually’.

With a recent update, they finally delivered in the form of ‘hotseat mode’, designed to allow players to play at the same system, but also allowing for play-by-email, a cumbersome system for many reasons—so still no real viable way to play.

Enter Giant Multiplayer Robot. Developed by Civ fans and released for free, this program, along with the website, will manage PBEM games for you in a manner similar to the old Civ IV PtBS mode, but without the need for someone to host.

How it works

Organize a game on the website, where you can invite players, pick civs, and discuss set-up options. Then player one sets up the game in Civ V, being careful to match the player order, civ choices, and other stuff that was set up on the website (there is no way to auto-populate the options into the game, unfortunately), then starts the game. That player takes his/her first turn, then when GMR detects that you have finished your turn and saved the game, it closes CIV V, and sends the turn to the next player on the list you made on the website. That player gets a notification from the GMR client, and can then load their game and take their turn. When they’re done, GMR sends the turn to the next player, and so on.

There are additional features like the ability to roll back turns (GMR keeps the last few turns stored on the server in case something gets corrupted or otherwise goes wrong) and the ability to resign from the game (even if it’s not currently your turn), or remove a player who has left (or is a jerk) by majority vote.

So, it’s taken a third party developer to make it happen, but finally there is a viable non-synchronous way to play the newest game in the greatest gaming franchise.

Here’s a video which explains the system:

Giant Multiplayer Robot is available free on their website. Thanks to Icrontic community member Zanthian for pointing me to the service.

Now, let’s finally play some Civ V!