Why not make co-op only?  There's nothing wrong with the current rules if you are only playing against the computer, and I think that's what almost all the people wanting to play with their friends are looking for and would be satisfied with - co-op, NOT competitive.

I think you're going to find much of this forum overwhelmingly against the idea of full-blown multiplayer for LH.

One of the reasons I love LH is because is because it doesn't have multiplayer.  It focuses solely on a solid single player sandbox experience -- and it plays to that strength quite well.  I currently view Stardock as one of the last bastions gamers like myself can rely on because they understand that multiplayer doesn't need to always be shoved down your throat, and its mere inclusion could drastically weaken core game.

They may very well add this at some point down the road, but I'd probably never play it.  Not because I hate multiplayer games (in fact I play quite a few), but because I dislike playing 4X turn-based strategy games online, for numerous reasons across the board.  Also, if implementing it somehow changed the game in a way that negatively impacted it or overly-complicated it (which I strongly feel is a likely outcome), then it's just another reason I'd much prefer they'd leave it be.   So consider me someone who "doesn't know what they're talking about" if you must, but being intolerant of others' views isn't something I try to be.  I'm perfectly comfortable if we still disagree.

But for those who desperately want multiplayer and refuse to buy LH strictly because of this, perhaps LH is simply not for you.  Fortunately, it's not as if you don't have an endless sea of options when looking to get your multiplayer fix elsewhere.

I think a co-op mode is the best option, which doesn't require all balance to be perfect and you can tailor the AI to be a good challenge.  I think FE and LH are well-suited to co-op and not well suited to competitive.  So I suggest to Stardock that instead of a general multiplayer mode they add a co-op mode for internet, and perhaps hotseat and LAN, and provide mod support for co-op play.

That is correct as far as I know. The reason Multiplayer is not in this game is purely the lack of development time for network coders.

I recall there was a post even recruiting experienced network coders from Stardock.

Multiplayer is a two-edged sword. It can make wonders for "balance" in one sense if done right, exploit fixing, etc. It can also ruin a game if it means all "good" strategies are nerfed to the degree that it no longer matters what you do because everything is equally good.

Civ 5 is a bad example, since they removed some stuff when you're playing in MP (like half the diplomacy).

Civ 4 OTOH... it's basically exactly the same as playing single player, except you can have more humans. It's a great coop game as you can play on a team so you're treated as one entity for things like war and victory conditions. And for coop purposes there's no need to worry about it being a long game, since coop is often played with friends anyway and you can schedule when to play. I played it that way for years.

That should be the example of how to do it in Elemental. There's no compromises made to the single player game to make it work, so people don't need to worry about that. It just gives us a way to play with friends.

Total War: Shogun 2 also did it well, although we (my coop friend and I) tend to avoid using the RTS combat mode just because it makes the game take forever if you do.

(That was actually why I got into Elemental originally, all those years ago. Obviously it didn't work out the way I'd hoped, but now that the game has gotten quite good with LH maybe it's time to look at putting MP back in.)

I always wonder where people get this idea from. Was Civ 4 ruined? Last I checked it did alright.

Also good to see people hurling insults against people for wanting to do something crazy like play coop.

go play civ iv then and leave this game alone. thankfully galciv was never MPer either.

This is what I would want.

I'd like to know this as well, I saw someone mention a dev had once posted that they plan on adding it at some point when people become available to work on it, if there is I would love a link to that post.

Don't really get all the MP hate, MP doesn't have to affect SP at all, especially since most of the work to add MP would be done by completely separate people than work on the SP content anyway. As for balance, not every MP game has to be, or is, balanced for competitive play, many games have MP modes just for fun, there really is no negative to adding MP unless the devs get nerf happy, but that's a problem with dev balance rather than multiplayer itself.

You don't get it because you do a lot of assuming on your part to back up your agenda.

Where do you get the idea that the 4X turn-based strategy genre has been typically dominated by multiplayer, compared to much more obvious choices like first-person shooters and real-time strategy?

How do you know for sure that their games would sell much better if they keep telling us that they analyse the market and the customer response indicates that only a tiny minority wants/needs multiplayer, while at the same time facing added development time and cost?

Why is multiplayer the difference between dust-bin status and instant classic if there are pure singleplayer games that sold well and gathered user praise and multiplayer games that sank to the bottom of the ocean?

Master of Orion 1 & 2, Civilization series, HoMM 1, 2, 3, Age of Wonders 1 & 2.

These are the bigshots of the genre.

Multiplayer doesn't make a bad game good. But a lack of multiplayer makes a good game not worth playing. The social interaction of a 4x is a huge component.  It's like a better boardgame.

Here's verbatim messages I sent to my 2 cousins and my brother (collectively, we've played probably 100 games of AoW 1 & 2 each, all multiplayer):

"Hey, I found a great looking game like AoW, Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes. Looks really good"

then:

"Nevermind, there's no multiplayer."

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"Shitty, that was one of the best parts."