An age-old problem with multiplayer in 4X games is that after several hours they can really slip into a lull – the giddy ramblings of the early game make way for hours of silence as everyone gets on with their own thing. On the bright side, at least my co-player can rest assured that I won’t be drafting that particular farmer into battle again, and they can always lobby our head of research to focus on discovering prosthetics to replace their splintery stump. We argue as the farmer tills the fields, hobbling around on a shonky pegleg. I might be able to chalk this one up as a forgivable miscommunication, but I find myself with plenty to answer for when the draftee returns missing a leg.

That’s how I end up seizing control of another player’s farmer and drafting them into my army to defend against raiders.

Perhaps things could escalate to civil war, resulting in dominant factions or breakaways Crucially, there’s nothing in the UI to indicate what other players are doing, which means you’ll need to talk constantly to stay in sync and not tread on each other’s toes. The premise is simple: every player has equal control over the colony, and you just see the faded mouse cursors of other players moving around the screen. The game that’s recently introduced me to the joys – and indeed the frustrations – of same-team multiplayer is Rimworld, or more specifically Zetrith’s multiplayer mod for it. This kind of untethered, unguided co-op play would force players to constantly communicate and self-manage – a bit like Overcooked, but instead of juggling tomatoes and dirty dishes you’re dealing with entire empires. Just picture it: a married couple squabbling over childrens’ claims in Crusader Kings 3 players controlling different states or regions within a single empire in Civilization or splitting players into agricultural, construction, and military duties in Age of Empires.

These series have always let you form alliances, but what if they let you have multiple players controlling the exact same team. Way back in 1995, CivNet laid the foundations for multiplayer in Civilization, which remain mostly unchanged even to this day, while the original Command & Conquer came with two copies of the game to facilitate LAN play. Strategy games used to be on the frontline of multiplayer PC gaming.

Civilization 6 multiplayer pc