Well a lot has happened in the multiplayer world since our last update. Of course Firaxis has released the Gathering Storm Expansion, and although the patch notes have this low key entry “Multiple desync and stability fixes” I can assure you that they have done a major code overhaul. Multiplayer is very stable now, disconnects are rare and desyncs are far fewer and handed very smoothly when they do happen. Also Gathering Storm is a native DX12 game now, and if you have a compatible DX12 GPU you will find a significant performance increase. All this is making for a much improved MP experience. At Civplayers we have had several very smooth 12 player games in the first week of Gathering Storm. Thank you Firaxis for your support!

We have also capitalized on another new Gathering Storm option: Play by Cloud. In past games we have had Pitboss, a very popular slower MP mode, PBC now continues this tradition, and we have created a separate text channel on our discord just for organizing PBC games! Even if you don’t have time for a 4 hour real time MP game you can now come and experience the slower MP experience. https://discord.gg/a47g4PD

To cap off and celebrate the great game that Rise and Fall was CivPlayers held its final Rise and Fall tournament the Rise and Fall Players Championship, 3 weeks of Free For All games capped off in a finals that saw veteran player The Fonz come out on top! Earning himself a copy of Gathering Storm!

We also gave away a copy of Gathering Storm to Codenaugh for winning our Guess the Gathering Storm Wonders Contest, well done!

We have also updated a couple of our mods to work with Gathering Storm. The Better Balance start mod you can find here https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1263394807

And the Dynamic Turn Timer mod here https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1431485535 Our Mod Team is hard at work at a new Better Balance Game mod, but it will take more time playing Gathering Storm to figure out what needs to be balanced in the multiplayer environment. More to follow later on.

Finally to celebrate the arrival of Gathering Storm, CivPlayers is running a Novice Championship Ironman FFA tournament. This tournament is aimed at the newer player base, and is sure to be fun. To register come to our discord and pop into this channel. https://discord.gg/9gSUg2j

And as always everyone is invited to come check out all the great games played 24/7 at CivPlayers https://discord.gg/ubwTNdd