My testing experience was split equally between traditional Single Player Civ4 games along with lots and lots of Multiplayer games. Although the games that I played on-site at Firaxis along with the rest of the QA group are lost to history, I also took part in weekly MP games with the Frankenstein test group. There were two running series of games: Casual Wednesday hosted by Sirian on Wednesdays and then Big Game Night hosted by Friedrich on Thursdays. Sirian's CW nights tended to be more relaxed and often featured co-op games against the AI while Fried's BGN events were more traditional PvP Multiplayer and tended to attract a larger crowd. The testing group was small enough that everyone knew one another and these recurring games were an absolute blast to experience, one of my favorite gaming experiences of all time. This page covers the first set of MP reports that I typed up in June and July of 2005.
Casual Wednesday, 22 June 2005
v.62, Ice Age Map Script, Small/Ancient/Quick
Team 3 vs 3 Game
Aeson (host) - Random (Hatshepsut), Sirian - Random (Isabella), Sullla - Random (Mansa Musa)
Versus 3 Emperor AIs (Kublai Khan, Saladin, Victoria)
Since there was a small turnout for Casual Wednesday, Sirian suggested we run a team game against the AI on his Ice Age map. Sirian kept crashing in the Gamespy lobby, but was able to get into the game with no problems and was fairly stable once inside. Aeson chose our tech research path, and headed us in the direction of Monarchy and Code of Laws. The exact route was Animal Husbandry (since we all had horses by our starts) -> Hunting -> Writing (forest chop early libraries) -> Bronze Working -> Meditation -> Priesthood -> Monarchy -> Code of Laws. This worked extremely well and we ended up getting Confucianism in 2760BC; by coincidence it ended up in my capital city.
I used the free missionary to convert Sirian and sent a second one a dozen or so turns later over to Aeson. As far as the starting land goes, Sirian and I were jammed together at the western edge of a long and relatively narrow island. Aeson had quite a bit more room to expand on the starting island, about as much as Sirian and I put together. I had room enough for my strong capital, a decent second city, and then three fishing villages; I think Sirian had almost exactly the same situation as I did. Aeson ended up with about 6-7 cities on the island - sorry if I don't remember the exact amount. Sirian said that the Ice Age map squeezes everyone down towards the equator due to extra ice/tundra, and that certainly seemed to be happening in this game.
Aeson helped us out early on by building Stonehenge with forest chops that gave free border expansions for Sirian's and my cities (being Creative, Aeson didn't need it as much). The early wonder also generated a Great Prophet eventually that we used for the Confucian shrine (which pulled in some pretty hefty income; by the end of the game, it was close to 20/turn). By luck, I happened to have a very strong capital city for shield production, and along with a very early swap to Hereditary Rule, this allowed me to build some wonders in Timbuktu. Great Lighthouse (2220BC) and Colossus (1920BC) turned our fishing cities into powerhouses; since Mansa Musa is Financial, my water tiles were getting 2 food/4 commerce. That's crazy, especially for a Quick game! 
Aeson suggested early on that we try to take it to the Emperor AIs, so he guided us down a tech route that matched that. Aeson and I both had ivory, and he pointed out that cats + elephants would cut through archers like a knife through butter. We beelined for Construction therefore (we got it before Alphabet and Polytheism!) and otherwise rode the bottom of the tree. When preparing for war, I focused on building elephants while Sirian constructed a mixed array of units to meet any other situation (swords, axes, longbows, and most importantly a stack of 5 catapults). Aeson had to hold our eastern flank against Victoria while Sirian and I were going after Saladin (who was just across the bay to the south). Invading with galleys is a pain, but we dropped off a sizable stack after declaring war in 1440BC:
Aeson was a legendary Civ3 player and he identified very early on the famous elephants + catapults combination that's still a staple of high-level Civ4 gameplay.
I cut-and-pasted the Arab units in Mecca in from another screenshot. As Aeson put it, "Mecca is hosed." 
Sirian captured Mecca with no problems on the next turn after bringing down the defenses with his cats. The AI response to our invasion was surprisingly weak; they threw units at us, but it was mostly archers (who were weaker than anything we had) and horse archers (who the elephants cut through without even breaking a sweat). Those elephants were a godsend against the Mongols, who threw tons of Keshiks against us. It might have been tricky otherwise. We pushed south from Mecca and Sirian took Medina in 1080BC. That gave us control over both the Hindu and Christian Holy Cities, which surely was a blow to the AI team. Here's another picture of the battlefield with all the units on it:
Those crossbows were the only unit we didn't have an adequate counter on hand to deal with; as Sirian put it, they're the "monkey wrench" unit. Kublai Khan certainly liked them a lot, he built crossbows and keshiks almost exclusively. We managed to push on and take Damascus, but by that time the Arabs were showing up with longbows in their cities, and some rough war weariness forced us to sue for peace. Aeson defended our sea nets from Victoria's caravel/galley invasions and captured a size 1 city on an overseas island. Overall, as a team we kicked the Emperor AIs' butts! Extremely satisfying. It does reveal, however, that the AI in this game was not focusing on defense enough. The AIs were so desperate to get their hands on every possible religion, that they continued to ignore researching Feudalism, even as we were at Saladin's throat capturing his core cities left and right. This might deserve some attention.
After the war ended, I built Chichen Itza and Hagia Sophia in my capital (Timbuktu had somehow become a wonder powerhouse!) Aeson and I began expanding to some new islands in the south while Sirian focused on trying to integrate the captured Arab territory into his civ. We were in the midst of another development phase when Sirian crashed out of the game in 280BC and we decided to call it a night. Sirian also crashed in 1040BC and was able to hotjoin with no problem. It was after 3am EST when we stopped, the time really flew by. 
A small detail that's worth re-emphasizing: Sirian and I both live in the same time zone and we both stayed up after 3:00 AM playing this game. Even at this early stage, Civ4 was that addicting for us.
Game was a ton of fun, it was a privilege to play with two of the best Civilization players in the world. I am anticipating doing this again next week. Sirian found a couple of bugs that he'll probably post here later, but I'll leave that to him. I'll end with a map I took of Arabia after most of it was conquered.
* * * * * * * * * * *
I don't have a writeup for the following week's game but I do have the screenshots preserved. This was a 5 vs 5 teamer game played on Sirian's Great Plains map script to test it out:
The main conclusion I remember from this game was that we had set the map size too large as there wasn't any meaningful combat given the vast open spaces. Whoops!
* * * * * * * * * * *
Casual Wednesday, 06 July 2005
Ice Age Map Script, Large/Quick/Ancient/everything else Default
v.63
Team 6 Humans vs. 6 Emperor AIs
Sirian (Random - Huanya Capac)
ME0003 (Random - Kublai Khan)
MagicNo3 (England - Elizabeth)
Nolan (Egypt - Hatshepsut)
Sullla (Random - Julius Caesar)
CanuckSoldier (India - Gandhi)
Before we even started, we had all kinds of problems getting started due to the fact that ME0003's name on the setup screen showed up as "WADCOMPUTER", which was too long for him to check the "Ready" X needed to launch the game. There was no option to scroll the window left/right, so we were held up on this for a good twenty minutes before finding a workaround. I know that the multiplayer interface is far from finalized, but it might be a good idea to include a left/right scroll on the game setup screen.
The game was versus six Emperor AIs on a team together, so it was going to be difficult regardless of what we did. We went for Polytheism first and got Hinduism (CanuckSoldier founded it), then one of my scouts popped Masonry from a hut and so we went right on to Monotheism and founded Judaism too (Sirian's capital). Those would be the only religions we got on the night.
Sirian was going to try and build Stonehenge for the team, but since I had such lousy land, I volunteered to do it instead. I profoundly wish I had put the capital one tile NE, to grab two oysters and a sheep, but I couldn't see any of those resources at the time. As I had just finished this settler, I went right onto Stonehenge afterwards and did manage to get it in 3040BC. One success for the team on an otherwise gloomy evening as the Emperor AIs flew past us.
Down the road, I also tried to build the Oracle and the Great Lighthouse in Roma, but was beaten to both of them by a single turn by an AI civ. That hurt a lot, as the gold was basically useless on this map. I lost the Great Lighthouse by a measly 3 shields:
Argh! I should have been micromanaging the city more closely, but I didn't think I was even in a race at the time... AI used the Oracle to take Theology and found Christianity, which wasn't a bad move - but the AI has been doing that so much, it's becoming a little too predictable, which isn't good. Canuck managed to build the Parthenon in 2160BC, but the AI civs were flying along at this point, having built Oracle (2760), Angkor Wat (2360), Sistine Chapel (2320) 
, Spiral Minaret (1920), and Hanging Gardens (1840). Yikes. When we finally met them near the end of the game, they were WAY ahead in score, even though our team had Stonehenge and was getting free culture expansions (that's not good). I think if we try this next week, we may want to play against some Monarch opponents. 
The biggest story of the night was probably the crashes. Aside from problems getting the game started, we had crashes in 3280BC (Nolan, Magic, and Canuck), a big one in 3040BC where everyone except Magic was taken out, another in 2360BC (Sirian), 2160BC (Sirian), and a final large crash in 1680BC that took out half the team again. It appears to have been the same unhandled exception each time causing the problems; I wasn't too sure what was happening, so I'll leave it to one of the other team members from last night to send in the bug report. Sirian has probably done so already, since it took him out multiple times last night.
I think everyone enjoyed the game, even though this version was proving to be very unstable. The Ice Age map was also well received. It's up to Sirian, but something similar next week against a Monarch AI team would probably prove to be a lot of fun.
I started work on-site at Firaxis shortly after this last game was played and therefore I don't have any records of MP games for a while. My saved MP writeups and screenshots would pick back up again at the end of August when I returned to my normal job as a Ph.D student.
