not able to see any multiplayer games besides LAN games

[zoutzakje]

hello, I quite recently bought AI war and 2 expensions on steam for the simple reason I love pretty much any game that involves strategy and a challenge. and considering the the amount of possibilities in this game I think it will keep me entertained for a long time
however, so far I've only been able to play singleplayer because when I search for other games it only shows the LAN games. I recall reading something about this somewhere, but I just couldn't find it again. so my apologies for asking this if it has been explained before.
It's not such a big deal, I love singleplayer too. but if possible I would like to get it fixed so I can play with other people in the future as well.

[TechSY730]

Well there are no match making servers currently in place for AI war, thus why it can only know what is going on in the LAN. Due to the very long nature of campaigns, hooking up with anonymous people would be odd because when you need to save the game and come back, how do you find them again? You could do a campaign that could last well over 10 hours in one sitting, but that seems impractical.

You can always type in an IP address yourself (LAN or over the Internet) to connect to a hosted game.

[zoutzakje]

oh I see... I thought it was something like that only the host had to be present for playing the game.... and that other people could just come and go whenever they felt like it.
but allright, thx anyway. guess I'll just stick to playing solo, which is just as much fun ^^

[TechSY730]

People can come and join as they feel like it, sort of. The game will not run until all player slots are full. The host can add or disable player slots, via the manage players button on the menu. However, it is somewhat awkward and slow, plus, if someone new comes in, they must either start with very little (they are given a home core, a "mini-home", and a little bit of resources, and that's it),  or hop into someone else's slot, which the new player will have to deal with how the old player did things.
To be honest, I'm not really sure how AI war chooses which option when a new player joins. I do know that if you have already participated in that game, the engine will try to put you back into the same player slot, so you don't have to worry about players joining back in the right order when loading from a save.

[zoutzakje]

hmm I see. so perhaps playing with real life friends is the best option then. that way we can always arrange a couple of hours of playing whenever we want to, instead of just hoping for the best when playing with random people from the internet.

[TechSY730]

That was the original purpose of multiplayer, as due to the length of games, starting games with random people is not a very good idea.

However, with the new defender modes (which you can set to last as little as 15 minutes) random online matching may be feasible, as they are short enough for it to work.