FreeOrion

I was just wondering if it would be wise to release FO without single player then add that feature in later once we get player feedbacks from mulitplayer experiences. I think it would save us a ton of work on AI development, plus we will get a working platform faster so we can have a larger community working on mods and AI. By then, we will have all the mechanics down so we can focus on AI problem with minimum distractions and new desgin features.

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You mean like an open beta, similar to what Blizzard does with their games? It sounds good, except that some one would have to rework what has to be done in the roadmap.

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"The one perfect impossibility is perfection."

agree, that would be fine. multiplayer = community = fun.
there´s already enough solo games of that type.

and turn-based online multiplayer seems to work (surprisingly):

http://spacefed.com/main/

these games don´t even have fancy graphics or anything, but it seems a lot of ppl like it nevertheless.

Be careful of this type of statement. I know you're just expressing your own opinion here, but it isn't necessarily the opinion that everyone holds. I for one am eagerly anticipating the single player game. I'm sure others are as well.

An early release of a multiplayer version for testing would be OK, as long as the gap between multi and single didn't run too long.

That's how it will go anyway. During early releases, the AI probaply won't be too sopihisticated, so only real opposiong you'll get is by multiplayer. And I have no doubt that in time we reach 0.5 we already have small but active gaming community which will always give enough feedback to better the for AI next release. I feel that even 0.2 will start to be fun to play for other than testing purposes

And personally, I wait mainly for singleplayer side of the game, specially the campaing and singleplayer mods

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Difference between a man and a gentleman is that a man does what he wants, a gentleman does what he should. - Albert Camus

With each release from 0.1->1.0 we will have many people playing it. During the later versions strategies will begin to emerge and we may find we have an active player's community early. This will also help us to have a lot fewer bugs than other games (I hope), since such a large group will be testing it early on.

So it should work out quite naturally that we will know the strategies AI should use.