What to do when I feel like after so many years I'm finally getting the grasp on Civ4 MP?

That's right, start fumbling my moves in a different game

Come laugh at my fumbles

Was trying to figure out where to post this, but ya random question.

Playing team game with a friend vs AIs and I could have SWORN that tiles inside both players city crosses basically were cultural battles. We've played a descent amount of games together and that is the way I remember it working. However, this time for some reason my culture is winning???? %s noted are his culture and both my cities are fairly new. I am creative for what its worth, but still the best % I have is 10%. Settled another filler and it also started taking tiles I didn't think it should take. 

It would be great if we can add higher resolution portraits for heroes and wizards or even ability icons and map tiles.

 Would implementing such a change be difficult ? Tried testing with some higher resolution map tiles but the game doesn't scale them correctly.

I have flirted with joining a game recently, but have thus far always decided against it. Which has made me think about why, and I think the reason is this. Compared to when I started (2020), it feels as though the barrier to entry has risen significantly to play MP civ. I mean this in terms of both new players, but also the amount of time/care that all players have to put into their civ to remain competitive. Theoretically I could play a game where my turns are <20 mins until the late game, but my chances of winning are practically zero. Whereas if I take a long time for my turns, I can usually contend with strong players. So to me, this time/energy input is the main predictor of relevance in a game.

Questions for the forum:

1. Does your experience align with this? Or is it a 'me' problem?

2. Is this an issue? I think it is, because it makes attracting new players very difficult, and retaining experienced ones somewhat difficult (I'd use myself as an example of someone who lost interest because the constraints of playing competitively were too high). But perhaps others disagree.

3. If it is an issue, how is it solved? Greens games are, in my opinion, not a great solution because the greens will just get eaten up once they move out of that space. But perhaps there are other solutions.
3a. How could a game be set up to restrict the amount of time players can spend on it? Is that possible, or a red herring?

4. Has this always been an issue? I feel as though it has worsened since 2020, but perhaps it is just that my life is busier.

5. For people who are typically not competing for wins, why do you join games? I mean that as a serious question: what is the part of Civ4 that you enjoy and keep coming back for? For me, winning is too much of the fun to sign up for games where I am extremely unlikely to contend, but clearly that is not the case for some people.

6. In contrast to Q4, for the people who are typically competitive but take a lot of time on their turns, how do you balance this with your real life?

Well, not really.

I’ve been itching to play, but trying to avoid the late game war-turns-of-doom. Anyone interested in a 3-city elimination game? At least the painful war turns will be over quickly.

Dropbox link to RB82.1 mod: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dfs7rq0jk2lrpm...1.zip?dl=1
--> RB82 Mod: aka CtH_5.0.0 with two changes: (1) to move Confucianism to ancient era, so that all players get a starting religion. (2) Techs cannot be popped from huts, switched goody hut result TECH with HIGH_GOLD.
*Sequential turns*
Classical era, by game setting (custom mod so everyone gets a religion)
Mostly-natural *minimal water* map, not heavily balanced, lighter on resources (much closer to “BtS” than “RB” lushness).
Barbs start with all ancient techs, same as players.
3-city elimination (game setting)
Emperor difficulty

Byzantines, Mongols, China and Vikings banned.
Spies allowed, great spies can scout
Barbs, events, and huts on (no techs from huts)
No Tech Trading
No Barb Cities

Players (in turn order):
1. Commodore - Nebuchadnezzar (PHI/IND) of Arabia
2. Cornflakes - Gandhi (PHI/SPI) of Greece
3. yuris125 - Frederick (PHI/ORG) of Germany
4. scooter - Willem (CRE/FIN) of America

It's been a long time since I tried to play Civ VI multiplayer.

So, Zulan was kind enough to give me the last save from PB74 and I wanted to open it in as a scenario, fool around a bit, maybe pilot my empire to a victory condition against AIs. But I don't quite see how to do that. I naively assumed you just need to put the file in Public Maps folder and launch it as a scenario but the game initially even did not identify it as a scenario file. I renamed it into a WB save, at that point the respective scenario did appear in the menu but still refused to launch (predictably, hardly simply changing the extension is all I needed). I opened the file in text processor, hoping for some enlightenment but it only showed me gibberish. What am I missing?
Also, how about we make this thread into a general "technical issues" thread and maybe pin it? I felt silly about opening an entire thread to ask one simple question but didn't figure out a different way to ask it. So, perhaps, a general "technical issues" thread might be useful.

Just a post to start a thread, will put something together when this gets a little further along.