Running Civilization 5 Pitboss in the cloud
I am trying to use pitboss to play civ 5 with some friends. However, we all use laptops which means none of us can run the host. I was hoping to run the host on a cloud instance, (Ubuntu) but so far no luck. Has anyone figured out how to do that?
Are there other alternatives?
Best Answer
I use a dedicated (desktop) machine for running a pitboss server, and that would seem to be the intended use case.
In theory you could instead pay for some type of dedicated server in the cloud, although I am not aware of any servers that specifically support Civilization V. It may be difficult as it is a Steam game, which means that the server would likely need its own Steam account with a copy of the game. I am unaware of why you couldn't run it on a cloud instance, although I would confirm you can meet the RAM and DirectX requirements, and if the game is in fact compatible with the Operating System.
Depending on your goals, a final alternative is to do a play-by-email game. This would mean not playing with simultaneous turns. Although Civilization V does not directly support play by email, some solutions are posted in response to this question. As discussed in the linked question, the first solution is to do hotseat game and email the save file manually. The other option is to use an external service to help, with Giant Multiplayer Robot being relatively popular.
Pictures about "Running Civilization 5 Pitboss in the cloud"
How do I speed up performance in Civ 5?
There are a quite some things you could try to do:How do I run Civilization 5 in compatibility mode?
Run Civilization V in compatibility modeFind the Civilization V shortcut and right-click it. Choose Properties from the menu. Go to Compatibility tab, check Run this program in compatibility mode for and select Windows 8 from the list. Click Apply then OK to save the settings.Civilization V - Tutorial / Guide - Fix crash on startup
More answers regarding running Civilization 5 Pitboss in the cloud
Answer 2
You can use a cloud compute provider and remote desktop if you want. For example, I'm running a game on a GCP instance (2 CPUS and 7.5GB RAM) after following these instructions, and just have to take my turn by logging into the remote desktop. That setup is a little slow (so I do everything in strategic graphics mode) but it works and is projected to be $55/mo, which gives you almost 6 months with their free $300 for signing up.
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: Q. Hưng Phạm, Kate Holovacheva, Jair Hernandez Villarreal, Pixabay