It seems like the launch of Sid Meier's Civilization VI didn't entirely go off without a hitch. This news comes from a forum post on the Steam Community page for the popular grand strategy game from Firaxis Games.
A thread by Steam user Silver tells us that the game seems to be having some trouble with setting up multiplayer games, and by trouble we, of course, mean that it's not connecting to the game's servers, rendering the multiplayer mode completely unplayable without resorting to workarounds.
My friend can't connect to any multiplayer games. Extremely frustrating. We bought the game to play together and can't.Multiple players in the thread are reporting the exact same issue, with the game either kicking them off the server after a few seconds or refusing to start a match completely. All players are getting at the moment is an error message after the game fails to retrieve host information from the player who started the lobby.
In another thread by Steam user nosTED, a Firaxis representative noted the complaints and they are currently investigating the issue affecting a number of users. Until then, you can use the workaround provided by Steam user Sepis, which has been confirmed by other players to work:
1. Start other game, I used CS:GO but any MP cappable game should work. 2. Start CIV6. So now, both games are running. 3. Now you will be able to join lobby and play mp. 4. When you are in MP game, you can close that other game.Steam also seems to not display that you're playing Civilization VI
While this will allow you to play games with your friends, there might be another problem if you like teaming up with your mates; the ability to form teams is conspicuously absent from the game as of the time of writing this article, apart from a workaround you'll have to enable manually.
A Reddit user on the Civilization VI subreddit went on to data mine the game after people discovered the missing team feature and went on to find a line in the code that states that the ability to form teams with players has been deactivated until the release of a Day 0 patch. While this evidently didn't make it into the Day 0 patch, it's likely that this will be addressed sooner rather than later. One might wonder why the feature got delayed. Until then, you'll have to make do with verbal agreements to not backstab each other on sight.
Alternatively, you can do some fiddling with the game files to enable the ability to form teams, but do know that you're activating a feature that was deemed unready for the game's initial release date so it may very well be unstable.
Another feature that is conspicuously absent is the Steam Workshop support. While the feature is advertised on the Steam Store page, the developers have stated earlier in development that the modding tools would be coming after the game's initial release.
Sid Meier's Civilization VI launched globally on October 21 and has since gone on to become third on the list of games with the most concurrent players currently.