The -offline parameter causes multichaind to work like multichaind-cold, restricting all access to global chain state, including stream subscriptions.
Instead, you should be able to achieve what you want by running MultiChain with these parameters:
-listen=0 -gen=0 -addnodeonly
The first two parameters are documented, and the undocumented addnodeonly parameter causes the node to not initiate any outgoing peer connections unless explicitly requested by the addnode command.
