Well, after much reading, uninstalling and reinstalling (reapplying 1.61 patch) and opening port 2056 on both my routers (cable modem to phone over internet router to wireless router), I have exhausted my knowledge (actually, exhausted it ages ago). If Dreylin is around at the same time tomorrow, maybe we can kick of a duel game to see if we can connect.
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Realms Beyond Epic MP Game
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Something I forgot to mention (it's been a while since I've played CIV MP) is that restarting CIV (ie exit to windows then restart, not just exit to the menu) seems to eliminate some connectivity issues (especially with infinite "connecting to peer...."), this sounds like superstition but does seem to work, and explains the "lucky first try".
Anyway I'll also be up for some testing tomorrow to see if we can resolve the issues.
Well I tried rebooting my machine twice while we were having problems last night, but I didn't do the Shift to clear cache, so will try that. I also played around with my firewall settings some, and if nothing else I now know where to find the information about how it's treating incoming events.
I can be around this evening to give it another go.
Well unfortunately connection issues torpedoed our first effort last night, even though we all managed to meet up and have everyone up and listening on Teamspeak. Chalk one up to Gamespy.
 If some of you are willing to turn up online tonight to try and give it another go on connecting, I'll be online at about 8 to help out as best I can. We are NOT changing the time and date of this event, however; the first session is still planned for next week on Wednesday at 8pm EST. (Unless we have the unlikely situation where all 6 of us meet up online tonight and can get a game going, heh. Don't rely on that.) If we can get things working tonight though, a short coop game may be in order and would probably be fun. I am also contacting some of the folks I know who play MP all the time and getting their feedback on how to work around connectivity issues. I'll post whatever I find out back in this thread. Thank you all SO much for your patience last night - we ARE going to get this to work! 
Well, I suppose its because I'm such a cynyck, but I consider the fact that we all met, all got a game launched (even if only for a minute or so), and all had teamspeak working to be a resounding success. Thanks for your hard work organizing this Sullla.
Is it true connection issues you're having, in that one player's internet connection goes borky-bork, or does the problem exist between you guys and Gamespy?
If it's the latter, one possibility is to try a VPN -- it'd make your computers look like they're all on the same LAN, so in theory you'd be able to play a LAN-game rather than an Internet game (gamespy). I've seen nothing but lots of praise for Hamachi (a near-zero configuration VPN tool that does NAT traversal and everything else), but I have yet to need to try it myself.
June 30th, 2006, 07:38
So Sullla, Dreylin, Ruff_HI and I got together last night to try and see if we could resolve any of the issues that we had on Wednesday. We ended up plaing a 4x4 cooperative game vs. the AIs. It was Louis (Sullla), Qin (me), Izzy (Dreylin) and Washington (Ruff_HI) vs. the AI team of Saladin, Tokugawa, Peter and Frederick. Monarch level on a Great Plains map at quick speed.
Ruff and I were on the front lines, me on the south/middle, and Ruff in the north. Dreylin was west of me, and Sullla was back in the corner. We started up with Meditation, only to be beaten to Buddhism by 1 turn. I had a crazy start (see attached pic). 4 cows on a floodplains / river. Even better, when we discovered Animal Husbandry and Bronze Working (our 2nd and 3rd techs), I had horses and copper in my BFC. I started off with a few warriors to make sure I had enough defense, though I didn't see anything for quite awhile (enemy.jpg). We teched our way up to Priesthood and Code of Laws, and Sullla built the Oracle and we took Civil service. He later built the Pyramids and probably some other wonders. Being industrious and on the back lines is very handy. At some point, what with being industrious myself as well as having stone and a monster capital, I realized I could build Chichen Itza in 4 turns, so I did that. Militarily, I was building units pretty much every turn (beijing.jpg). One turn axes (and later 1 turn cho-ko-nus and maces) were very handy. I had gotten a few axes out and headed them towards a very aggressive settlement that Peter had put out. I got a 2nd axe there, just in time for him to get a 2nd archer in the city. A few axes later it was razed. Ruff_HI joined me and we went after St. Pete (stpete.jpg). A few turns later, ruff captured Moscow, the last Russian city, and Peter was eliminated. Christianity had just been founded in Moscow the turn before, but then ruff lost the city to Saladin. I re-captured it the next turn and razed it. Christianity didn't do so well in this game :-). We could have ended there, with the AI being down a player, but decided to play a bit longer. I built up a healthy stack of maces, cats and cho-ko-nus and sent it east towards Berlin. Dreylin had an axe and chariot in the area as well. I had had a few units that way pillaging and doing recon. Once my stack decimated Berlin, we decided it was time to go. Good game all and hope to see you next week!
Nice write up regoarrarr. This was my first MP game and playing with the likes of Sullla, Dreylin and regoarrarr was a little off putting (as in, what the heck do I know about CIV when compared to these guys). We also had a friend over for dinner and was playing thru dinner and later at night - very nice friend and wife.
I found myself rushing my turns, not wanting to be the one holding up the rest of the group. Consequently, I lost a worker through not paying attention and my attack strategy was very 'single unit at a time' instead of stacks of them. Next time, I am going to hide the score - so I don't see how far behind I am compared to everyone else and start to panic about how poorly I am playing. I will also spend more time looking at what my team mates are up to and learning from them. After thinking about the game, I felt as if I was playing all by myself and not helping out the team. I'm assuming that team work is the way to go with these games - aggressive civs build units, india builds workers, etc. Majromax Wrote:Is it true connection issues you're having, in that one player's internet connection goes borky-bork, or does the problem exist between you guys and Gamespy?This is a good idea and I have seen it mentioned a few times on the forums. Do we want to try this if we run into connection issues next Wed? |
