My friend and I have been playing civ4 together since its release and have never had any problems with it until the 1.61 patch.

It wasn't until recently that we started playing again using the 1.61 patch and fresh installs of civ 4 for both of us.

Now whenever I host a new game we have no problems but if I were to save the game and we continued later, sometimes it will not allow him to connect. It says something about Lost connection to host (for him). Again note that this only happens with continuing from a saved game.

Also just to mention we always play with AI in the game and have used different settings with the same resulting problems.

When we do have this problem, whenever he joins I can see him join the game and then he'll get disconnected because it wont let him in.

If you look at this screenshot here:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b349/pinkfloyd9193/Civ4ScreenShot0000.jpg

you can see the 12th slot has a Random AI. I never added this 12th slot when we started the game and only seems to crop up after a game is saved and we continue a day or two later.

I think this only happens after a civ is eliminated from the game and then we end up stopping for the day. Also we both keep a save of the game and his saved game has the same result.

We are unable to continue playing any of our games because this keeps happening. Both of us are very frustrated and would like to be able to play again.

Does anybody have a clue as to the problem, is this a known bug with the new patch? I'm completely stumped please help!

I've had no problems with my brother. We played whit direct IP connection. Sometimes the IP address may change between sessions, but thats no prob.