Can not host a LAN Game

Hi guys, first post for me, registered just for this message =)
wellwell, to the point:

Im having the same problem as you are, but i can also host games while unplugged. as far as i see:

The developers, by some unimaginable reason, hard-coded the multiplayer behavior to connect to some server. dont know which, but it doesnt seem online. it might also be the game trying to send its "Hello, now i'm hosted"-msg to the server managing all the hosted games u can find with the in-game browser. another option might be harder game-spy integration, which would explain the fact that it DOES work for some ppl. (e.g. those who have installed gamespy)

im gonna try install gamespy and see if that helps, otherwise i would urge all crackers to make a new working exe.

c ya

yup... it's that bad folks... sid has forced us to use gamespy... after installing gamespy, hosting games worked on the fly... post if u've got gamespy, and it still wont work...

i get really disappointed, i hate these 3rd party programs, especially gamespy and the like, since i really dont need em. maybe even time for a little petitiononline?

I just registered to post this as well. I got to thinking the same thing that installing Gamespy might help but it did not. So I tried to install the 1.29 patch before installing Conquests but that did nothelp. I've disabled all start up programs, I've updated drivers, I've uninstalled and reinstalled the program numerous times but nothing works. I never used to have this problem but for some reason now the exe constantly crashes whenever I try to host games on LAN or Hotseat and if I host on the Internet it crashes whenever I launch.

Has anyone solved this?

I have win xp, civ3 conquests with the 1.22 patch. It crashes (to the desktop) when I try to host a lan game (or internet game). Have uninstalled etc. wont work patched or unpatched (even with all 3rd party programs disabled). All the win xp machines on my network will not host a lan game. Have turned firewall on and off with no luck. I can run other games over my lan. My win 98 machines on the lan will launch and play the game. The xp machines will not see the game hosted by the 98 machines. At least one of the xp machines has played multi-player lan civ3 conquests with the 98 machines in the past but as of yesterday none of the xp machines will work. I have manually opened ports 6073,2302, and 2400 but that didnt work either. I am still working on this problem and will let you all know if I find anything. I would apreciate it if anyone who has any luck with this posts it to help with this problem. I have also tried it with and without gamespy with no luck.
Thanks all.
Big Lar

I fixed my problem by formating my windows drive and reinstalling windows and Civ. If you can I suggest you do that.

Thanks Soam. That is a lot of work and I would have to do it for three computers (the ones with xp) on my lan. One of the computers is a laptop that I just purchased and to think of reformatting it is outrageous! When you put civ back on how did you do it? Did you patch civ3, ptw, and conquests or just conquests. What patch did you use 1.22? I will try what you say on at least one computer and see if it helps.

Thanks

Big Lar

Believe me if I knew another solution I would have done it. Since a format fixes it I'm assuming something was wrong with XP and not Civ.

All I did was install Civlization, then I installed Conquests and had no problems. I just installed that 1.22 patch and it still runs good.

Well, I have finally had some luck with this problem. When I upgraded my directx from 9.0b to 9.0c all my hosting problems went away. All my win xp machines on my network now work as well as my 98 machines. I can host lan games, gamespy games, etc. which would not work for me before. After all the other things I tried (even deleting the registry entrys, opening ports manually, etc.) it turned out that dx 9.0c did the trick. I hope this will help someone else out there as sometimes it is the simplist fixes that can elude us the longest.
Good luck to all and have fun gaming.

I had this same problem too (see below for solution!): I had been hosting local LAN games with no problem. Then just yesterday my friend had to restart while we were on the multiplayer setup screen. So I exited out and we both started again... But it hung on the Hosting screen just as some of you have described. I tried for hours to make it work again, and one thing I found is that this is definitely a Gamespy issue... if I simply turn off my internet connection (unplug it or whatever), it tells me it can't connect to gamespy so it is defaulting to only local games, and I am allowed into the screen. Unfortunately, plugging it back in while on that screen doesn't seem to make my hosted game visible to anyone on my network, so that was no good.

SOLUTION: (at least what worked for me) ... I had been messing with settings and DirectX and junk like that for hours, before I simply tried to run the original setup on the game disc... I selected "reinstall" on the menu and then selected "repair" on the next one. I'm not sure what it did, since it was very quick and didn't seem to copy over any game files. But bottom line, it worked! I am able to get onto the screen fine and it works just as it did before. Maybe it fixed some registry values that were messed up when I quit while on the host setup screen that first time? I don't know, but I hope this helps some of you with this same vexing problem.

Mike