AND Multiplayer

[Jaqar]

UPDATE (4th June 2010):

The definite No-No's for multiplayer are...

DO NOT use Ctrl-A in City Window to Remove Building or Abandon City
DO NOT use Ctrl+Shift-X to let the AI play your turns
DO NOT take control of new civ during revolution

As for Revolutions, few people are suggesting it is turned off. While this is probably a safer option, in my tests I have yet to find it causing an OOS. It works fine if you Accept rebel terms and the city(s) become independant. It works if you allow elections and if you accept another leader will take over for X number of terms. (If the AI says it will take over, actually it returns control to you immediately that move and no OOS). Accept rebel turns and taking control of new civ does not work however. I read somewhere in the Revolutions readme that particular feature can be turned off. Quote from the readme "LeaderRevolution and HumanLeaderRevolution could be turned off in Revolution.ini for MP games". I will test this feature.

UPDATE (2nd/3rd June 2010):

I've now play'tested' a 15+ hours 2 player LAN game

-Both machines on Windows 7
-ROM 2.91, AND 1.73 Patch J.
-Large size ROM_Tectonics map script
-2 starting AI's, Epic speed
-All default AND game settings (including Revolutions and Assimilations)
-Also enabled were Fixed Cultural Borders, Great Commanders, Barbarian Generals, Start as minors and Realistic Culture Spread
-Barbarian World and Random Events was turned off for the 15 hour game although we had a two hour game previous to that with those options on and no OOS
-All RevDCM combat options were enabled except Stack Attack. Off the top of my head, these enabled options were Battle effects, Ranged Bombardment, Archer Bombard, Naval Bombardment, Opportunity Fire, and all the fighter/bomber options. Spies bribe and assasination missions enabled. Flexible Difficulty was OFF. Limited Religions and Holy City Relocation was ON.

And so in 15+ hours (so far), not ONE OOS error (just Memory Allocation Failure's every now and again on one machine which gets it regardless of multiplayer or singleplayer as it only has 2gb RAM). This is not a multiplayer issue.

Now after 15+ hours, (including a few breaks for food and reloading the game WITHOUT clearing cache).... still no Out Of Sync errors.

CONCLUSION?
Either we're very lucky or, it really is fixed. But I would suggest to MAKE SURE BOTH installations of Civ4, Warlords, BTS, ROM and AND are identical. It may make a difference. Both shortcuts to run the game were modified to run the MOD directly (adding "mod="Rise of Mankind" to the command line). Also selected was the 'Run as Administrator' option. At the beginning I had also enabled 'Run in Windows XP SP3 Compatibility Mode' but I turned it off halfway through the game on one machine and it still worked fine.

There are two ways however to cause an immediate OOS that were found:

1st, Ctrl-Alt-X ... this in singleplayer will bring up a prompt asking how many moves you'd like the AI to play your Civ for. When the prompt comes up, the game will OOS before you even confirm or exit the prompt. Note: Ctrl-Alt-M (which makes the AI play your move just one turn) did not seem to cause a problem.

2nd, DO NOT ABANDON A CITY OR REMVOE BUILDING (using Ctrl-A in City Window). This will cause a OOS if you confirm to abandon. Note however: Razing cities during conquest is not affected and will perform normally.


SO WHAT DO I RECOMMEND?
I know I'm kinda saying everything works fine for me is not the best way to help others with multiplayer problems, but at the very least it might clear the doubt if it is playable or not.

Any comments, suggestions or repots are appreciated


-Jaqar














(ORIGINAL POST BELOW)
Any news/info regarding multiplayer capability with AND 1.73?

-Is it playable?
-With what game options?


EDIT:
So far the best multiplayer compatible options suggested are:

RECOMMENDED SETTINGS:
Game Options:
-Barbarian World *OFF
-Assimilations *OFF
-Revolutions *OFF

RevDCM Options:
-None suggested



MY CURRENT TESTING with ROM 2.91, AND 1.73 Patch J - 2 Player LAN game, Standard size Tectonics map with 2 AI players:

Game Options:

-Random Events
**Game will start. No immediate OOS. Tested by discovering technologies and receiving free unit (eg. Archer from first to Archery) and waiting for other events to happen, no OOS and both machines see the same event
+++Most likely STABLE

-Barbarian World
**Game will start. No immediate OOS. Tested by discovering, capturing and razing barbarian cities and no OOS
+++Most likely STABLE

-Assimilations
**Game will start. No immediate OOS. Did not test yet by capturing foreign city
===Needs more testing

-Revolutions
**Game will start. No immediate OOS. Did not test yet by causing revolutions or accepting/declining rebel terms
===Needs more testing

-Fixed Cultural Borders
**Game will start. No immediate OOS. No OOS when switching to fixed border civic. Did not test yet by claiming territory
===Needs more testing

-Great Commanders
**Game will start. No immediate OOS. Did not test yet by using in battle
===Needs more testing

-Unlimited Wonders
**Game will start. No immediate OOS. Testing building more than default maximum allowed in city and no OOS.
+++Most likely STABLE


RevDCM Options:

-Ranged Bombardment
**Game will start. No immediate OOS. Tested so far only with Archer and Catapult and no OOS.
+++Most likely STABLE

-Archer Bombard
**Game will start. No immediate OOS. Testing by bombarding with Archer and no OOS
+++Most likely STABLE

-Battle Effects
**Game will start. No immediate OOS. Battle effects are showing correctly on both machines, no OOS
+++Most likely STABLE

-Limited Religions
**Game will start. No immediate OOS. No OOS from gaining first religion. No OOS from another civ gaining a religion. No OOS from researching a tech that would normally give a religion but disallowed due to already owning a holy city
+++Most likely STABLE


I'll try to keep testing through this week and update anything. Crazily now that I've been testing I haven't had any OOS errors.

One possible reason is before testing I completely removed Civ4 and expansions and simultaneously installed freshly on both machines (both Windows 7). I also edited the properties of each Civ4BeyondTheSword.exe files to 'Run as Administrator' and 'Windows XP Sp3 Compatibility Mode' and cleared the cache on both machines before testing. I'm not sure whether this helps but so far testing has been.. quite bug free. I should be happy so if you hear nothing more from me, that's the answer.




If anyone has any other suggestions or corrections then keep them coming

 

[Elucidus]

I play it with my wife on a giant map with high seas, and insane AI or whatever its called. Turns take about a minute and we have random connection issues. I think it was related to the number of combats, as when we had huge battles we would typically lose connection. Though I just loaded the J patch and we only lost connection once and its was because my game crashed.

 

[Alsark]

My brother reported seeing "your difficulty has decreased" even with flexible difficulty turned off (apparently it didn't *actually* adjust his difficulty, it just said it did). Additionally, I got some OOS errors. This was on Patch H. Other than that it goes just fine.

 

[Jaqar]

What connection issues exactly? OOS or just connection dropping?

In my tests 2 player LAN, win7 both computers and 1.73 Patch I with all options turned on and cache cleared before MP game start, we get consistant OOS to a point of unplayable.

I've heard that it's RevDCM causing most of the issues and suggestions of turning off barbarians and random events can help but I'm not sure if this is a recent or even working fix.

Has anyone managed to play a MP AND game lately without too many OOS errors? If so what set of options and any tips would be appreciated.

 

[WildFire]

Played probably 10 hours of AND with 1.73 patch E and haven't had a single OOS.

Try turning off barb world, revolutions and assimilation. Seemed to be common settings we had on whenever an insane amount of OOS happened.

 

[Alsark]

Played probably 10 hours of AND with 1.73 patch E and haven't had a single OOS.

Try turning off barb world, revolutions and assimilation. Seemed to be common settings we had on whenever an insane amount of OOS happened.

Of those, I think I only had Assimilation enabled - and the OOS errors were occurring prior to Assimilation even playing a role in the game.

 

[Jaqar]

I've updated the original post. Troubleshooting was getting hard when there was no trouble to shoot.

 

[WildFire]

removing a building still causes immediate OOS

 

[Elucidus]

Yeah definitely want revolutions off in MP, at least for now. I play without any barbarians. But most other settings on, including assimilations and have seen it in play without any problems.

 

[Jaqar]

While I would suggest as a safe option revolutions should be turned off, I believe OOS errors with revolutions on are uncommon and can be avoided. It's a shame to play without any feature and currently in my testing revolution OOS's can be avoided.

 

[Iceciro]

While I would suggest as a safe option revolutions should be turned off, I believe OOS errors with revolutions on are uncommon and can be avoided. It's a shame to play without any feature and currently in my testing revolution OOS's can be avoided.

I'd certainly hope so - RoM/AND's good integration of the revolutions system is part of what keeps me playing.

 

[Afforess]

While I would suggest as a safe option revolutions should be turned off, I believe OOS errors with revolutions on are uncommon and can be avoided. It's a shame to play without any feature and currently in my testing revolution OOS's can be avoided.

Revolutions works in MP with RevDCM's latest builds, so I'll include it in 1.74.

 

[Iceciro]

Hmmm. Not having the same luck as the OP even using the same options and an idiot-proof multi-machine install test and getting an OOS about 7 turns in.

Any chance of getting an OOSLogger like FF has into AnD? Would help both the main modder and volunteers (like me cough cough) debug what is being thrown off and thus point us towards the culprits to turn off/fix.

 

[Afforess]

Icerciro, FF's OOS logger is in AND & RoM. Check your main BTS folder for the logs.

 

[Iceciro]

Icerciro, FF's OOS logger is in AND & RoM. Check your main BTS folder for the logs.

Derp. I suck at finding things.

EDIT: Good news, nobody! Found out the problem, apparently RoM settings like dynamic XP still need to match - the OOS was xp-related, once he disabled Dynamic XP in SP, the MP stopped OOSing.

 

[Jaqar]

I can't stress enough how important it is for all players to have identical settings and files. It seems this is way more important than the settings you choose. Good to hear you're updating the RevDCM in 1.74 Afforess, I hear it's more MP stable but actually it's not unplayable at the moment. I've yet to have a OOS.

 

[Afforess]

I would love it if some people with multiple computers could test out and see if this file fixes the ability to abandon cities and sell buildings. Download it and copy it into your Rise of Mankind/Assets/Python folder, it should overwrite an existing file.

It won't affect saves.

Edit:

I've fixed it, and the new file should work. Replace it for all your computers and you will be able to sell buildings and abandon cities just fine in MP.
View attachment AbandonCityEventManager.rar

 

[egogo]

does anyone know why cant i see the maps list on the MP internet connection page?

 

[Killtech]

since there were already 2 threads asking about it...

 

[Killtech]

again some's asking. slowly i think this thread should be sticky.