Hello all,
I received this game for Christmas a few years ago, along with Black and White and loved the game to death until I broke the CD one day. About a month ago I downloaded the game on GameTap and attempted to run a Multiplayer Hotseat game with two human players and 3 AI Players. This is when I first ran into the infamous "Assigning Team Colors" lockup bug that is so common, yet remains a relatively undiscussed bug. I have spent several hours each day for the past week looking for bugs, and the following is a compilation of what I have found thus far, and it has been placed here thanks to the contributions of many others on these forums and others.
Description of the bug - When attempting to run Civilization III on a Multiplayer Mode (Namely Hotseat), the game freezes when assigning an option known as "Team Colors". This happens when you attempt to run two or more Human players in the same game, and causes the entire program to stop responding.
----Common Fix 1 - GameSpy Internet Error
"It appears that the problem might be due to something about gamespy trying to locate an internet connection when you're not connected to the internet."
----Common Fix 2 - PBEM/Hotseat Multiplayer Dropout Fix
Originally posted by somateria,
"I figured out how to play PBEM/Hotseat without an internet connection, and its not quite straightforward. From the main menu, select Multiplayer. On the "Choose Multiplayer Game Type" popup, select "internet" NOT "hotseat" or "PBEM." When connection to GameSpy can't be made, you will be dumped to the main muliplayer menu, and location should be set to "Local Games." Then, select "host," and you will get the multiplayer setup menu. Select "Hotseat" or "PBEM" as the game type, set turn timer to "none," select your game and players, and then "Launch." Voila! Because C3C already knows GameSpy isn't available, it doesn't lock up trying to find it."
----Common Fix 3 - Unplugging Your Router
Another common way of fixing certain types of this bug is by simply unplugging your router. Changing settings on your router may also help to solve this problem, but can be a risky setting change that could put your working internet at risk for other potential problems.
----Common Fix 4 - DirectPlay/Regsvr32 dpnet.dll/DirectX
Originally posted by another user,
I couldn't figure this out for the longest time but I had the same problem and it was actually DirectPlay that was giving me issues. I ran DXDIAG from Start Menu/Run and under the Network tab it gave me four DirectPlay8 errors. I have DirectX 9.0c installed so I couldn't update DirectX. All I had to do was type this into the Run box:
regsvr32 dpnet.dll
The microsoft knowlege database can be found here, http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;829151
If anyone has any more additional information, or useful ways they've found to fix this bug, please contribute to this thread. I know the multiplayer version of this game was kind of a last minute throw-on, but that shouldn't mean that the majority of players should run into a bug like this with little support (other than what's been found here thankfully).
Thank You,
CivFanatics.com Community Member NicPre.
I received this game for Christmas a few years ago, along with Black and White and loved the game to death until I broke the CD one day. About a month ago I downloaded the game on GameTap and attempted to run a Multiplayer Hotseat game with two human players and 3 AI Players. This is when I first ran into the infamous "Assigning Team Colors" lockup bug that is so common, yet remains a relatively undiscussed bug. I have spent several hours each day for the past week looking for bugs, and the following is a compilation of what I have found thus far, and it has been placed here thanks to the contributions of many others on these forums and others.
Description of the bug - When attempting to run Civilization III on a Multiplayer Mode (Namely Hotseat), the game freezes when assigning an option known as "Team Colors". This happens when you attempt to run two or more Human players in the same game, and causes the entire program to stop responding.
----Common Fix 1 - GameSpy Internet Error
"It appears that the problem might be due to something about gamespy trying to locate an internet connection when you're not connected to the internet."
----Common Fix 2 - PBEM/Hotseat Multiplayer Dropout Fix
Originally posted by somateria,
"I figured out how to play PBEM/Hotseat without an internet connection, and its not quite straightforward. From the main menu, select Multiplayer. On the "Choose Multiplayer Game Type" popup, select "internet" NOT "hotseat" or "PBEM." When connection to GameSpy can't be made, you will be dumped to the main muliplayer menu, and location should be set to "Local Games." Then, select "host," and you will get the multiplayer setup menu. Select "Hotseat" or "PBEM" as the game type, set turn timer to "none," select your game and players, and then "Launch." Voila! Because C3C already knows GameSpy isn't available, it doesn't lock up trying to find it."
----Common Fix 3 - Unplugging Your Router
Another common way of fixing certain types of this bug is by simply unplugging your router. Changing settings on your router may also help to solve this problem, but can be a risky setting change that could put your working internet at risk for other potential problems.
----Common Fix 4 - DirectPlay/Regsvr32 dpnet.dll/DirectX
Originally posted by another user,
I couldn't figure this out for the longest time but I had the same problem and it was actually DirectPlay that was giving me issues. I ran DXDIAG from Start Menu/Run and under the Network tab it gave me four DirectPlay8 errors. I have DirectX 9.0c installed so I couldn't update DirectX. All I had to do was type this into the Run box:
regsvr32 dpnet.dll
The microsoft knowlege database can be found here, http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;829151
If anyone has any more additional information, or useful ways they've found to fix this bug, please contribute to this thread. I know the multiplayer version of this game was kind of a last minute throw-on, but that shouldn't mean that the majority of players should run into a bug like this with little support (other than what's been found here thankfully).
Thank You,
CivFanatics.com Community Member NicPre.
