Direct IP connection - help?

[meglok]

Ok, first of all, my friend and I wish to play a direct IP game. We have spent probably 8 hours trying to set it up with no joy. And I have spent about 4 hours reading thru the forum posts trying to understand how to make it happen.

We both have router based network systems at home. Mine is a Linksys NR041 router. The computers are easily capable of playing the game in single player mode. We both play all kinds of games over the web and have no problems with them.

We have made sure that our firewalls have the civ4.exe exceptions noted.

We have both gone into our routers and attempted to open the 2056 port thru UPnP port forwarding. We have both disabled the WAN access block. We have verified we are using the correct IP address for my system, which would be the host system (Athlon 64 3400, 1 gig ram) I have also opened the port triggering file and added port 2056 to the file.

We are still unable to play the game.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I consider myself to be fairly computer literate, having tinkered with them since the old TRS-80 (trash 80's for those old enough to remember) and APPLE IIE's. Yet I am rapidly becoming completely furious and frustrated at the length of time and hoops to jump thru to play this game in multi-player mode.

The documentation on multi-player in the Civ4 manual is an absolute joke. The read me files were written by programmers who must have assumed that everyone has a degree in computers and understands all the terminology and acronyms. You would never know that you have to open the 2056 port unless you scan thru forums on a FAN BASED Civ4 site .

Most of the people nowadays are plug and play, thanks to Windows. They pop in the part, pop in the CD, and follow the set up guide. And most game programmers understand this, coding their offerings to accommodate. I have played MMO's and other games that require no tinkering with router set ups, etc just fine. Yet the programmers of Civ4 seemed determined to keep their multi-player system a national security for your eyes only clearance secret!

I will climb down off my soap box and plead once again for assistance. If anyone wishes to assist me either thru this forums or thru email, we would be in your debt.

 

[OverloadUT]

Most of the people nowadays are plug and play, thanks to Windows. They pop in the part, pop in the CD, and follow the set up guide. And most game programmers understand this, coding their offerings to accommodate. I have played MMO's and other games that require no tinkering with router set ups, etc just fine. Yet the programmers of Civ4 seemed determined to keep their multi-player system a national security for your eyes only clearance secret!

Actually, if you are behind a router, you will most likely run in to this problem with any game where you are actually hosting a server, because the router does not know which computer behind the NAT to send the incoming traffic to. Playing an MMO's and many other games just require you to connect to a public server and therefore no router configuration is needed.

Now, let's get the basics out of the way. Are you sure you're giving your friend your external IP? You can go to http://www.whatismyip.com to find your external IP.

 

[mickeyj]

We have made sure that our firewalls have the civ4.exe exceptions noted.

Have you also enabled port 2056 in your software firewall as well as your router?

Is the problem your friend is not able to log into the game?

If you have a dynamic IP it may be worth going the gamespy route.

 

[meglok]

Appreciate the responses.

Yes, I am using the correct ip number. Did double check it with whatismyip.com early in the process (another useful tip I picked up in reading thru the threads). It is not a dynamic ip.

I usually have zone alarm basic up as my firewall. Settings are at medium. I am not aware of a way to open a specific port in zone alarm.

I have also tried it with disabling zone alarm and running Windows fire alarm (verifing that the civ4 exe exception is there), and completely turning off all firewalls.

I will go into civ multiplayer, set up a game, stay in the game set up screen, and my friend will attempt to log into the multiplayer using my ip and gets timed out.

Incidently, my friend's router is a Linksys BEFSR41.

Thanks again guys.

 

[Manacode]

This is my solution.

Go to properties on your network connection, then write the IP: 192.1.2.X, both of you. Don't write 192.1.2."1", but choose different numbers, something between 2-9. Network Mask is choosen automatically after that, just click it, and apply the changes.

Has worked like a dream for me and my friends for years.

Hope this helps.

 

[xeen]

Me and my brother use hamachi www.hamachi.cc
We're both behind a router and the game works perfectly for us. We haven't done any port forwarding or anything like that. You can either use it as a lan game, or a direct connection, hamachi assigns you a new "lan" ip address.

 

[OverloadUT]

I'll put in a second recommendation for Hamachi. I use it religiously for any game where I can't figure out the port forwarding stuff. You can just host your game as a LAN game and he'll be able to see it in the LAN lobby as if you were plugged in behind the same router.