Does anyone play MP with mods?

[Carwyn]

If so, what mods do you use and how well do they work for MP?

Also, does anyone know a mod that has archer bombard and improved artillery functions that they have had experience with in MP and that worked well? We've tried some and like the features, but not had good success with them continuing to work without crashing.

Thanks!

 

[2metraninja]

I do play a lot of MP with mods, but mainly using pitboss with DirectIP. Cant tell how well mods work with GameSpy.

 

[Carwyn]

We've played using direct IP, not Gamespy. How does pitboss work? What are the benefits of using it?

I'm more interested in which mods play well in MP than anything.

 

[tchristensen]

I recently discovered Pitboss and find it has many advantages, but a few disadvantages.

In our MP games we suffer from a continuous OOS error that pops up around 1 an hour on bigger games. Pitboss makes it nice because everyone can just exit to the Civ4 menu and re-enter -- which is much quicker.

Its also nice that no one person actually hosts the game, although my computer hosts Pitboss and my game so technically that is not the case.

Overall it works well for us.

The bad side it appears that you can't have local gamers along with web players. I did some research and it appears there is an issue with ports in the game. I did play around with adding ports internally and that seemed to help with OOS errors but we couldn't get our external players to link up. I am still messing around with this and may be able to get it to work -- it requires people to change their INI files and most of my players are not computer savvy and thus makes it too hard.

 

[tchristensen]

All of my mods work well on MP -- Extreme2, ExtremeMod, Multiverse, Age of Discover ... and now working on Age of Discovery II (using the StrategicRivers mod as its base).

 

[Carwyn]

We've been using pitboss lately and found it does cut down on the number of OOS a LOT and that mods that were unplayable (wouldn't load and start for instance) behave fine under pitboss. We basically have four players, two of which share a network. The players that share a network are using Win 7 64 bit and Win XP 32 bit, I use Win XP pro 64 bit and the other player uses Win 7. You can see we have a challenging situation. We are, however, pretty computer savvy so that helps. One of the two players on the same network have hosted using Direct IP in the past, but it's always been a real pain and pretty iffy. It works a lot better for the one player with Win 7 to host, he's got the best connection and is able to make it work.

Using Direct IP, we had to be really careful what order we joined him in, one of the two players sharing the network had to be the first to join, then me, then the other player. It's a lot smoother and easier on pitboss, though we do tend to let one join, get them hooked up, then the next person joins. We have a lot fewer OOS problems and a lot easier to deal with them.

I hope that helps anyone playing MP with mods.

 

[tchristensen]

Did you find you had to change external port numbers at all? I went into the Pitboss and opened up more ports, then went to each computer internally and changed its port for a unique value. The guys outside the network, on the web, aren't savvy enough to change their ports (which is nothing more than a civilizationiv.ini change) and says that the game doesn't connect.

I am still trying to figure out if that's because of a port conflict or something they are doing wrong with their game/mad?!?

 

[Carwyn]

Oh gosh, I'm not sure - I've been set up to play Civ IV MP for years and don't mess with it. I'm pretty sure that my friends adjusted their routers to open the necessary ports, there are a few that should be open to allow packets to come and go. Also they may have to adjust or turn off their firewalls to get it to work. Unfortunately Civ IV is a bit picky on MP play in general.

If you think its the mod, then try getting vanilla Civ to work, then add the mod in. That might pinpoint some of your problems. There is some helpful information in the technical threads about connecting for MP play - which ports to open on your router, etc. Seems to me that a few years ago every game started with the pre-game of "Router Sleuth", where we spent one night getting the connections configured! Takes patience, we did end up getting pretty good at it. I just don't mess with mine, now that it's set up the way I need it to be.

I'm the least technical of the lot of us and I built my own computer... hehe I do know how to access my router and open ports. You could have them go into the DMZ for game night, but have them switch it back otherwise, there is a risk for keeping your router in the DMZ (allowing all traffic). I do not host, mainly because my internet connection is the worst of the lot.

 

[karadoc]

When connecting to a PitBoss server (or to a non-pitboss direct IP game), if the server it not using the default port (2056), then the players will need to specify the port when they connect.

eg. Suppose the server is set to use port 1234, and the server's IP address is 127.0.0.1. To connect, players will need to enter "127.0.0.1:1234"

To save you and your tech unsavy friends the bother of that, it's probably best to let the PitBoss host use the default port; then you will only need to enter the IP address to connect.

Regarding NAT problems, I don't think you'll need to use DMZ mode. The big thing to keep in mind is just that if you have a bunch of players behind the same NAT, then they each need to have their own port with their own port forwarding (and DMZ doesn't do that for you anyway). The PitBoss host needs its own port as well (if it's on the same NAT).

Incidentally, there are a couple of OOS problems and bugs which uniquely affect PitBoss games. One that comes to mind is that the PitBoss host will crash whenever someone launches a spaceship;; and another is that if you are playing in simultaneous turns mode, and if combat animations are turned on, the PitBoss host will go OOS when someone attacks a city with the city raider promotion... The bottom line is that if you really want to play without OOS problems, you should play something based on K-Mod, where all that stuff is fixed.

 

[Carwyn]

Well, we don't play space victory, so that's not a problem. I'll let 'em know about the other. And, as far as the mod we play goes, we'll do more experimenting when we get back to it for the winter, but will likely make our own mod. Our host has a lot of his own ideas, which make the game more challenging and more interesting and changes up the mod every so often without telling us what he did. We don't get bored! lol

Oh, the city attack thing, is that when you use stack attack? We haven't had a problem with it yet, we don't play with the stack attack to give us more time to deal with attacks.

 

[karadoc]

For the city attack thing, the PitBoss bug is that it doesn't take into account the extra time it takes for the little siege-tower graphical effect to fall over (whereas the non-pitboss instances of the game do take that into account). So what happens is that if the siege-tower thing would be displayed, then the PitBoss host will think the battle is over slightly sooner than the player's do, and so if there is anything around which was waiting for that combat to finish (eg. stack attack, or just another non-stack attack on the same plot, or anything like that), then the PitBoss host will do it immediately whereas the game for the player's will wait. -- -- Then ... if something else is happening at the same time as all that, then the order of effects can get messed up, and so the random outcomes can get switched, and thus the game goes out-of-sync.

There's a large numbers of "ifs" in all that, but that's how it is for all OOS bugs; that's why they're so difficult to track down and fix. (and it's why they only happen relatively rarely, rather than once every turn.)

Making your own mod, and tweaking it each time is great fun. So goodluck with that. -- But I suggest you use K-Mod as the starting point for the mod, so that the mod includes these bugfixes!

 

[Millea]

I have played some FFH2 multiplayer. It seems like it's just about as stable as regular civ4

 

[Lokilow]

I played RoM with a friend, no problems using gamespy ... looking for more players to team up with. Send me a msg

 

[Luthor_Saxburg]

Does anyone play MP with mods?
If so, what mods do you use and how well do they work for MP?

For PBEM (Play By Email) most MOD's work fine!!!

Also, does anyone know a mod that has archer bombard and improved artillery functions that they have had experience with in MP and that worked well?

There is one MOD (Supremacy) I know about that all archery and artillery units have it. I don't like that particular concept very much but the MOD is working, so it doesn't crash.

Here is the MOD link: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=17537


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