How do I get LAN games to work?

[Flamegrape]

I know this sounds like a dumb, sophmoric question. But I don't know what is going wrong when I've never seen it work right. I've never been able to play a multiplayer CIV4 game. Now I want to. I slaved for days on an Earth map and I want to play it on my LAN.

Here's the best that I can describe it:

I launch the game normally. Single player gaming works fine. But when I go to Multiplayer and click on LAN, it FREEZES. The little pointer spins around for a second then returns to normal. Nothing happens. I can still hear the menu music but the animation in the background stops (the spinning Earth with the sunrises and sunsets). After about a half a minute, it goes to the LAN Lobby. It FREEZES again and nothing happens when I click on any of the Lobby buttons. Again, the animation in the background stops while I still can hear the menu music. Again, after about a half minute, I regain control of my computer and I can click on the Lobby buttons. But if I don't hurry up and click on something, it eventually FREEZES again and I can do nothing until it unfreezes again. When I'm able, I click the New Scenario button and I can select my scenario map I created in WorldBuilder. Once I get to the Staging Room, this is where all potential fun vaporizes in a flash of false hope. It looks like all the other players on the LAN have to do is join the game, right? WRONG! None of the other players can see it on the LAN. I launch the game and they still can't see it.

W. T. F. ?

What do I have to do to get this sum***** to work? Is there any hope? Does there exist a soul on the planet Earth who ever got multiplayer to work in CIV4?

 

[Flamegrape]

For a brief, glimmering moment, I thought I got it to work. I manually configured the LAN local IP addresses and I was actually able to see the game on the other LAN computers.

But this damned thing FREEZES all of the time. I click on the name slot to change the name of a player and I get half way through backspace-deleting the default name and it FREEZES. When control is grudgingly returned to me, the network game vanishes from the list.

"Ha-ha! Stupid puny fool of a gamer! Thought you'd have fun? You're such a chump!"

 

[Flamegrape]

I've made some progress. I've found that if I quickly jump into the game in between the times it FREEZES while viewing the Lobby Room, I don't seem to have much problem afterwards. If I dawdle and do something foolish like try to change the username, it's bound to FREEZE again. And each time it FREEZES, there is a chance that it will CTD. Actually, it doesn't CTD. I have to do the three-fingered salute.

But so far, so good. I haven't tried any games longer than a few turns. So I'll get into the habit of saving the game after every turn.

 

[Flamegrape]

Well, crud! It doesn't work! As soon as the game starts, it gives me blinking read text that says that the game is out of sync.

Has anyone gotten this game to work on multiplayer? Anyone? At all?

 

[Flamegrape]

No one? No one has gotten this game to work in multiplayer mode? Ever?