How to play Civ5 multiplayer in virtual LAN (VPN).

[Nefliqus]

If you want to play Civ5 multiplayer game in virtual LAN you can use new game tool: EVOLVE (https://www.evolvehq.com). It is very easy.

Evolve VPN Client: http://forum.civilization.org.pl/files/evolvesetup_175.zip

Some Screenshots:

My Evolve profile:
https://www.evolvehq.com/recruit/friend?token=player:w1k5XxwoTmu3xcUn,friend:3XZfg53y1IcRBdWk

 

[CanuckSoldier]

This is very interesting, up until now the only VPN I ever found that works is the Windows vista/7 build in VPN. Can you post this in the Civplayers Civ5 general forums too please. And in your experience does this make Civ5 games any more stable? Are games able to go above 6 players consistently?

CS

 

[KiffeLesBiffles]

Hi Nefliqus,

I installed Evolve, but it does not automaticaly detecs civ V. Did you had issues with that ? did you solved it ?

 

[Adreno]

This looks very good, I would also like to know how well it works. A bit afraid to install it, but it does seem very promising. I would love to move out of Steam completely.

 

[Nefliqus]

It works very well, I'm suprised that it is not popular. You have to activate all features to detect civ5, picture #2. Setting everything is a little bit hard at the beginning but after this you can play civ5 over VPN, import users list from STEAM, Facebook, Google+ and integrate it with YouTube (automatic video upload to YouTube). Additionaly it has TeamSpeak feature and very nice lobby for VPN network. Really nice tool for players.

You can add me to your Evolve friends list clicking on this link:
https://www.evolvehq.com/recruit/friend?token=player:w1k5XxwoTmu3xcUn,friend:3XZfg53y1IcRBdWk

Link to civ5 vpn network:
https://www.evolvehq.com/recruit/party?token=player:w1k5XxwoTmu3xcUn,party:iVS8nFP3qW31CMDU

Info in polish how to setup this VPN:
Opis po polsku jak ustawić sobie ten VPN:
http://forum.civilization.org.pl/viewtopic.php?p=215060#215060

Unfortunately you have to use STEAM to start Civ5 but you can switch STEAM to Offline mode or... Moderator Action: *snip* inappropriate.

 

[Nefliqus]

Info about civplayers VPN:

Right now I'm not sure if this will improve Civ5 MP stability or not, but it will likely solve a lot of the firewall and router issues that some players might have. So I would like to have this tested by you guys and get some feedback. I have setup a Civplayers "Party" aka a chat lobby here; https://www.evolvehq.com/recruit/party?token=player:uHFSmNy4ffXSZFIm,party:H8c1ljVrYJJc1stU

news link:
http://www.civplayers.com/index.php?section=smf&topic=10038

 

[ense7en]

Marked for further investigation.

Presently i cannot play with two of my friends together as MP breaks when the three of us try to get a game going online. Yay broken Steam.

 

[Onan]

For the less technically sophisticated, what the heck is this?

Ps, please summarise in English.

 

[Nefliqus]

@Onan

Some good quotes:

Why VPN much better than Steam for multiplayer
Some players asking question why VPN is much more successful than steam in all possible cases like tournaments, league, great poll of games etc.
The answer is about civ multiplayer is social thing.
Matters is not only number of players, matter how they act between each others, how it organized, how many communities and their quality.
The main thing is in Steam multiplayer divided by many small communities with little "bosses" and "leaders" that are rivals with each other and not let "their" players direct contact with "other".
Everyone wants to lead and fights with others. In time number of that "communities" is only growing. But, for example, such thing as tourney only can happen on big united community.
Also Steam troubles uniting players and their arrange on quality and leaves very good place for quitters, like their "open" lobby which is paradise for quitters.
In that case VPN offers new (but in real is old) system with united lobby with well communicating, which was in previous versions of game (civ3 and civ4). But now you can moderating lobby every day, not like it was in GameSpy where Chatmoderators coming only once in half-year trying to clean lobby out of haters and all other bad guys.
Big number of this advantages makes a great success for VPN as alternative design for civ5 multiplayer.
Without any trouble we organizing tournaments on VPN every week, where playing almoust all best civ5 players.

Evolve offers more then just VPN, but also a social experience (friends list, groups, player rankings, parties), game info (pages about games, gametime tracking), and media (game recording and screenshots).
I can't exactly recall what Gameranger or Garena do, but Evolve can basically replace a VPN client (Hamachi, Tunngle, GameRanger, Garena), Recording/Screenshot/FPS software (Fraps), VOIP (TeamSpeak, Ventrilo, Mumble), Gametime Tracking (Xfire, Raptr), and probably some others.
It also has superior overlay hooking methods when compared to Xfire (and probably Raptr), making it more compatible in most cases.

Yes this system looks very promising indeed, good work. This is the only VPN system that I know of that works for Civ5, other than the Vista/7 built-in VPN that is not user friendly to setup. And I run a Civ5 league www.civplayers.com And we will be testing/exploring the Evolve services more now that I found out about this
CS

 

[KiffeLesBiffles]

My civ V is not recognized by Evolved...

 

[Nefliqus]

My civ V is not recognized by Evolved...

Just activate this options in file/preference, restart PC, start Evolve and start civ5.
Additionaly think that game recognition is unnecessary to play civ5 in VPN anyway. To play you just have to join to or create VPN network party.

EDIT:

You can just HOSTGAME and if you would like you can associate your party with CIV5:

 

[CanuckSoldier]

Yes as I have posted at Civplayers, I'd really like to see games played using the VPN and see if it makes Civ5 more stable and if we can push the number of players reliably to 6-8 players in a game.

And the Civplayers Group with chat is here https://www.evolvehq.com/groups/922 The link above is to a "party" which is Evolve-speak for a pre-game staging room that launches the VPN for individual games. I just made a test one as did Nefliqus for the polish KAC league.

CS

 

[WarningU2]

Would like to see this in action ... missed where you download this from?

 

[Nefliqus]

Would like to see this in action ... missed where you download this from?

https://www.evolvehq.com/client

 

[Nefliqus]

You have to switch off connection sharing in windows setup if you can't join to LAN game or launch the game as host. Restart civ5 after it.

 

[Nefliqus]

The "Find Game" button is very useful too. Just click it and wait for some player. Simetimes it takes 1 min, sometimes 15 min but it is the best way to find new player with civ5.

 

[Gort]

Trip report - this is pretty good. I was able to play with only 15 minutes between disconnects with my two buddies. (One is my housemate on an actual LAN, the other lives half the country away)

Previous to using this, we couldn't even get past the lobby - we'd connect, and we'd both see the other disconnect after about five seconds.

 

[Nefliqus]

Trip report - this is pretty good. I was able to play with only 15 minutes between disconnects with my two buddies. (One is my housemate on an actual LAN, the other lives half the country away)

Previous to using this, we couldn't even get past the lobby - we'd connect, and we'd both see the other disconnect after about five seconds.

It doesn't improve game code or your connection quality. It just enable to play over VPN. Before next game just ping to your mate and test his connection quality (right click on his nick) .
I'm sure that this is the best tool to play over vpn.

 

[Gort]

Before next game just ping to your mate and test his connection quality (right click on his nick)

OK, I chose ping, getting time=55ms or so. Does it ever stop pinging him?

Is there another option for "testing connection quality"? I don't see one.

 

[Nefliqus]

OK, I chose ping, getting time=55ms or so. Does it ever stop pinging him?

Is there another option for "testing connection quality"? I don't see one.

Ping test is good enough, it is just a game not voip system or sreaming service. 50ms pings is very good result so network is ok. Your problems are connected with bad CIV5 multiplayer functionality not with EVOLVE or LAN network. What you can do is to switch off all other programs including antyvir, launch civ5 in window mode and use DX9 option.

EDIT:
and don't forget to change nick to some unique one, e.g. REVOLT is not unique one.