How to play multi-player on the same computer?

[DS_CL]

I'm kind of new to posting on the forums, so I apologize if this is in the wrong section.

I only have one computer in my house. My girlfiend and I liked to play PTW together, and wanted to try a conquests tournament against each other. We did this through PBEM before, and plit 4 civs among each of us to make it more interesting. In Conquests, when loading other human players, it says "AI:[CivName]". Am I doing something wrong, or is this normal?

Also, in trying to play a scenario we made, which usually takes 2 hours to load, I left my computer on all night and woke up to find the game froze on the loading screen. I have tested it in a single player and it works fine there. Any Ideas?

 

[Benderino]

Click on something on the left side of the screen, I think it's "setting" or something. Then press "hotseat" which enables multiplayer on the same machine. Then select your respective teams and commence. Good luck.

 

[DS_CL]

Thanks for the response Benderino. I tried doing hotseat as well, and I am having no luck . Even on small random maps, It stops loading at "Assigning Team Colors" and won't go further.

 

[Snoopy]

Man, you are lucky to have a gf who will play Civ with you!

whats your computer specs DS_CL? I am assuming Hot Seat would take up quite a bit of ram?

 

[DS_CL]

Ive got an Athlon 2500 XP pro
512 DDR Ram
60 G MAXTOR Hard drive
DVD Rom 12X
Running Windows XP

I have tried uninstalling everything and reinstalling. Didn't help, but with Conquests installed I also can't seem to play multiplayer PTW either (Tried 1.21 and 1.27 patches). LAN and Internet games work fine. PBEM and Hotseat both stall.

 

[Benderino]

What games are you playing? I mean, are you playing random maps, or scenarios...

If the latter is true, sometimes they mess up because of the gamemakers, not your computer. Just try another mode.

 

[CanuckSoldier]

When your in the setup screen make sure that the "game type" dropdown box says Play by Email. Then in each player slot click the down arrow and select human player. It will then ask you to name your player and select a sex(M/F). Do this up to 8 times, and select the Civs too. This seems to me to be identical to PTW so I don't know how you got a AI Civ thing unless you selected computer instead of "human player".

Hope this helps

CS

 

[somateria]

I just got C3C and single player works fine, but I can't get PBEM or hotseat games to load. When I get to the multiplayer setup, I select the PBEM or Hotseat game type and then fill in players as per instructions. But, as others have experienced, the load always gets stuck on "assigning team colors, and it doesn't seem to matter what game mode is used or how many human vs. computer players are selected.

I have a Dell Dimension 4100 with ~1 gig processor, 768MB of SDRAM, and Windows 2K. This computer is NOT connected to the internet, but I wouldn't think this would be a problem for PBEM/Hotseat. . . I have yet not tried reloading C3/C3C, not sure if that might help.

I'd appreciate any thoughts on potential fixes before I ding Atari support.

 

[Kute]

Hotseat works fine with my C3C. I tested epic and scenario game, both loaded fine. The wierd thing is my firewall warned me a good 5-6 time that different part of C3C wanted to access the internet ... Is it really needed for a hotseat?

I have tried uninstalling everything and reinstalling. Didn't help, but with Conquests installed I also can't seem to play multiplayer PTW either (Tried 1.21 and 1.27 patches). LAN and Internet games work fine. PBEM and Hotseat both stall.

You might have a problem in a .ini file.And those type of files are rarely uninstalled, you should look for them and delete them by hand (back them up somewhere, just in case).

 

[DS_CL]

Hey all,
Sorry for my late response to this thread. As for the suggestions you guys made:

Benderino-
I have played player-made scenarios, random scenarios, and ones that the game comes with in both PBEM and Hotseat game types. I am still having no luck. Single Player works fine on any setting or map. Playing on the internet or LAN also works fine, but I can't play two players on the same computer on LAN or internet.

CanuckSoldier-
I always make sure the PBEM is checked. I also tried hot seat, and made sure the game is checked before i continue. I also check to make sure simultaneous moves is turned OFF.


Also, an interesting thing i just found out, the PBEM game doesnt seem to work for PTW either! I used to play PTW via PBEM all the time before getting Conquests, and never had a problem with it. I have tried uninstalling, as well as deleting whatever files and folders the unistall missed, and reinstalling with the same patches i used before Conquests and still have no luck.

 

[somateria]

DS_CL

I am having the same problem you are. Kute's observation that C3C seemed to need to connect to GameSpy for PBEM/Hotseat led me to believe that not being connected to the internet might have been my problem. But, if you can play on internet and still have the same problem. I also have PTW 1.27 installed. I wonder if PTW and C3C are having conflicts?

I emailed Atari tech support a few days ago about the problem. I'm not holding my breath waiting for a reply, as I suspect it would make me blue. Maybe if we (and others with this problem?) email Atari daily, they'll think there are many of us.

 

[Snoopy]

When you hit the multiplayer link on the start menu and it starts to connect to gamespy, quickly hit cancel and see if that works.

 

[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.

I hope this helps.

 

[SemperFi2382]

Strange, I am having the same problem. HOWEVER I can play Hotseat games with my friend on his computer and I haven't had any problems at all.

However, when I first tried on my computer, it crashed. I had uninstalled/reinstalled EVERYTHING BUT GameSpy to save space and it worked.

SO I think it is GameSpy NOT Conquests itself. Sorry this doesn't help though.

BTW: Singleplayer works fine for me on my computer too. Oh well.

 

[DS_CL]

I'v been playing around with this and here's what I've found:

Deleting all the saved settings in the conquests.ini file solved the problem for one game, then it came back (even if i delete it again, doesn't help).

I tried saving working games from my laptop at work and sent them home to play. This was working fine as i was able to skip the PBEM/hotseat screen and load directly as a saved game. However, it was working fine for about a week then all of a sudden I can't start games on my lap top, due to the same problem. This leads me to believe it is a software problem, not something on my computer or my scenarios. Otherwise, i shouldn't get the same problem on two different machines (Laptop is a Toshiba Satellite P25-S509).

When setting up the scenario, changing the names of each player to something with a ";" in it and selecting "female" leader gender seemed to work for a bit (although I have to wonder if i was doing something else in the process because i can't see how this affects anything). It seems to work about 10% of the time, where it will radomly load the game instead of crashing.

I've tried working through game spy and reinstalling a second time. The game always loads to the point of "Configuring Team Colors" and then stops. In one crash, i recieved a .dll error, however it went away too quickly for me to read, and was not a pop-up from within the game.

Thanks for your help.