Multiplayer Freezing & Slow/Choppy Performance

[staffman]

Hello all, I apologize if these concerns have been answered in previous posts, however I did my best to search for them and did not have any success in finding any solutions.

I'm really excited about Civilization IV, but I'm having a lot of problems trying to play it online. I installed it and immediately updated it to the latest patch (1.52).

Here are some of my issues:

1. I just can't seem to play a multiplayer game. Sometimes Civ IV freezes in the gamespy lobby or when I make a new game for others to join. Usually the first person joining my new game leads to the program freezing. These freezes usually require a hard reset when in full screen mode... but of late, I've been playing in Windowed mode where I can just close the program.

2. When connecting to other games, sometimes I join games with great pings but am either stuck at "connecting to host" or "connecting to peer" until it times out or I get sick of waiting.

3. If I ever do make it into a multiplayer game, the game freezes on me withing the first 20 turns or so of play.

4. I'm not sure if this is related, but I notice in BOTH single and multiplayer games that all unit movements are very quick and choppy. Often I give a unit an order to go from A to B automatically, and I don't see the animation while my movement zips to its destination. This is particularly worse in multiplayer games. I double checked and "quick movements" are turned off in options.

5. In battles, in both single and multiplayer games, I find combat animations are also choppy and quick. Combat occurs with almost no animation and then I get a message stating that I either won or lost combat.

6. Finally, this may be because I am very inexperienced with Civ IV, but I feel like I am at unreasonable odds in every battle I play (I play on noble difficulty). Every single player game I've played, I consistently lose battles even to much less powerful civs. My battle successes are seriously like 1 win to 20 losses. I choose my units wisely, move them in block formations, and often have units similar in strength to my opponent. One time, I lowered the enemy defenses of a city with catapults, then I attacked and weakend a lone rifleman guard to only 1 out of 3 animated figures that make up the one unit... then 6 successive attacks with 6 full health catapults didn't kill the badly injured defender.


I've tried the following things to no avail:

1. Opened all the necessary ports on my router
2. I've changed around various settings in the civilizationsiv.ini file according to the post http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=156384
3. I've tried setting my dual core processor to only use one core to run the program.
4. I tried enabling and disabling virtual memory
5. I've tried changing graphics settings in Civ IV


Here are my system specs:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+
DFI Lanparty UT nF4 SLI-DR
Mushkin High Performance 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 RAM @ 2-3-2-6
2 x BFG 7800 GTX OC SLI
250 GB Hitachi T7K250 SATA II
NEC ND-3540A DVD Burner
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
Enermax 600W NoiseTaker EG-701AX-VE
Windows XP Professional 64-Bit Edition

I've attached my dxdiag.txt and Civ IV log files. If anyone can PLEASE help me to get Civ IV running well, I'd really appreciate it. I'm at my wits end on what to do. If you need any further information, please let me know. Thank you all.

Salahuddin

 

[staffman]

Well, I think I've isolated the problems I'm having to two separate issues:

1. Choppy Animation: This seems to be significantly improved when I set processor affinity to "Realtime" in Windows Taskbar. I've noticed that prior to enabling Realtime the choppy animations are associated with a short screeching sound after playing for a while. Makes me wonder about some sort of degrading process as one continues to play... like a memory leak or something.

2. Internet Connection Problems: This is perhaps my biggest issue. I can connect to a few games fine. But, with most multiplayer games, I'm stuck on "connecting to peer" without ever connecting. If I don't join a firewalled host, I always seems to be able to connect to the host without problems. I called 2kgames tech support today and they told me that internet connection problems wasn't a big issue after the 1.52 patch, but that they would escalate the call and get back to me in 24-48 hours.

If anyone has any suggestions on other things to try, it would be much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Alistic]

But, with most multiplayer games, I'm stuck on "connecting to peer" without ever connecting. If I don't join a firewalled host, I always seems to be able to connect to the host without problems. I called 2kgames tech support today and they told me that internet connection problems wasn't a big issue after the 1.52 patch, but that they would escalate the call and get back to me in 24-48 hours.

If anyone has any suggestions on other things to try, it would be much appreciated. Thanks.

OMG see this worrys me. 1. There is a huge issue with the 1.52 patch and not being able to play multiplayer games. You will be lucky if within 2 hours you lauch and make it into a multiplayer game. There was no peer issue before 1.52. Man, if a patch comes out and they dont address that issue, civ4 multiplayer will die. They are wasting far too much time fixing this. The online multiplayer community is dying off each day this doesent get fixed. Sounds to me like they are too fixated on this being a router/firewall issue and not a problem with their game. It's definatly not. If someone plugs up that slot than everyone will get the bad peer error no matter if they have a firewall or not. I cant wait until we can play civ4 multiplayer again.

 

[staffman]

OMG see this worrys me. 1. There is a huge issue with the 1.52 patch and not being able to play multiplayer games. You will be lucky if within 2 hours you lauch and make it into a multiplayer game. There was no peer issue before 1.52. Man, if a patch comes out and they dont address that issue, civ4 multiplayer will die. They are wasting far too much time fixing this. The online multiplayer community is dying off each day this doesent get fixed. Sounds to me like they are too fixated on this being a router/firewall issue and not a problem with their game. It's definatly not. If someone plugs up that slot than everyone will get the bad peer error no matter if they have a firewall or not. I cant wait until we can play civ4 multiplayer again.

I agree with you and I think the delays have killed off a lot of the multiplayer community, at least those that use Gamespy. Whenever I try and log on, there are barely even 10 new games starting at any given time, and over half of those are by firewalled hosts (meaning you aren't going to be able to join them). Many games are passworded, as are the majority of those in progress... so I can imagine if you have a group of friends willing to play, Civ IV still promises to be a great multiplayer experience.

As for me, I really wanted to get hooked to this game and play it with great intensity... but after weeks of dealing with the bugs and not being able to get a decent online game going, I've given up. I don't have the luxury of having personal friends who are interested in playing Civ IV with me, nor do I have hours of time to waste connecting to an online game with dedicated players. Unfortuntaely, I've already listed my copy for sale online. I hope the rest of you with problems have better luck.