Multiplayer question

[Schmendrick]

I am trying to play Civilization IV over the Internet with a couple of friends of mine. One has a Macintosh, the other a Windows computer. I figure direct IP connection would be the quickest way to go. We made an attempt and tried tinkering with a few settings, but it didn't work. Their computers would try connecting to mine until they timed out. I got my IP address from http://www.ip-adress.com/

We all access the Internet through a wireless router. Mine is an Airport Extreme base station. Is there anything we ought to be doing before trying to make the connection?

 

[AlanH]

If you are hosting the game you must set the relevant port to forward through your router to your computer. I don't know how to do that on an Airport Extreme, but it should be straightforward. Port 2056 is the one you need, I believe, and you need to forward it to the LOCAL ethernet address of your Mac. External players will then need to connect to the PUBLIC IP address you found, and the router should pass their connections through to your computer.

- Make sure that everyone is running the same version of Civ4 (1.61) or Warlords (2.08)

- Note that players have reported Loss of Sync errors after running Multiplayer for a while.

 

[Schmendrick]

Many thanks!

 

[Akadah]

how do you find the ports on mac?

 

[AlanH]

My reference to ports was on the Internet router. But if you are running the Mac OS X firewall you may need to open the port on that as well.

- Go to System Preferences -> Sharing -> Firewall tab.
- Click 'New ...'
- Select 'Other' in the Port Name menu
- Enter 2056 in both TCP and UDP Port Number(s) fields.
- Enter a description to remind yourself what it's for - eg Civ4
- Click OK

HTH

 

[Akadah]

Thanks for that explanation!