Multiple Players Using Same IP Address

[HALO_TacImpulse]

Okay everybody, perhaps someone has a quick answer to this problem that we've been running into in Civilization IV:

We're trying to play a 4 player Internet (GameSpy) or DirectIP game with two friends in California.

They both own Direct2Drive copies of CivIV patched with the Direct2Drive version 1.52 patch. They are both using cable internet with a router that has all of the ports needed opened (both their software and hardware firewalls). They have also tried disabling both of them altogether. The one working on the firewalls is a professional network tech, just an FYI to anyone trying to help us out here. They both are on the same dynamically generated IP address in the same household.

And as for us:

We are also on cable internet, using the same dynamic IP address in the same household. We too have the 1.52 CivIV patch (except we both have the boxed copy of CivIV, not Direct2Drive). We also have all of the needed ports open on both our software and hardware firewalls (I am working on this and am a computer tech myself).

Here is the situation:

When my friend (from California) and I (from Oregon) try to play a 1 on 1 game of CivIV everything works fine via Internet and DirectIP. When my girlfriend (Oregon) and his wife (California) try to play a 1 on 1 game all is well too.

However, when my girlfriend and I both try to play a 2 on 2 verus him and his wife, it will never work. We get into the staging room just fine and set up all of our preferences, then hit launch. The game loads just fine and we end up at the dawn of man screen and hit continue. Right after that, all internet traffic begins to back up and lag out until both of our connections completely blow out and have to come back online after a quick break in connectivity. Sometimes our computers will even hardlock in the game (while getting ready to move our Settlers and Scouts/Warriors).

Has anyone else run into a similar problem under similar circumstances? If so, what did you do to remedy this aggrevating issue? We can't come up with a solution on our own and after much searching, I can't find anything that pertains to our issue anywhere out there on the net. Help!

Thanks in advance to anyone who took the time to read our issue. I hope it is laid out in a way that everyone can comprehend. If not, please let me know what further information you could use to help us.

Sincerely, TacImpulse

 

[Laramon]

One thing to try:

Get someone to host a DirectIP game. The person who lives with you use the local IP address of the server, while the others use the external. At the very least it will cause only 1 person to drop, in theory.

Report back with a status.

 

[HALO_TacImpulse]

Thanks for the quick response on the matter Laramon.

I tried to have one person connect via internal IP address and the rest via the outside IP. It still failed on us unfortunately.

However, if we take the game down from a 2v2 to a 1v2 or a 3 player (total) game instead of a 4 player (total) game it works consistantly.

It just seems like the 4 player mark is a real sticky point for some reason.

So, very, confused... lol.

Thanks again!

 

[Islandia]

You might want to try Hamachi
http://www.hamachi.cc/

It creates a virtual LAN for you with your own ip addresses so you can then play a "local" intranet game.

 

[Zydor]

Islandia

Maybe an idea to post that one on the Multiplayer forum, it could well be of interest to MP Players in general with the current MP problems that seem to be around

Regards
Zy

 

[HALO_TacImpulse]

Thanks Islandia, I'll give it a try. Appreciate you taking the time to post.

 

[HALO_TacImpulse]

Another quick addition to this whole situation is this:

It seems that we only have problems when we try to play a 4+player game. 3 people works fine, 2 works fine. But as soon as you try to launch it with 4 people total, all hell breaks loose. Anyone else having problems around the 4 player mark?

 

[trutch]

Me and my friend have had the same issue but with other games. We managed to solve it like this.

We found that we had 2 IP addresses. 1 for our own PC and 1 for the router. When we first tried playing Football Manager we just used our own PC's IP addresses. This slowed down the internet connections for all the other people on the network.

We worked out that this could be because when my friend was connecting he would be going through the router then off through the net and just getting directed back to the router then to me, instead of just going throught the router straight to me.

So we tried using a combination of our IP addresses for our own machine and the router and this worked and the whole thing was faster and it didn't affect the other users on the network.

When entering the IP addresses try something like:

XXX.XXX.X.X / XXX.XXX.X.X

I cant remember which way round the 2 IP addresses were and it can be a bit fiddley whether you have 2 put spaces between the slash and the addresses.

I don't know if this will work for Civ but just thought it might help.

 

[HALO_TacImpulse]

Well thank you very much for throwing in your personal experience there for me to try trutch.