Patch 1.52: Civ Now Unplayable on Gamespy

[DangerousMonkey]

Ever since the 1.52 patch playing civ on Gamspy has become nearly impossible. Incredible ammounts of "bad peers" have made it very, very hard to join a game. As a result it often takes over an hour of constant searching and uncessesful attempts to even get into a game.

I have a few questions for my Civfanatics brothers:

1) Have you been having this kind of trouble on Gamespy? If so, how bad is it for you?

2)Is there any method you know of that reduces or eliminates these problems, opening a certain port, messing with your firewall, downloading some obscure driver, hopping on one foot, ect? If there is, then for the love of god lets get the word out.

Until things get cleared up I guess it's IP games for me. I'd appreciate any input anybody has on this topic.

 

[vbraun]

This has nothing to do with the patch. It has to do with GameSpy screwing something up at there end.

I reccommend reading this thread: http://civ4players.proboards44.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1135360446

Here is an important piece of information from the link above:

Since my first post, and before reading these responses, I indeed DID call the Take2 support number (located in England) and they say the issues aren't with the patch, but are with the servers.

"Terribly overloaded and extra'ordinarily busy" was his quote (and apology).

he also said that, "they are working on getting more servers available in the next few hours and to please be patient with them."

So far, I think I'll "try" and trust his word as he asked, lol.

Some other important quotes:

I'm afraid that it will likely be a couple days before this is resolved with GS, as they are enjoying Christmas as well, but it is not a 1.52 patch issue, it's just a co-incidence that either GS screwed up and gave CIV less bandwidth and/or more people have bought the game. Which is not susprising as CIV is competing or won GOTY on several major sites. But please be patient it won't be a long term problem, it just happened at a bad time.

Yes once in a game CIV is still a true peer to peer game, and even while connecting, you have to connect to all players just not one server. CIV is different than C3C though in that we do maintain a connection to the "match making server" even while in the game, this is how our games are listed while inprogress(which never happened with C3C) and allows us to hotjoin without knowing a IP address(Civ2MGE had hotjoining but you could do so only by IP).

You can argue that using GS was a bad decision but Firaxis did not have any alternatives, and given the fact that GS is a requirement then Firaxis's decision to use GS's latest NAT technology to "trick" firewalls and routers into excepting inbound packets was a good idea. GS states that it's NAT technology works in 90% of peer to peer situations with problem firewalls. But the weak point of course is that if GS is the weak link then all peer to peer connections when joining staging rooms or games are difficult as the game code assumes that GS is working perfectly and tries to use it.

So the GS/CIV relationship is not a client/server model(or we would not have to worry about connection to the peers as that would be the servers problem), but not quit a true peer to peer situation either. The GS NAT technology in theory is there to help make the peer to peer model work better, but unfortuately until they add more server capability it's actually hurting us majorily.

While I can't speak to the usefulness of Civ4f, I would strongly assure folks that Firaxis is aware of the situation. They don't like it any more than we do, so place faith in that and have patience, please.

Hope this clears up somethings.

 

[Smidlee]

There is one problem clearly is cause by the patch; that's the password bug. today I couldn't get back into a ladder game along with two other players. others has mention the pw was buggy.

 

[knupp715]

I have been trying to connect to a game for the last hour and a half. After so many unsuccesful tries I decided to come here and on the home page of CFC if find this. I don't know what the problem is yet, but I hope it gets cleared up soon. I've spent probably 45 minutes on the "contacting peer" screen. When I finally got into a game I was the 3 of 5 players. Nobody else could connect to the game after me. It turns out that I am one of these "bad peers." Don't know what the problem is, I just got a new computer. I do believe however that it is gamespy and not firaxis that is responsible for all the problems. Just wanted to post my experiences, hopefully the problem will be fixed soon. For now I will have to stick to single player.

 

[Captain Howdy]

I've had the problem. I try and get on a game and if I get the peer message for more than a minute or so I just try a different game. It has'nt been too hard to find a game I can get on. I don't have specific games I want to play so its not that big a problem.

 

[CivCube]

Not a big deal for me, but I can't get in either. I'm stuck at "contacting peer" until it times out.

 

[FordPrefectA]

It is also a problem that if someone does not password their civ in a large game (~10 players), the rest of the players have to suffer while people quit and join the game throughout. There is no way to block entry to the game after it has begun. This is a problem in the extreme now, since with the gamespy/new patch problem most people just try to join and fail, pausing the game for all the players as they try.

 

[MookieNJ]

It is also a problem that if someone does not password their civ in a large game (~10 players), the rest of the players have to suffer while people quit and join the game throughout. There is no way to block entry to the game after it has begun. This is a problem in the extreme now, since with the gamespy/new patch problem most people just try to join and fail, pausing the game for all the players as they try.

The other funny thing about this is that for some reason, Civ4 allows players to join in as a civ that has already been eliminated from the game. So you're stuck waiting while someone joins a dead civ, and then have to wait again after they leave the game.

 

[Willburn]

I see the peer connecting problem every day. If i try and join 3-4 games its allmost guaranteeed to be seen in 1 of em.

Also i noticed that some people never get this at all, they can connect and will never block for other people. I have never blocked others from joining the game. Maybe this points out to that some people have faulty network settings?

In any case the software code should not allow people to block others from joining. And yes this happens when connecting to peers.

And yes please allow a option to say everyone has to have a password, its extremly annoying and sometimes abused in ladder games. If someone is loosing they can create new accounts and keep joining and leaving the game until the other players vote to scrap the game. Thereby not loosing points. (No I have not done this myself.)

 

[TheeLord]

Ive always had this problem... if I join a game, no one else can join for some reason....

 

[vbraun]

The other funny thing about this is that for some reason, Civ4 allows players to join in as a civ that has already been eliminated from the game. So you're stuck waiting while someone joins a dead civ, and then have to wait again after they leave the game.

No it doesn't. This was fixed in the patch.

 

[Megatron83]

Yup. I've noticed this problem & posted about it. There's DEFINITELY a problem w/ gamespy.

And this isn't just w/ civ, gamespy is notorious for having lots of problems online. Pretty much the only game I've ever played on gamespy and not had problems like this was Quake.

 

[Zhao]

I had this problem about 2-3 weeks back before any of the patches.... it got a little better with 1.09.... then returned pretty soon after the 1.52 patch.


However, I've had similar problems with C&C Generals which (I think) also uses the GameSpy servers - you don't get 'contacting peer' messages but it just kinda sits there and you don't connect . . .

Anyway

There was a period yesterday . . at about 2pm Australian time . . . (is that 3am in England?) where I didn't get any errors whatsoever . . but after my first game ended in a crash it wouldn't let me connect any more.

I don't know about opening up all these ports etc which people keep going on about... I've had them all open with no success - maybe it's my network device thingy?

Hope they fix it by the time I get back from my New Years trip

 

[iceviking6]

Me and my cousins started up a LAN game over christmas and experienced MASSIVE "Connecting to Peer" problems. We even reverted back to 1.09 because of it. We also saved a game, and were unable to load it again since those joining would crash.

1. If person A started the game, person B could usually log in, but person C was left starting at "connecting to peer." If peson B logged out, then SOMETIME C could get in, but then B couldn´t join.

A nightmare and a long waste of time to say the least trying to get all 3 of us connected. Anyone else experiencing trouble with LAN games?

Note: We sometimes get similar problems with 1.09 but it we always got in eventually.. with 1.52.. impossible.

 

[BulMaster]

I have no problems with my MP games then again I only play with one friend so guess we both can be contacted, a problem however i noticed is that I can't see his game every so often. Refreshing the game list doesn't help so he has to remake the game until i find it ...

 

[Willburn]

Ive found a strange effect. If you cannot join a game because of connecting to peer, then if you host a game right after it you will be joined by one of the players from the game you yourself where trying to join. There is definivily something wrong in the code...

So to say it in easy steps:
1. Fail to connect to a game because of waiting for peers
2. Host a new game
3. See in your game one of the players from the game you tried to connect to.

Any ideas why this happens? Its as if he is still trying to get into the first game.. Maybe the one player in your game is the one causing bad peer problems?

 

[hexabob]

Personally I believe that if you fail to connect and so on you should restart the game not just return to the lobby. I can assure all that this is a main concern at Firaxis right now and will be remedied very soon.

 

[Phyr_Negator]

I got that "Contacting peer/host" since the beginning and in every version - in 1.52 it just get insanely worse.

 

[knupp715]

Before I posted on this thread yesterday some people were having trouble connecting to me during multiplayer. After I posted on this thread I played MP again. I noticed that people could connect after me. I don't know if the "bad peer" problem is random or not. I find though that if you are having troubles, get out of Civ4 (maybe even restart you computer) and then get back in to Civ4 and the problem will usually clear up.

 

[Phyr_Negator]

Well, just checked now - if before you have to wait about 15 mins before you could find a game without peer problem, now you can wait over an hour and still get "Contacting peer".