PBEM and SMTP

[Darkhrse]

I want to start a PBEM game but I want to make sure I get all the technical stuff down pat before I do so.

I understand that Civ IV only uses port 25 for sending out SMTP packets. Since my SMTP is either GMail's or Yahoo's, I already know it won't work. I read somewhere that you can manually e-mail the gamestate to the next player when you're done with your turn. How exactly is this done? And if this is how I will plan to do it, does that mean I have to keep the SMTP field in the PBEM set up blank on my machine?

Thanks!

 

[thelastmccabe]

Can't provide an answer, but I use yahoo's mail, and I was wondering the same thing...so thought I'd give this a bump...

 

[Darkhrse]

I have three computers at home plus multiple yahoo and gmail e-mail accounts. I plan to experiment playing a PBEM by myself and see how it goes. I'll post the results here soon after.

 

[J_RocKeT76]

I don't use SMPT for PBEM's. If you leave the SMPT blank at the end of turn it will say it has saved game to folder.

Then you use Outlook, whatever, and just attach save. Usually saves to
My Documents/ My Games/ CIV4/ SAVES/ PBEM/ "Name Of PBEM Folder".

 

[Darkhrse]

Yeah, what J_RocKeT76 said. I just tested it the whole thing. Basically, after you've made your move, hit the Enter key to end your turn and this window opens prompting you to send the game state to the next player. Click the Don't Send button and the game gets saved in the aforementioned folder. Just send that save game via e-mail like you would any other file. Just make sure you note down the e-mail address of the next player before either exiting the game or alt-tabbing out of it.

That's it. Should be a cinch. I'm gonna be initiating a game in a few hours.

 

[StrideCollosus]

This is probably going to expose me as being really thick, but can't work out how to do it or find any related threads...

Sending the save manually works fine, but its a bit laborious. How do you configure Civ to send from within the game? Me and my adversary are both playing through hotmail accounts, is it possible to do it this way?

 

[Darkhrse]

The easiest way is to use the SMTP server that is provided by your internet provider. If your provider is say, Gruponox, then typically their SMTP server would be smtp.gruponox.com and that's that. No further authentication details whatsoever are needed.

However, if you're like me and you're mobile then you won't be connected to Gruponox all the time and therefore can't use their SMTP server. This was why Yahoo Bizmail and GMail were appealing because they provided SMTP servers you can access from anywhere in the world.

The bad news is that these providers use non-standard ports for their SMTP. The standard SMTP port that Civ IV and most other SMTPs use is port 25. I do have good news but it will require you to do some technical stuff.

I'm talking about personal SMTP software. Basically you download a piece of software and install it on your computer. Once installed, your computer becomes an SMTP server. If you've managed to do that, the SMTP server name you put in Civ IV would either be localhost or 127.0.0.1. Unfortunately, this sounds more simple than it really is.

First off, you've got to select the right SMTP for you. The right one is, of course, the one that's free (as in really free and not the kind that won't work anymore after a period of time), and has all the features you want. I recommend PostCast (www.postcastserver.com). It's free (at least when I used to use it) and it's got all the features you could ever want in an SMTP software. So you download it, install it, configure it and that's it. The SMTP server you specify in Civ IV (or any e-mail client for that matter) is localhost or 127.0.0.1.

I hope this helps.

 

[StrideCollosus]

Cheers Darkhrse, I'll give it a whirl.