Tips for those having trouble with MP

Here are a few pointers I have found to ensure optimal performance, at least until the netcode gets polished a bit.

-Make sure you download 1.04f, this is a must!
-Don't play games with anyone whose ping is greater than 200, if there are some high ping players in your room, politely tell them what the situation is, and then boot them.
-If you are behind a NAT router, don't try to host right now.
-Don't play games with any more than 4 players or so, too many players right now will cause the game to hang in the transition from the staging window to the setup window. One day we will have likely have 24 player matches without hiccup, but for now, keep things at 3-4 players. In fact, I have found that 1 vs 1 with a bunch of AIs is probably your best bet, but if you have to have more people, keep them at 3-4.
-Play on smaller maps, to ensure optimal performance and more lively games with fewer people.

If you do all these things, you should look forward to some extremely fun and exciting MP games while things get polished up a bit on Firaxis' front.

 

Here are some additional tips provided by KittenofChaos and Coldfever.
Try to play people who are on the same OS...the best from my experience of beta-testing since June is Windows XP.

Windows ME in my opinion isn't really compatible with PTW...


I recommend using MSN or some other instant messenger device to talk to people you are playing with, crashes in the early stage could break up a game quickly.


If you try more people than 1 VS 1 make sure you all have a ping lower than 200 with all players and preferrably lower.


Also: the host player should have the most powerful computer (of the people playing), the host player suffers most slowdown and having a computer with alot of RAM can really help rectify this.



All this points to it being better to organise games outside the pathetic "lobby" and have some other means of "match-making" players.



Advise to newbies to the mp fun: defend your cities and settlers or I will attack them and you will give in

If you do PBEM try to play a scenario were there is alot to do each turn, or the mass regicide option (humans only for best results).

Passing a save file around when people have only pressed enter is boring...lets hope some nice fellows putout some great ww2 scenarios soon.
I only have a minor thing to add: with few people it is more fun to play on a PANGEA world, as you do not have to play until Navigation to meet each other via oceans - one massive continent usually is more fun to play on short games with few people.

 

If someone wanted to sticky this, I wouldn't hold it against them.

 

UPDATE-
The only games that seem to be working on a reliable basis are two player games, that is only two human players, but with a few AI civs.
So don't try any games with more than two human players. Try a small pangea map with another human and two or three AI civs.

Don't worry though, Firaxis will get this patched up in no time.

 

You are joking right? What is wrong with ME?

CG

 

thats the funniest thing i have ever heard

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I havent got PTW... but in any MP game that takes a lot of ram, all players should turn off most software that access the internet. A large amount of uploading is required in MP and even a few kb counts.

 

More tips:

Only try to play with your next door neighbor and only if you both have pentagon sized mainframes and only if we are in a relatively sunspot free part of the solar cycle and only if you haven't eaten anything in the past 24 hours.

Another option is to load Civ2 Multiplayer gold and paint a 3 over the 2 on your monitor as it loads up.

Sorry for grumping, but you should see the profanity on the actual MP chat.

 

one more thing: if you have disconnection problems try to disable any antivirus-software. On my machine I had to disable "F-Secure Antivirus" to play without frequent ingame disconnections.

 

Oh, it's not that bad - I hear the Notepad application is sometimes stable enough to allow you to write a letter to Microsoft asking the above question.

 

A couple of questions:

1. What is "ping" and what does it mean to have a ping of less than 200? Why is it bad to have ping>200?

2. What is a NAT router? How do I know if I'm behind such a router?

 

Ping is an averaged measurement of how fast data travels from one computer to another - it is measured in miliseconds.
If you have a ping of 200 to the host, it means data will have to travel for 200 ms. to reach the host computer. This is what causes 'lag', or slowdowns when playing over the net - usually a lot of data has to travel back and forth between computers in a multiplayer game.
Basically, if you press the 'move' key, your computer might have to send that information to the host computer, which then checks to see if anyone else has moved into the square you are going into, and then sends the information back to your computer before the actual move is carried out - so theoretically, you'll be waiting 400 ms (200 out, 200 in) before your unit moves.

A router is a piece of hardware, also known as a hardware firewall. Usually if you don't know that you have one, you probably don't. Unless you're on a shared connection, in which case you might be behind one.
One (not very reliable) way to check is to go into the command prompt (click Start and then Run, and in the 'Run' box type 'Command' and press OK - an MS DOS prompt should open an then you type 'IPCONFIG' and press enter.
If the IP-Adress listed there starts with 192 or 10 (i.e. 192.xxx.xxx.xxx or 10.xxx.xxx.xxx) you could very well be behind a router.

I have to disagree - running any kind of internet-active program in the background is only likely to cause you more grief than relief. If you need a backup form of contact, use email

 

After last night, I'd say most of that makes sense. The one thing I'd be frustrated with is not even knowing what my ping is; you can't see it on the screen when you join, so you can't even be polite and bow out...

But I should be ok on the Atlantic seaboard with a DSL. LOL at folks with ping values of 1700+ last night once I figured out what that meant. They must have been in Johannesburg or something.

R.III

 

I knwo winME is not the best (maybe the worst) but does PTW work in it at all?? ot not neather MP and SP?!

 

PtW worked on my Windows ME machine; I haven't tried MP with it since a friend is currently adding RAM to that machine (128 MB just doesn't go as far as it used to) and customizing it for me. I haven't had any major problems with my Windows Me machine and have had it for over 1 1/2 years.

I am concerned about having to disable stuff like AV and Firewalls to play MP. I have been hacked too many times to want to disable those items.

Another issue not mentioned is that some ISP's block some of the ports that need to be open (Port 80 for example is blocked by Cox Communications to prevent customers from using it to web host/serve, and they will not unblock it: I asked). Check out the readme:

Multiplayer Hosting Troubleshooting:

* If a player is behind a firewall, and they're attempting to host an internet game, it may be necessary to open specific ports that the game uses. These ports are:
6667 (IRC)
80 (HTTP)
27900 (Master Server UDP Heartbeat)
28900 (Master Server List Request)
29900 (GP Connection Manager)
29901 (GP Search Manager)
13139 (Custom UDP Pings)
6500 (incoming, UDP, default roomquery port)

* You cannot host an internet game behind a firewall that is using Network Address Translation (NAT).

 

To expand on what Isak said, a 500 ping means a half a second delay minimum for every action that you do. This is a long time.

 

Thanks kring- very interesting, still beyond me though...
When do you write in a specific port?

erez - I am sure it is not an issue with ME - everyone has had problems so far.

It is utter BS to see people in the chat room constantly saying "what OS do you use?" when trying to start games. If it turns out that we have to synchronize our OS's then the game is for the trash. I have never heard of that being an issue before, and it is not professional at all.

 

Extra tip:

Don't play on a LAN with a ping under 20ms as you will get fubar timing issues and the host computer has to wait 3 seconds or more every time he wasnt to do anything.

Example.
You want to move 10 units 3 spaces each

10 * 3 * 3 = 90 seconds it takes you.

aaaaaaaaargh!

Does Civ3 Support dedicated servers?

 

I also turn off all animations, IMO, it runs better then and less out of syncs.

We tried Roger Wilco & BattleCom , both voice-chats. I think they're free/shareware. Easy to set up and password-protect. RW worked best, in the config, set the modem-speed to 56k, it's still good enough.

 

Henry_X, there is voice chat built-in. No need for any other voice chat software.