Troubleshooting Connectivity

[Kirzon-Dax]

To CanuckSoldier,

Exactly the type of response I was expecting.

I will go first in attempting to set an example that perhaps... just perhaps... you, Firaxis, 2K Games, Take2, and all of those who have a vested interest in the success of this game will follow.

I will keep an open mind! And, I will admit that perhaps your "contributions" should not be dismissed.

But only if you, and those like you, can open their clogged brains and look at this problem objectively.

CIV IV help trees all point to this site... and only now are we beginning to get some sort of response from Firaxis leadership.

As the caretakers of the CIV franchise, Firaxis/2K/Take2 have an obligation to look inward when these problems arise. Instead, we have seen a coordinated effort by these caretakers to divert attention away from their faults.

I'd really like to see more effort by Firaxis/2K/Take2 in stepping up to the plate and addressing the real problems that are being experience by many.

Since this site is such a good source of information... one that I have used since April of 2000, which was a long, long, time after I began playing CIV I, it is a shame that Firaxis/2K/Take2 are until recently, absent from conversations.

Bottom line.. CIV III MTP did not work and CIV IV MTP does not work. The last MTP CIV that did work was CIV II.

There is enough evidence to show that the issues extend well beyond any potential Game Spy weaknesses.

Stop being such a stubborn defender… it weakens your "contributions"

 

[CanuckSoldier]

If you've read any of my posts before this, you'll know that I never said that there aren't problems to solve, or that it's not Firaxis's responsibility to do so. But exactly what response did you expect when you make statements like "should be ignored by all"? A rather strong statement don't you think? But you and many others here in this thread make blanket statements that MP doesn't work at all, which is not the truth, and if myself pointing that out upsets people then so be it. The connection problems we face right now are a huge problem to the future of MP community, and I've said so to the powers that be, but it seems to me that you and others here are not putting these technical issues in any proper perspective at all. It is sometimes very frustrating getting a game set up especially with people you don't know, and don't know if they might have issues that make the situation worse, but once you do succeed in starting a MP game, which in some cases isn't as hard as other times, Civ4 MP work very well and is very enjoyable, and that part of the equations seems to be completely ignored here.....except my myself. Maybe the detractors in this thread have never played a 10 person team game for 6 hours with few problems if any, such as I have had? I'm not sure, but those are regular experiences for many not just me and is the flip side to all the difficulties with connections and the lobby. You say that you have always come here to get your civ fix, perhaps if you took a look at the home of the MP addicts you would see that despite the problems many people are still playing many enjoyable games.

Just take a look at my sig if you do want to see what the MP community is doing.

CS

 

[Phoenix_56721]

To access the GS lobby you have to open the ports it uses as well as 2056, look at the GS firewall help page for the ports

http://www.gamespyarcade.com/support/firewalls.shtml

CS

Thanks for the information!

 

[Freak101]

I am unconvinced that port 2056 is the problem. This problem only occurs, from my experience and some others I talked to, during the day at peak hours. During night time I have no problems connecting and people have no problem connecting after me.
Now today I am once again a "bad peer". Suddenly the game just decides that I am a bad peer lol and no one can connect after me but not every time. Thats proof enough for me its not port 2056. Some people may have port 2056 problems. But I think the fact the port 2056 problem doesnt appear in low use hours speaks for itself. Thats the problem in my book. Not port 2056.

 

[dob]

Just a small status update from Gamespy, 18.00, CET: Pretty much nothing except direct IP works. Complaining rampant in chat.

 

[risa2000]

if you want to change the port number on the machine that's hosting, then everyone else will need to include the port number when they connect. for example, if the machine that's hosting has an ip address of 1.2.3.4, and you've changed that machine's port to 52056, then anybody who wants to connect to that machine should enter 1.2.3.4:52056 as the address.

-ken

Thanks for the reply, this is exactly what I was looking for!

 

[peregrin641]

Hi. I'm trying to play Civ4 with a couple of friends. I am at my house, and they are both at their shared apartment. They have only one outbound IP address from their ISP. Whenever the second one tries to connect, it kicks the first one out of the game. It seems that my computer cannot tell the difference between theirs since they both have the same IP. We have tried hosting it from their LAN and my LAN, but it fails either way.

We did finally get it so both were connected by using a VPN to our university on one of the computers, but the network was too slow through the VPN to play the game.

We are trying to connect using DirectIP and have port 2056 forwarded. We can only forward 2056 to one of their computers.

Has anybody else ran into this problem? Any solutions?

EDIT:
I *THINK* I figured out a solution.

http://www.hamachi.cc/download

This sets up a VPN so we can all be on the same network. Cool.

 

[CanuckSoldier]

Hi. I'm trying to play Civ4 with a couple of friends. I am at my house, and they are both at their shared apartment. They have only one outbound IP address from their ISP. Whenever the second one tries to connect, it kicks the first one out of the game. It seems that my computer cannot tell the difference between theirs since they both have the same IP. We have tried hosting it from their LAN and my LAN, but it fails either way.

We did finally get it so both were connected by using a VPN to our university on one of the computers, but the network was too slow through the VPN to play the game.

We are trying to connect using DirectIP and have port 2056 forwarded. We can only forward 2056 to one of their computers.

Has anybody else ran into this problem? Any solutions?

EDIT:
I *THINK* I figured out a solution.

http://www.hamachi.cc/download

This sets up a VPN so we can all be on the same network. Cool.

The solution is much simpler than that, just have one of those two change the port being used to something other than 2056. Say one machine uses 2057, then you will have to set up 2056 to be forwarded to one machine and 2057 to be forwarded to the other machine. That way the host on the internet can tell the difference between the two machines despite having the same public IP.

CS

 

[risa2000]

The solution is much simpler than that, just have one of those two change the port being used to something other than 2056. Say one machine uses 2057, then you will have to set up 2056 to be forwarded to one machine and 2057 to be forwarded to the other machine. That way the host on the internet can tell the difference between the two machines despite having the same public IP.

Just to add to CanuckSoldier, the keyword is 'Port' in CivilizationIV.ini file (for source port, for changing destination port read this thread).

On the other note, should the router, if there are two hosts on the local net transmitting from the same port, do port translation as well and present those two hosts to outside network as being on two *different* ports?

Or is it a bug in game network code with source port hardcoded in UDP content?

 

[black_mischief]

Civ4 MP work very well and is very enjoyable, and that part of the equations seems to be completely ignored here.....except my myself.
CS

you are totally deluded from reality as to what a high quality multiplayer online game should be in terms of functionality and quality, and this is the primary reason why I agree with others' remarks on here that we should almost completely ignore what you are saying. Civ4 lacks in a multitude of areas, not the least of which are:

- Terrible connectivity. It just doesn't ****ing work very well, period. And if you think it does, you don't know a god damn thing about multiplayer gaming.

- Terrible multiplayer interface. A user must constantly refresh to display rooms rather than actively update which games are filling up, which maps are going to be played (if they change). You have no ability to see which players are sitting in existing rooms - disallowing you to see which friends are in which staging games already. Even simple things like automatically reconnecting to out of sync games, a tracked history of your games played/won/lost (would help to remember the names of the people to report on), an ability to see how many games a player has played in total so you can tell if the guy is really a serious player or lying about being an expert and really a noob, etc. etc.

- Horrible user-friendly. No parental controls/chat filters, no permanent ignore lists, no integration into IM clients like X-Fire, no note taking sections (to take notes on your opponents as to remember what their game play tendencies are), no ability to see how far along existing games are (that aren't new), no ability to see your ping rates to all the peers in staging game, i can go on and on. And these aren't crazy concepts. ALL OF THESE were features in AOE2, a game that is 5+ years old.

- No active ranking system. Why do you think www.myleague.com/civ4players exists ? Simply because Firaxis didnt bother or didn't have the foresight to include a ranked match system, player statistics and rankings into the game. It's just beyond stupid that players have to resort to reporting their own losses and maintaining their own ladder and that this functionality isn't bulit into the game. Any other high quality game like Guild Wars for example has it's own maintained ladder, skill rankings, etc. (http://ladder.guildwars.com) - that auto updates when ranked matches are played.

And on a final, slightly more subjective note - I think the unit balance, civ balance, way in which player points are calculated, and total game balance needs a serious review. It seems to me like this game rewards too much of the SimCity/Cultural play bullfeathers, some of the units are ridiculously overpowered or conversely underpowered, and a few civs are basically useless or really way too strong. Firaxis needs to get someone to look at game balance and not just "design what is fun", but what is also fair.

And for your info, i dont care how deeply involved you are in the Civ4 community. I've played this **** out of this game (under another name than I post here), and I know it plenty -- as well as many other online games (i'm a semi-pro gamer).

At the end of the day... this guy said it best:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3588464&postcount=76

this game was written by elementary school pupils. it's disgrace to the Civ4 franchise, but will sell 1+ M units becuz the vast majority of people just sit at home -- they all played civ2/civ3 and enjoyed the franchise, they aren't serious gamers, and don't play online that much.

bm

 

[dob]

I think comparing Civ 4 to Guildwars is kinda over the top - Guildwars is a dedicated multiplayer game, while Civ 4 is primarily Single Player. Still, that doesn't excuse the fact that Civ can't even get the very basics right - successful connections above the 50% mark should be a good first goal to aim for...

Also, the "best" balance between playstyles is also a matter of preference (and map choice) - Going all out tech / wonders / great people is a wonderful strategy if you are isolated on a continent. On Pangaea things are very different... (Usually, people gang up on the tech leader, in my experience...)

 

[CanuckSoldier]

BM, It's almost impossible to know were to start with such an amazingly polite post, but I'll try none the less.

1. Yes connectivity sucks right now, but Firaxis is working to fix that as we speak, still it's no were near impossible to start a game, just difficult.

2. The interface doesn't auto update because that was a bug in ver 1.00 that caused the list to constantly scroll out of control with all the games changing, so in 1.09 they changed it to update on command only, you can't have it both ways.

You claim to have played this game extensively under a different name(god only knows why you need to hide, but anyways), so I find it hard to fathom that you haven't noticed that if you hover your cursor over a name in your friends list a popup tells you exacting what game or staging room they are in, and you can chat with them in a staging room.

As for your other interface points I can only say that all of us Civers that contributed ideas to the functions in this game never thought that they were as important as you do, and I'm talking about civers from every major fan sight and dicipline.

3. Yes parental controls would be nice, as our interface is only able to use what GS has, it's likely that that is a limiting factor, having used Arcade for years I don't think it even has parental controls. I'm not sure why you'd even want a integrated IM, you can chat to people in the lobby and in staging rooms, and being pm'd in a game is the last thing you want when you are playing. I've even tried xfire myself and I see nothing it can possibly add to a peer to peer game like Civ4, as it stands now. Yes it would be nice to see pings in the staging rooms an I'm sure that is on the wish list. Not sure why you need to know how far along existing games are, if you didn't start in the game you likely are not invited to join it anyway. Info on players, atleast for me, is a simple matter of a piece of paper and pen, and even if you had statistics they are hardly a true messure of skill in any system, but C4P does allow you to look up our players to atleast see how many games they've played, if avoiding noobs is what you want.

4. I have no idea about what Guild Wars was like or what worked well for it. Firaxis did have plans for a simple stats tracking ladder at one time, but when resources got slim in the development cycle it fell to the side, maybe it'll resurface in an XP, I don't know. But in reality, the Civ community has never needed that, did the ladder for Guild Wars have tournaments run by the company? Or moderated forums? Or unique Clan/team events? Not to mention the well run SP events like Diplo games and Games of the Month. I know Firaxis was in no position, being a small company, to offer this totoal package for it's customers, which is why the fan sites exist and take over all these functions. If you don't like them then don't use them, but we are just Civers offering a free service for other civers, you can't go wrong with that.

5. Yes game balance is very sujective, so I'm certainly not going to discuss it here in any depth. We did put alot of effort into game balance, it may not suit your taste, but then you seem to want Civ to just be a strategic war game, well that it is not, it's a strategic civ building game, that contains a military option. If all you want is a war game there are many other better options for you on the market right now. They are lots of discussions on units, techs, culture, religion etc, such as people thinking that unit X is to strong on 1v1 deul maps, well that may be true but you can't change things for your favourite style of game either, the game balance was designed to be as fair and fun across the entire Civ experience.

In the end we are unlikely to agree on much, but atleast I've refrained from name calling So lets just agree to disagree.

CS

 

[tals]

I think comparing Civ 4 to Guildwars is kinda over the top - Guildwars is a dedicated multiplayer game, while Civ 4 is primarily Single Player. Still, that doesn't excuse the fact that Civ can't even get the very basics right - successful connections above the 50% mark should be a good first goal to aim for...

Also, the "best" balance between playstyles is also a matter of preference (and map choice) - Going all out tech / wonders / great people is a wonderful strategy if you are isolated on a continent. On Pangaea things are very different... (Usually, people gang up on the tech leader, in my experience...)

And GW is boring as .... lets just not go down there

I'm obviously playing a different game or maybe I just stick with direct connect/pitboss and don't go the gamespy route as I have very few issues with the MP (not lost a connection or had an issue connecting) and find it tbh very good. If I have an issue its with the problem of connecting to a game when someone has their firewall configured incorrectly - I think it effects pitboss more.

Tals

 

[risa2000]

I personally take Multiplayer in Civ4 as "nice to have" feature, but the main selling point (in terms of both selling figures *and* fun factor) I see in single player.

It is easy to compare with MP games, which are multiplayer form day one (or day two), some well known FPS like Quake franchise, Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike etc. come to mind, but I guess it is not easy or cheap to do solid, robust and fully featured MP and corresponding support (in terms of ladders, servers, etc.).

I do not have experience with Civ3 or Civ2 MP (if there was one), since I played Civ3 only shortly, but Civ4 MP reincarnation seems to me as the first attempt of serious magnitude rather than a final solution. It would be honest to say, I do not see much room for MP in Civ4 (not because the game is bad, but because the gaming mechanism is not suitable for intensive experience - compared to either FPS or RTS genre).

That said, today I played my second game with friends using Direct IP without any major problem (except several messages of "Waiting to hear from player XXX"). It did not crash in six hours, which I find promising .

 

[tals]

We're all different - if Civ IV hadn't had MP then i'd not have got it and developing it further pbem and pitboss were big draws for me - but then that is probably obvious in my posts

 

[Firegiver]

Are you guys just lazy or plain incompetent? Its like more then month this bad peer problem exists and there is still no solution... Hire some new programmers please.. Turnbased stragie games can't be so hard to make lol.

 

[dob]

The peer problem has been around since launch even - just got wose with 1.52...

 

[CanuckSoldier]

Are you guys just lazy or plain incompetent? Its like more then month this bad peer problem exists and there is still no solution... Hire some new programmers please.. Turnbased stragie games can't be so hard to make lol.

Of which 3 weeks were a well deserved vacation, they have been working on the problem for 2 weeks and there is progress, more than that I can't say.

CS

 

[CanuckSoldier]

We're all different - if Civ IV hadn't had MP then i'd not have got it and developing it further pbem and pitboss were big draws for me - but then that is probably obvious in my posts

I'm with Tals, no matter how much better the AI is in CIV than it was in C3C, it's still not a challenge for very long. Civ doesn't have a great MP record for sure, and CIV is the first time Firaxis has tried to integrate it OOTB, and there's still room for more improvements but CIV is still a very enjoyable game to play with your friends and I wouldn't trade this unique TBS MP game for any RTS or FPS MP game.

CS

 

[dob]

Of which 3 weeks were a well deserved vacation, they have been working on the problem for 2 weeks and there is progress, more than that I can't say.

CS

That's great to hear! As an aside, anything on the bug where the game launches successfully, but the turn timer never starts, you can't move units around, etc? Really annoying, especially if you got a good starting location!