What's the deal with blocked connections?

[NoxNoctum]

Just started playing multiplayer Civ4 BTS for the first time.

What's with all the connection problems? Half the games I can't join because I can't connect to a player and occasionally I get a message when I'm in a game a player can't join cause of me.

Is there anything I can do about this or is it just bad netcode?

Also... there aren't that many games in the gamespy lobby you access through the game. Is there some other way people are playing MP games (other than PBEM)? Like Hamachi or something???

 

[WNxHackjobJonny]

I posed a thread just below this one about hamachi lol.

 

[NoxNoctum]

Alright so to open these ports (got them from the port forwarding thread) how do I do it?

* 6667 (IRC)
* 2033 (Civ4)
* 2056 (Civ4)
* 47624 (Directplay)
* 3783 (Voice Chat Port)
* 27900 (Master Server UDP Heartbeat)
* 28900 (Master Server List Request)
* 29900 (GP Connection Manager)
* 29901 (GP Search Manager)
* 13139 (Custom UDP Pings)
* 6500 (Query Port)
* 6515 (Dplay UDP)
* 2300-2400 (DirectPlay - UDP)

How do I do this?

I'm looking at this screen:



What do I put in each of the spaces?

Thanks.

 

[Raveologist]

Have a look at this site - http://portforward.com/

Just select your router, select the program you want to port forward, follow the guide and robert's your fathers brother

(If you use an adblocker you may need to temporarily turn it off to see all the relevant stuff)

Hope this helps


EDIT 1

Forgot to add that you need a static ip assigned to the computer you wish to port forward to, the same website has guides to do this as well - http://portforward.com/networking/staticip.htm . There is often a section in your router config page for this too.

EDIT 2

Also forgot to add that if you use a firewall (which you probably should!) The Civ4/Civ4 Warlords/Civ4 BTS .exe should be added to the exception list. If you use windows firewall go Control Panel---->Windows Firewall---->Allow a Program Through Windows Firewall---->Browse---->Go to your Civ4 installation folder (and into Warlords or BTS folder if you play either of these) and select the .exe file you would usually use to start the game . I cant remember quite how its done on XP but it should be a similar process, the same goes for 3rd party firewalls.

 

[NoxNoctum]

Yeah I actually tried that website, they don't have my router (Bountiful BWRG 500)

Do I need to put anything for local port or at the end of the ip address (where it has a 0)?

I'm a little bit confused about what to put in the local port and local address area. Is local address same as default gateway?

I filled it out like this:

TCP Remote Ports: 6667-6667 Local Port: 6667 Address: 192.168.0.10 (that's what it had under ipconfig for my IP address)

So then I went to test it at this website and it still says it's closed:

http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/

What is my external address though and what does it have to do with what I'm doing here?

 

[NoxNoctum]

bumpety bump.

This has to be Civ4's single biggest flaw. The unbearably horsehockey netcode.