Article: Civilization 4 Multiplayer: The World As You Know It Is Changed

[MasterDave]

Aussie, I wish I shared your optimism. Unfortunately I have played a lot of games in the past that used Gamespy and I have never seen them actually fix a connectivity issue during the life cycle of a particular game. In most of the other games I played that used gamespy (Moo3, Homeworld 2, Kohan 2 come to mind) nobody with any kind of firewall could host the game. That never got fixed, at least as far as HW2 was concerned. I came up with a home-grown workaround for Kohan 2, but Gamespy itself never fixed that issue as far as I know.

I keep hearing about this Pitboss thing, can you describe how it is going to work?

Direct IP Civ 4 worked very well for me before the 1.52 patch, but now people are getting the same contacting peer hangups that they get in gamespy when they try to connect to me. Also, I am sometimes getting the bad peer bug when I try to join games by IP since the patch.

[blackplastick]

Originally posted by LzPrst


nonsense. I hosted and enjoyed a MP game yesterday with 8 players. people came and left a lot though, but that only shows that the system is pretty decent. it can handle people leaving (AI takes over but still, better than civ3) and returning, and even other people taking over abandoned civs. I havent suffered that myself yet, but no way the AI can mess up completely if you relog quickly.

all you have to make sure is that the correct ports on your firewall are open, easily fixed in windows. according to Soren select the exceptions tab in the firewall window, and add port 2056 for UDP traffic on the SidMeiersCivilization4.exe spot. I did this myself and it helped. couldnt connect to nearly any games or host. after, it worked like a charm.

note. I also opened some ports on my router. ask your ISP for how to do that if you find it necessary.

You can open ports all day and it isn't going to help unless EVERYBODY does it. Ports don't keep you from getting into a game, they keep *others* from getting in. Anyway it seems like it is less of a problem when there aren't many people on.

[LzPrst]

ok. I understand now. regardless though, thethe solution is rather simple... to me anyway. make sure you play with people who have open ports...

isnt that what ladder games and such are for? to get together people who want to play? people you know will finish the game?

it is not exceedingly difficult to open ports, heck, even I managed, so just require everyone to make sure their ports are open...

besides playing civ games IMO is more fun with someone you know than random pick up groups (that have a tendency to be very unstable, and often quite unpleasant).

long rant short: wanna avoid bad peers. play with people you know to be good peers

[OneFootInTheGrave]

so opening 2056 is not sorting the connectivity problems out? Does the game use other ports after the patch?

[Deity Dude]

I am by no means a computer geek so this my sound like a dumb question but couldn't they just program the next patch to open the port when starting a game and close it when finished.

[MasterDave]

It is not just the port that is the issue. There is evidence out there that Gamespy has problems with correctly reading IP addresses when NAT is involved (this is used when people on an internal network, such as myself, share single connection to the net). The NAT (or Network Address Transator) makes artificial IP's that are used internally on the network, but are not real IP #'s that external computers in the outside world will recognize. When gamespy fails in these cases, it takes the "fake" internal network address of someone already in a game and tries to have others connect to that address, which of course does not work and creates a bad peer result, effectively preventing anyone else from joining that game. This problem also affects direct IP connectivity. I have seen it happen myself lateley, where if my wife joins a game, I often get bad peered from that game and vice versa.

My personal solution is that we are getting two fixed IP's rather than using the NAT, but that does not help prevent us from hitting other bad peers due to bad firewall settings or NAT translation problems. Others more technical than myself have said that fixing this bad NAT translation is fairly simple, and hopefully either Firaxis or Gamespy will address this problem in the future.

[arvcran]

Fried - that article is very well written *thumbs up*

I have few connectivity problems.

I always find there is not enough time per turn in my MP games
every one wants blazing time limits. simultaneous movement is new to me cause it is my first time playing - it Rocks ;-).
But can be alarming since it feels like Age of Empire rather than turn based ;-). I think that on turns where you get a tech or have to manage next builds or deal with diplomacy you should get time bonuses - especially during war time (which seams to be all the time in MP lol)

Any how great game and great article!

[Deity Dude]

I hate blazing - it turns into an exercise of trying to finish your turn. I still don't understand why people want to play a game like civ and yet arent patient enough to have turns over 20 secs.