Tried everything, please help

[Yurt]

Here's the situation. Me and my friend want to play SMAC (no X) one on one on the internet. So after numerous failed attempts, here's the situation now.

Both of us have the "smacp4e.exe" patch
Both have the "SMAC_Win2000&XP_Compatibility_Update_v1[2].03f.exe" patch
Neither of us have Alien Crossfire
Both of us have the CD, no cracked game or anything

He is running WinME or some other new system, I have 98.
He has cable modem, I have DSL. I am hosting.

We both select TCP/IP Connection.

I go in and set up my game. He goes in, puts in my IP address, gets into my game and sees me there. But he never appears on my screen. I get the message that he is not responding and I have a number of choices like wait 20 seconds, drop him, quit game, or ignore, potentially fatal. I have tried all four and none of them result in anything good.

Is there anything that can be done?

[Mongoose]

Could be a firewall issue. Could be a dynamic IP issue.

If the former, I don't know how to solve it. If the latter, you might try with your friend hosting.

Suggest you PM MichaeltheGreat. Once upon a year he used to host IP SMAC games, and he had dynamic IP problems doing so. Perhaps he recalls a workaround.

[johndmuller]

If you and your friend are local to each other (or if you don't mind dropping a few bills), try a direct dial up connection instead of using your respective isp's, then you can establish whether or not you have it set up right and know what to do to get started (a little experience on a home LAN would help with the latter too). Assuming you know how to set it up, etc, you most likely have some sort of a firewall problem, either at your ISP's or in your own router(s). I don't really know how to deal with the specific firewall problems, but I believe it has to do with particular 'ports' being accessible through the firewall, which may provide a clue, either to looking in the documentation or cruising the sites looking for further help.

The AC thru router thread seems pretty much on target for you (if it gets a definitive answer at some point).

[Yurt]

Thanks for the help!