Hey,
A group of us have just started a 5 player MP game over here in Oz, we've all got good ADSL2 internet connections, but the game lags really badly if the speed is set to anything faster than normal.
2 of us are on 1 connection at one place, using a router, 2 are at another place using a router, and the 5th is at a third place.
We had a lot of difficulty setting up the port forwarding for one of the routers (players A B C see D's game, E doesn't, or AC&E see B's game, D doesn't, crap like that).
So we've been using Hamachi to simulate a LAN for the game. Even that doesn't work as intended, though; the host creates a game as a LAN game, and the others have to join it as an internet game, but with the hosts Hamachi IP address, and that seems to get us all connecting.
Back to the problem: 5 players, we haven't done before. If the speed is Above Normal, then the game lags sometimes by game days, and only catches up if someone who is not the host pauses the game. This is causing other problems - if a tech is finished in those days, then a new one cannot be started until the game has caught up.
Some people have lost techs (they don't show up as having been researched). A perfect example is the Japan player researched cavalry, we had to load from a save game after a player crashed, the Japan player is building cavalry, he can select more cavalry to build, but has not researched them, so he won't be able to get the next level of cavalry.
One player researched a tech and they just straight up don't have it, and has to research it again.
One player researched a tech (Adv Machine Tools), is shown as having researched it, but does not have the +5% industry.
Now I can fix some of these with a save edit (probably all of them). But if there's a dozen of these issues for every 2-3 hour session, then I'm gonna spend more time editing save games than playing the game (unless there's a cool save editor I'm not aware of).
Plus I'm gonna know what everyone is researching, because they're gonna have to tell me - and possible confirm it somehow - so I can fix it if it breaks.
If the war starts with this sort of lag, battles will be over before players know they have begun, fleets sunk before a player can see what they're facing, etc etc.
Is 5 players too much for the game to handle?
Is it too much for Hamachi to handle?
Is one crappy internet connection killing the game for all of us?
Would we be better trying to connect via a different program like Xfire or something? Does Xfire take care of routing and that stuff?
We've all just gotten the 1.3b patch, but the only suggestion as to what could possibly cause this is the fact that there's massively increased spying activity by the AI, and that might be taking up lots of bandwidth... but I wouldn't have thought any of it was bandwidth intensive.
Any help or suggestions at all would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Lord Akkrand
A group of us have just started a 5 player MP game over here in Oz, we've all got good ADSL2 internet connections, but the game lags really badly if the speed is set to anything faster than normal.
2 of us are on 1 connection at one place, using a router, 2 are at another place using a router, and the 5th is at a third place.
We had a lot of difficulty setting up the port forwarding for one of the routers (players A B C see D's game, E doesn't, or AC&E see B's game, D doesn't, crap like that).
So we've been using Hamachi to simulate a LAN for the game. Even that doesn't work as intended, though; the host creates a game as a LAN game, and the others have to join it as an internet game, but with the hosts Hamachi IP address, and that seems to get us all connecting.
Back to the problem: 5 players, we haven't done before. If the speed is Above Normal, then the game lags sometimes by game days, and only catches up if someone who is not the host pauses the game. This is causing other problems - if a tech is finished in those days, then a new one cannot be started until the game has caught up.
Some people have lost techs (they don't show up as having been researched). A perfect example is the Japan player researched cavalry, we had to load from a save game after a player crashed, the Japan player is building cavalry, he can select more cavalry to build, but has not researched them, so he won't be able to get the next level of cavalry.
One player researched a tech and they just straight up don't have it, and has to research it again.
One player researched a tech (Adv Machine Tools), is shown as having researched it, but does not have the +5% industry.
Now I can fix some of these with a save edit (probably all of them). But if there's a dozen of these issues for every 2-3 hour session, then I'm gonna spend more time editing save games than playing the game (unless there's a cool save editor I'm not aware of).
Plus I'm gonna know what everyone is researching, because they're gonna have to tell me - and possible confirm it somehow - so I can fix it if it breaks.
If the war starts with this sort of lag, battles will be over before players know they have begun, fleets sunk before a player can see what they're facing, etc etc.
Is 5 players too much for the game to handle?
Is it too much for Hamachi to handle?
Is one crappy internet connection killing the game for all of us?
Would we be better trying to connect via a different program like Xfire or something? Does Xfire take care of routing and that stuff?
We've all just gotten the 1.3b patch, but the only suggestion as to what could possibly cause this is the fact that there's massively increased spying activity by the AI, and that might be taking up lots of bandwidth... but I wouldn't have thought any of it was bandwidth intensive.
Any help or suggestions at all would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Lord Akkrand