trouble with multiplayer

[unmerged(54663)]

A friend and I have been trying to play EU2 multiplayer quite a bit lately, but it is getting really frustrating since the game doesn't seem able to synchronize correctly. whoever is not the server has the following problems:

A: their cash reserves are not reported correctly, this regularly leads to the computer forcing them to take out a loan when they still saw themselves having a positive treasury.

B: when they send out merchants around half of them never report a success or failure message, they just get lost.

C: colonists sometimes do that too.

D: periodicaly a stack of troops will stop responding to any orders, saving and restarting the game usually fixes this one.


I was wondering if anyone else had experienced similar problems, and if there are any known solutions.

 

[AndrewT]

Moving you to the Bug Report forum as these are not Tech Suport issues.

What patch level are you on?

 

[unmerged(54663)]

PC version 1.09

 

[AndrewT]

I was expecting you to say 1.05 or something ... these problems are supposed to have been mostly fixed by now. What's the nature of your connection? Is it local Lan or over the internet? What ping times do you get between yourselves?

 

[unmerged(54663)]

We're on a gigabit Lan at college, we're usually plugged into the same hub in my friends room. Pings from the command line are generaly reported as being well under half a second.

 

[unmerged(18425)]

A: their cash reserves are not reported correctly, this regularly leads to the computer forcing them to take out a loan when they still saw themselves having a positive treasury.

Happens when someone is out of sync. I had this once myself, taking 15 loans despite having more than 2,000 ducats in treasure A rehost will solve it.

B: when they send out merchants around half of them never report a success or failure message, they just get lost.

Lag/being out-of-sync and low tech related. If you have a good connection and high trade efficiency, it should happen only very rarely

C: colonists sometimes do that too.

Never heard about that.

D: periodicaly a stack of troops will stop responding to any orders, saving and restarting the game usually fixes this one.

Did that happen when you diplo annexed an AI country? This is a frequent bug and only a rehost solves it.
Otherwise, (if it are your own armies that refuse movement) it's connection related.

 

[unmerged(18425)]

We're on a gigabit Lan at college, we're usually plugged into the same hub in my friends room. Pings from the command line are generaly reported as being well under half a second.

When playing, are the both of you constantly playing with the same in game date? Do you notice any in game message lag? Do you both notice each other pausing the game immediately? If 'yes' at one of these questions, there's definately a connection issue, which is a bit strange given your speed.

However, do you perhaps play faster than above normal speed? Higher speeds tend to give problems in multiplayer too.

 

[AndrewT]

We're on a gigabit Lan at college, we're usually plugged into the same hub in my friends room. Pings from the command line are generaly reported as being well under half a second.

Half a second on the same hub? Boy you have some terrible comms problem, you should be getting less than 10ms.

 

[unmerged(54897)]

I am the other player in MFM's games, and he misspoke with the 0.5 seconds. The ping command just tells us the <10ms or whatever it says when it is too small to report accurately.

I'll clear up a few of the other things real quick, since I was on the recieving end of the bugs most of the time.

Pausing is always perfectly in sync. Whenever one person pauses or unpauses, the other notices immediately. We also always have the same date, as we always both move our sliders at the same time.

I know that we always had a good connection, but I never had a particularly high trade efficiency, so I don't know if the merchent problem would get less bad with good trade or not.

My armies only got stuck after diploannexing an AI country.

One thing that he didn't mention, is that combat is seriously FUBAR for whoever isn't serving.

I never collected data on it, but I will try to give a description of what happens.

First, think of a battle that should be a cakewalk (ex. twice as many troops, more cavalry & in plains, etc.)

You usually win such a battle in single player, yes?

I only win about 5% of the time. About 50% of the time I lose and the AI takes no losses. I frequently lose about 12k men taking out 6k man stacks of partisans.

I don't know what similarities there may be between EU2 and HOI2, but we have played quite a bit of HOI2 also, and we have never had problems with it.

 

[AndrewT]

First, think of a battle that should be a cakewalk (ex. twice as many troops, more cavalry & in plains, etc.). You usually win such a battle in single player, yes? I only win about 5% of the time. About 50% of the time I lose and the AI takes no losses. I frequently lose about 12k men taking out 6k man stacks of partisans.

It's hard to see how being in MP could have the slightest effect on whether you win or lose battles with the AI. Are you saying you find this different depending on whether you are host or not? We've certainly had numerous posts in the GD forum complaining about being beaten by smaller rebel forces in SP ... I kinda doubt this has anything to do with your MP problems.

One thing though, you should always make sure the slower machine is the host. If the fast one is host then the slow client will always struggle to keep up, and your issues like forced loans are symptoms of the client failing to keep up.

Another thing is, as soon as you get any glitch at all like armies being stuck or whatever, have the host do a save then both restart the game.

Have you read or posted in the MP forum here to see if anyone else is having these problems?