Detailed description of the requirements for playing MP!

[drthreepwood]

Dear K2 & Firaxis

We have played Civ5 MP on LAN with great success. The setup was three PCs connected to one router, and we played for more than 10 hours without a single dropout.

But when the same three PCs play Civ5 MP over the internet things goes bad! We can host/join a game, but after some time (approx 30 min) the two clients were disconnected. The internet connections are 20MBit/s down and 1 Mbit/s upload and totally stable and with disabled firewall.

Joining a host game is buggy, but after some attempts we succeded.

We have searched this forum and google for a solution, but unfortunately, I have only found some empirical “Trial and error” description of similar cases. We have tried all the empirical solutions such as disable IPv6, force all to use the same version of directX and so forth.

So it is time to get some detailed description from Firaxis/K2 of the internet requirements for playing Civ5. In such a way, that we can have a checklist of requirements before starting a MP game!

Since we are able to play for 30 min. my guess is that the problem lies in some timeout problem. A quick network analysis shows, that civ5 and steam are using a lot of UDP connections. Many routers/ISP are normally closing UDP connections if the connection is inactive for a few min. Can this be the case/problem, or do Civ5 reestablish closed UDP connections?

Please, Firaxis/K2, provide us with a detailed description of the requirements for playing MP and how civ5 deals with UDP connections.

BR,
Morten

[civdiss]

maybe playing with 3 PC's from the same connection over the internet is very demanding..did you try to play over the internet with just one PC? good to hear that the LAN games didn't have any technical issues

[drthreepwood]

We use three internet connections, where each connection has 20MBit/s up and 1MBit down. We use two different ISP in Denmark and we are within 10km ~ 6. miles in distance for each other. I did not measure the round-trip time, since K2/Firaxis don't inform us with requrements! Anyway, I don't believe that the problem is due to round-trip time or bandwith.

In our setup, we played (or tryed!) by hosting Internet MP and with "Host Private Game" on. Then invite the two others via steam menu by press control-Tab.

BR

[Mike117]

Multiplayer is broken...

Maybe someone should try playing LAN on internet with a VPN.

[Beliathon]

There is only one requirement to play Civ V MP, and it is very simple:

Wait for Firaxis to actually finish it.

It should be obvious to everyone that what we currently have is an alpha state (at best).

[shozum]

There is only one requirement to play Civ V MP, and it is very simple:

Wait for Firaxis to actually finish it.

It should be obvious to everyone that what we currently have is an alpha state (at best).

Not even given a rough guesstimate either on when these issues will be addressed.

[civdiss]

Not even given a rough guesstimate either on when these issues will be addressed.

no but I am guessing after Christmas, hopefully before Easter