Unplayable LAN game

olan99 · December 15, 2002, 15:52

Hi !

I've been trying to play on a lan but I had to give up... huge lag, players being dropped, extremelly slow turns (even in the FIRST turn at the start of the game)... I've tried every mode, no difference. It's not even that we are too many, it's only a 2 persons game.

I have the latest patched version, 1.14f

Anyone has an idea why ?

I did notice that I have to go on the web to enable the 'local game', that might be why it is slow ???

Many thank

Olan

Franses · December 15, 2002, 16:14

2 person's game on a LAN and laggy? New to me unless you had a very large map and many AI players?

Is your network ok? What was the ping that was displayed?

olan99 · December 15, 2002, 16:32

ping was 1 (or something similar)... the map is standard, everything is average (with 3 computer opponents).

The mode which looks the most interesting to me is 'simultaneous play'... but is not playable at all... not sure if I should call it lag, maybe lack of sync would be better...

Olan

Janimaku · December 15, 2002, 17:05

Hi
Same with me! - I have the US Version of Civ3. I have a PIII 500 but it workes fine with civ3 w/o ptw. The main problem are the moves of units. There is a about 3 second delay in between pressing the button and the actual move of a unit on the screen. This makes the whole game unplayable!! It's AWEFUL!!
Just like olan99 there is a weired thing occuring: The computer find each other only through entering the IP address. That's pretty odd! I don't know why they can't find each other.

Bye,

Janimaku

Janimaku · December 15, 2002, 17:23

It's me again
I just tried it with hot seat. If I turn out the animation there is no delay at all!!
Ohh - another thing I forgot - the movement speed is worse on the Athlon 2000+ with 256 MB RAM which host the game. Well - I'll mess around some more ;-)

Janimaku
P.S: I got the latest version

Wittlich · December 15, 2002, 17:28

It sounds like you need more RAM. My partner and I play all the time - Huge Map, 6 AIs, 2 Human Players - and the lag is very slight. BTW, both of my comps have 512Mb RAM installed. My comp is running Win2000 Professional and my partner is running of WinXP. I hope this helps.

Janimaku · December 15, 2002, 17:54

Hi again
I just screwed around some more. Something weired just happened: I opened an internet connection at the fast computer and the "civ3 ptw"s weren't able to find each other any more. It just stopped working. I could imagine that ptw always wants to establish an internet connection which initiate conflicts with the LAN connection. When this happens, the two computers can't find each other any more. I got two network cards in my computer: One for ADSL (flat) and one for Network. I run XP. I can't really explain why and how this happens - it might be the old computer but I don't think so (the delay is much worse on the new one).
Well - so far so good
Janimaku
P.S.: I play on a standard map (4 computers) and this problem occures from the beginning of the game.
P.P.S.: The flag beside my name explains the bad language :-)

Franses · December 15, 2002, 18:23

Quote:

Originally posted by Wittlich
It sounds like you need more RAM. My partner and I play all the time - Huge Map, 6 AIs, 2 Human Players - and the lag is very slight. BTW, both of my comps have 512Mb RAM installed. My comp is running Win2000 Professional and my partner is running of WinXP. I hope this helps.

I don't think it is the RAM. I have 256MB and have played Internet games without much lag at all. In fact my LAN games were more laggy than the Internet games sofar. I suspect that it has to do with the amount of available diskspace. You need at least 600MB free according to the readme. Perhaps this is your problem?

olan99 · December 16, 2002, 09:09

I don't think it is the ram either, I have 512, there's 256 on the other PC... And we both have Gigs of free hard drive space...

I've tried again a turnless game and it was almost playable, some delay but not much. I'm however not very interested in that mode, so I'm still looking for a way around the problem .

Other question, why does it have to connect to the web to do a lan game ? Can't I stop it ? (I have to stay, even though we are on ADSL, I suspect it is the reason why there is some delay... )

Thanks

Olan

Franses · December 16, 2002, 09:52

I am not sure exactly what you mean by "we have to stay on the web". With a LAN game I use DirectIP. In that way there is no web involved afaik except for the first screen.

FNBrown · December 16, 2002, 15:07

I have similar problems with LAN games. No word from Firaxis on what they're doing about it. I have to play hotseat, or SMAC.

JimMac · December 16, 2002, 19:45

Hmmm...Register another LAN player who is disappointed with the lag.

Tried my first LAN game at the weekend. Both myself and my brother were very surprised at the lag. Its not unplayable, but the one to two second delay between pressing the key to move the unit, and seeing the response on screen takes a bit of getting used to. We have been used to much smoother and speedy responses in our other TBS games such as CTP,HOMM3 or Age of Wonders.

I hope Firaxis considers providing the option of traditional 'I-go,U-go' turn based play for those who dont want to play CIV3 in a rush, as I am sure that this will return the smoothness of play. Although this lag and the removal of the pop-ups has made for multiplayer disappointment, I still think that it has the potential to be great fun

Jim

FNBrown · December 16, 2002, 19:48

You can do "I go, you go" by making the game turn-based with the timer off.

I still have problems with the game having chronic "out-of-synch" errors over the LAN. And while I've seen Firaxis staff post on a number of issues, they've yet to address this one.

Zamphyr · December 17, 2002, 01:54

Quote:

I still have problems with the game having chronic "out-of-synch" errors over the LAN. And while I've seen Firaxis staff post on a number of issues, they've yet to address this one.

That's because the OOS error is a general error that covers various connection problems between computers. The programmers knew they would have connectivity problems and planned for it( (resynch.sav files). I would guess they don't mention it because they will never completely get rid of Out Of Synch errors. However, everytime they patch the game/improve the code, there will be a smaller chance of getting these errors. I know I got many more OOS's with 1.04 than I do with 1.14. Keep patching.

St.Vengeance · December 17, 2002, 07:20

Hi,
we experience the same lag-problems playing on a LAN, but:
Release (german) version: No problems, little lag.
Version 1.14: the abovementioned heavy lag problem.
In my opinion it's neither the ram (we all have 512+), not the disk space
(at least 40 GB), but I don't have any other idea ...
Actually we consider to return to our smooth (and beloved) SMAC sessions!

_______________
Give us SMAC II !!

olan99 · December 19, 2002, 09:33

OK, I might be flamed for that, but I'm asking anyway.... would the fact that we are playing with the same copy of the game on both pcs make it dodgy ? (as some kind of lame copy protection)

olan99

Wittlich · December 19, 2002, 10:13

Quote:

Originally posted by olan99
OK, I might be flamed for that, but I'm asking anyway.... would the fact that we are playing with the same copy of the game on both pcs make it dodgy ? (as some kind of lame copy protection)

olan99

Possibly - My partner and I play with very little lag involved in the early game - and we own 2 copies of the game. Of course, later in the game the lag gets greater, but it's still playable.

Janimaku · December 21, 2002, 09:32

Hi

I don't think so - just try a noCD crack for the version (only if you have the original) - it doesn't work :-((

Ciao

Janimaku