Help! Problems starting multiplayer

Hello, I hope that someone can help me. I am having problems starting and even setting up a multiplayer game of Civ 5.

I want to play a game against a friend, but when I try to set up a multiplayer game, there is no menu to select Friends in the staging room, as identified in the instructions.

We have also tried setting up a Host Game. If we select 'private game', it is not visible to each other. If we deselect private, and try to connect, we both get the game hanging on 'retrieving host information'.

I hope that someone can help us, as we have spent a good few hours trying to get around this. We thought that by being on Steam, multiplayer would be easy to set up, but I guess that we were very very wrong!

[lovinituk]

Originally Posted by Fynbar

Hello, I hope that someone can help me. I am having problems starting and even setting up a multiplayer game of Civ 5.

I want to play a game against a friend, but when I try to set up a multiplayer game, there is no menu to select Friends in the staging room, as identified in the instructions.

We have also tried setting up a Host Game. If we select 'private game', it is not visible to each other. If we deselect private, and try to connect, we both get the game hanging on 'retrieving host information'.

I hope that someone can help us, as we have spent a good few hours trying to get around this. We thought that by being on Steam, multiplayer would be easy to set up, but I guess that we were very very wrong!

Have you tried opening the Steam overlay and from the friends list invite to game?

[Mystech]

The problems that you describe are common in games that use Gamespy.

I had the same problem with UT3 and more recently with boarderlands. I'll look online, see only maybe 5 games on the server list and can't connect to any of them, and can never even find any of the games hosted by my friends - it's atrocious.

For some people some sort of port forwarding setup usually fixes the problem but I don't know what ports to tell you to open up, and of course such a solution restricts only one computer on the network to be playing Civ 5 online at any one time.

Don't expect this issue to ever be fixed - it never has been in any of the other games which it is present and just an artifact of the fact that Gamespy is some ghetto ♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ that should have died around the year 2000 or something, and can't even negotiate the most common types of NAT setups.

[Mystech]

Originally Posted by lovinituk

Have you tried opening the Steam overlay and from the friends list invite to game?

This would only work if the game was using steam's matchaming which, for some stupid reason, it is not. Instead it's using gamespy. There is no hope.

EDIT: Actually I just talked with a friend who usually has the same problem that I do and he says he was able to join a friend's game just by going into steam and going "Join Game" - so I guess I spoke too soon. maybe that does work with Civ V. usually when a game has the gamespy logo anywhere on it that is not the case!

Another civ game, another multiplayer problem.

When I connect or host multiplayer games in dx9 or dx11, my name shows up as "]" and everything I type in chat shows up as
"]" as well. Just one character, though, not a bunch of them.

Say I need to write "Help, Civ 5 is broken on day 1." It just shows up as "]"

As far as I know, I can still play multiplayer (albeit, with some graphical glitches - black grass, etc). And single player seems to work just fine (but who only wants to play SP...???)

Please help. I want to play this game with my friends. I was already screwed out of not playing IV because I had the disk version and they had the steam version...

Thanks in advance

[Kobata]

Originally Posted by Mystech

This would only work if the game was using steam's matchaming which, for some stupid reason, it is not. Instead it's using gamespy. There is no hope.

EDIT: Actually I just talked with a friend who usually has the same problem that I do and he says he was able to join a friend's game just by going into steam and going "Join Game" - so I guess I spoke too soon. maybe that does work with Civ V. usually when a game has the gamespy logo anywhere on it that is not the case!

Steam does the multiplayer. Gamespy is only used for the mod downloads.

So yes, hosting it in private and sending invites via steam is probably the easiest method currently.

[Mystech]

Originally Posted by Kobata

Steam does the multiplayer. Gamespy is only used for the mod downloads.

Hallelujah. Can you tell I've got a chip on my shoulder? It's at the point where I cringe every time I see that dreaded middle-ware logo pop up when a game starts. Lots of ruined experiences because of that service.

Anyway I've since tested playing internet games on my own connection and it seems that even though I see very few in the main server list I'm still able to join them just fine, and indeed I can just hop right into a lobby hosted by a friend without any trouble as with any other steam game, so yay.