I’d be grateful for any help with running Civ 4 multiplayer games across a LAN (local area network.)
My mate and I have been playing Civ 4 for years. We like to sit in the same room and chat (how ‘old fashioned’!), so we play over my LAN.
One of my computers runs VISTA, the other was Windows 8.1.
I had two copies of Civ 4 on DVD.
So far so good.
Then I foolishly upgraded to Windows 10, which will not run Civ4 from DVD.
I reverted to Windows 8.1, but now that computer still refused to recognise the DVD.
So I bought Civ 4 from Steam (since there’s no DVD, Windows will allow it.)
My mate also bought Civ 4 from Steam for his home computer and we can play multiplayer sitting in our own homes.
But we like to chat face-to-face (see above!), so I have two questions:
Will Steam allow two people (each with Civ 4 in their Steam Library) to play multiplayer across a LAN?
Is there any way to get Windows 8.1 to recognise my (legal) Civ 4 DVD?
I’ve heard that SafeDisc has been disabled on ALL current versions of Windows, from 7 on up. :mad:
However, if you have the Beyond the Sword expansion pack (very much a worthwhile investment IMHO) and it’s fully patched, the game no longer checks for the disc.
As for Steam compatibility with multiplayer, I have no idea, sorry.
I had the same issue trying to play Medieval Total War II (actually installing the Europa Barbaorum Mod and trying to play that). After much googling I found two suggested solutions - install the game outside of the program files folder (so to C:/Civ4 directly rather than C:/Programfilesx86/Civ4) or grant the game administrator privileges. I went with the second and everything seems to work (although my EB mod is stuck on an earlier patch version for some reason). Might be worth a try.
I’d be very surprised if you couldn’t play over LAN on the Steam edition of Civ 4, but I can’t say it for a fact. I’ve never seen a Steam version remove something core like that (with maybe a few exceptions for re-releases.)
