I'm glad you have the expansion now. Thanks for picking that up Marilyn!

Mike mentioned he won't be able to join us until 8:00 Saturday night, so I say we just play without him.

Just kidding.

I'll set up a game at MSN zone (there's a link to it on the opening screen of the game). In one of the zone areas, I'll set up a game and title it "Barbarian Invasion." You guys can find me there and "join" my game.

Let me know if this works for y'all.

Okay, I changed my mind. The MSN Zone thing is harder than ever. It was a real pain to try and set up there, and even if we all could I don't know how we'd find each other. Which means we're going to have to set up through an IP adress. I can still host it, but I'm not sure how you guys are going to know my IP number.

Any ideas?

Thanks for hosting Dan.
If you have a broadband connection then your IP address should be static. You should be able to access your router via a web browser to find your current IP address. There might be two addresses, LAN & WAN IP. We will need the WAN IP address to find you. I have not tried the AE2 lately but other multiplayer games will show your IP address somewhere in the setup screen within the game. Either way you will need to email us you address when you find it. I would not post it on this blog.
If you have a dial-up connection your IP address changes each time you connect so you will need to view the properties of the connection under Windows “network connections” to find your IP.

Hope this helps.
bsmed72@yahoo.com

Cool Ben,

That helps. I started up a multiplayer game in AOE2 earlier today, just to check out the set-up. I did manage to find the IP adress. What I'll do, then, is start the game about 15 minutes early and send you guys the IP numbers through e-mail.

So you guys check out your e-mail first to find the address. Then log on and join me when you can. Early arrivers can chat in the game setup screen until everyone's arrived.

See you then!

Oh and I do have broadband, which should make things easier.

I don't have broadband, but dial-up, and I suspect I may be the only one in the group that this is the case for. Is that going to make things all bad and unfun for me?

Yes. Your guys will look as though they have been dipped in syrup and will move at 1/4 the speed of everyone else. They will all walk around with dumb looks on their faces and just say, "Dehr?" when you click them.

Actually, I have no idea what will happen.

As a side note, while I apologize that I can't start until late, I will point out that it's daylight savings time--so we'll get an extra hour...

It might be a good idea for everyone to be set up with GoogleChat or AIM or whatever chat program we want to use so that we can at least communicate if something goes wrong with setting up the IP host thingie...

Don't worry about determining your IP Devin. We only need Dan's since he is hosting. Your dial up should be fine.

Also, make sure to download and install the patches for both games.

Ben,

What's so groovilicious about these patches? I downloaded one for AOE II that's supposed to help in multiplayer (which I imagine will be useful), but I haven't been able to locate one for the Conquerors expansion. Any pointers?

Here's the wesbite for the Conquerors patch:

http://www.microsoft.com/games/conquerors/downloads.asp?f1=no

When I installed the patches last night, after each one installed, I was shown a ReadMe file which described all of the changes that the patches made - primarily removing bugs that had shown up in character behaviors, and changing a few details such as the length it takes to build a Castle, different benefits and drawbacks for different civilizations, etc.

My question is: what time tonight are we meeting to play? I haven't been able to find any comments where anyone specified a meeting time...

Dan said in the first comment of this thread, 8:00 PM PST. This was the time Mike could join in but if you guys would like to play a practice round at 7:00 PM PST I'm available.

I'll be on for that practice round, Ben. Is Dan going to host that, as well?