Hello!

I have a problem hosting/joining games in Sins Entrenchment 1.041.

I have 2 problems (not sure if these are connected or not):

1. I'm trying to play a game with my friend through Direct IP connection. Without changing any settings there are 3 scenarios how the things can go:

  1.1 He connects to my game immediately and we can play. (this, currently, happens pretty seldom)

  1.2 He can't connect to me. He waits for a minute or 2 and just doesn't get into my game. (this happens most of the time). During these periods I can't connect to his games either.

  1.3 He can't connect to me immediately, but after some time (~30 seconds - 1 minute) he connects. Sometimes he disconnects while we're still in game start menu (he doesn't see the settings I'm changing, we don't see the messages from each other in the chat) (sometimes, this will occur between 1.2 occurences...). During these periods, if I try to connect to his game - I get the same problem, I connect only after a long wait and get disconnected quickly.

This friend of mine lives in another country (I live in Latvia, he - in UK). I didn't have a chance to test extensively, but when once we've tried to play with another friend of mine, who lives near me - the game worked.

2. This issue - is with ICO. Connecting to that is a pain. 4 scenarios here (which lead me to think that these issues are somehow connected...)

  2.1 Very seldom the connection goes through quickly

  2.2 Usually I just can't connect and after some time get the message "Disconnected from ICO"

  2.3 Sometimes I connect after a long wait (1-2 minutes) - I haven't tried to play a game, so I'm not sure if it'd disconnect with time or not.

  2.4 Actually, it's almost impossible for me to:

     2.4.1 Login to ICO

     2.4.2 Logout from ICO manually

     2.4.3 Login to ICO again

  in a row. Even if the first connect happens, the second one fails 90% of the time.

This 2 problem is what leads me to believe, that the problem is on my side. My friend can connect to ICO freely.

In all cases, I can run netstat -aon and see the connections on relevant ports (6112, 7000, some loopbacks) as Established, at least for some time.

I've read the technical FAQ and tried to follow the steps there.

I have a router, which I'm pretty much familiar with. I've set up the forwarding, the UPnP, and, actually, I've tried to remove the router totally. The effects still persist - the game is playable very rarely.

My next suspicion is my ISP, but I'm really not sure what can I tell them, if sometimes the game works.

I've tried reinstalling the game to another OS (Vista, currently - I'm on XP). switching off firewalls and skipping router completely. Nothing makes the problems go away...

Obviously, I don't have any problems with other games (Civ4, Borderlands to name a couple)

I have some WireShark capture logs, which show my attempts to log into ICO, but I don't see how I could attach these. Also, while they look as they could shed some light on what's going on (they reflect the way I can/can't connect somehow) I'm not experienced enough to interpret these. If anyone is and is ready to - I can try to put them on my private web server/upload these somewhere/send these by e-mail.

I would be very grateful for any help, for for now the game is totally useless to me, which is a real shame.

Thanks in advance!