Save Empire Earth

Dear forum-goers,

My name is Josh, and I'm new here. I am not new to Empire Earth however, as I played it much when I was a kid, and I played it with my best friend (who is coincidentally also named Josh).

Here's the problem...

I log onto NeoEE, host a game, and he can get in the room just fine. When I press start game, however, it pops up the 'Connecting to game' window. When this happens, whoever is not hosting the game eventually has a tombstone (RIP) sign beside their name, and the game does not start.

I have forwarded my ports through my D-link router. It's not that (I'm pretty sure... I could have screwed it up.)

But here's the strange part. I tried hosting a test game (a random person joined, was nice of them to do) and I started the game fine with no issues.

So what's going on? Anybody know? He turned his firewall off...

Please, if someone can help, please do. I want to play EE with my friend again.

Edit: I am trying to play AoC, not regular EE. I will try regular next time I'm online with him. He's in the army.

1. Make sure you opened ports to the right IP (to your computer).
2. Make sure there isn't any firewall on the router blocking access.
3. Make sure the firewall on your computer isn't blocking access.
4. Make sure you don't have a anti-virus program blocking access.

The easy way to test these things is just turn them off -> Host the game, and if it still doesn't work turn them back on again.

If it does work, you can go into any firewall/anti-virus program and make specific rules for Empire Earth.exe to prevent any blocking.

Hope this helps.
BTW I suggest trying to fix the hosting problem asap, and not exactly when you and your friend wants to play. Login to lobby and ask people there to help you test if you can start a game.

in eec i had problems with hosting (only with a few players),
now it works fine i just disabled this Rip hosting thing.
But i think AOC has no rip hosting.

That's right, AOC is not supported for this yet. EE shows you if your port forwarding worked or not, e.g. in options tab where your IP addresses are located, there is a red arrow sign if port forwarding failed. RIP pings of players joining the game are usually also a good indicator. Make sure you forwarded 33334-33336 TCP+UDP.

Thank you, Jodocus, for your swift response. We are able to play regular Empire Earth, but we cannot access AoC. It won't start the game. I'll double-check when I get home to make sure that my ports are forwarded right, and I'll check and see if there's a firewall in the router settings preventing me from hosting. I did disable my Windows Firewall but that didn't help...

We'll have to see.