Timeout issue on LAN Multiplayer with Age of Empires II: The Conquerors on Windows 7
I'm attempting to connect to me and my brother's computer to play our old Age of Empires II The conquerors through our LAN connection.
The thing is sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Almost always it doesn't.
We are always able to see each others games, but when either one of us clicks "join" and the loading screen comes up, we wait 15 seconds and then see a pop-up sending us back to the main page saying "Unable to connect"
We have tried multiple things to fix this,
Set the compatibility of the .exe file to Windows Vista (Service Pack III) even though we both have Windows 7
Turned off our firewalls
Direct Connect through Static IP addresses.
Direct Connect through Hamatchi VPN tunnels.
None of these have changed anything. It still supposedly "times out" with the pop up message "Unable to Connect"
Any help would be greatly appreciated!! Sorry if it's a re-post, I've spent a lot of time looking for the solution and have been unsuccessful.
Solution 1:
Try the community-made (non-official) AOE II: The Conquerors patch, UserPatch:
https://userpatch.aiscripters.net/
This is a feature and bug-fix update for Age of Empires II: The Conquerors Expansion. Its primary focus is to correct several long existing issues with the game, the AI system, compatibility, and related elements.
Among many other fixes and improvements to AOE II: The Conquerors, including many sync and connection / multiplayer fixes, one if its core features is:
The vote panel/serial sync bug has been fixed for multiplayer.
Note that the UserPatch installer must be run with admin privileges in order for it to be able to install all of its fixes.