Dear fellow players of EB,
The mission has been successful. I have successfully played an online battle of EB using the built-in Gamespy network. Because I don't expect many people to play EB online, I won't recommend any prefixes to usernames, such as [EB]. Just to recap, so far in all our attempts, the only successful means of multiplayer have been Gamespy and Hamachi, with Hamachi being the 16-user limiter. Hamachi also doesn't work for Rome: Total War and any of its modifications if you are on a restricted network such as myself (@ a school network, for instance). Hamachi also requires adamant administrators. For this purpose I have been administering my own Hamachi network, constantly checking for frequent offliners and freeing slots for other players, not that there are many to be honest.
To join my Hamachi network you don't enter in a network name, but rather an ID number instead. The ID for my network is 031-664-896. You enter it in the same box where you would enter in a network name. The password is "eb" (without quotes).
To see the game I played with my friend over Gamespy, download the replay. You will need to run EB in multiplayer mode to playback the replay correctly. If you haven't already set up your EB MP version to have the Load Game option (as EB MP does not have this by default), you can download the EB MP Load Replay Mod. It needs to be placed in the 'mp edu backup' folder inside [RTW Root Installation Directory]/EB. You may want to copy your original Rome.lnt file that's located there so that you can revert back to it as I am not responsible for any damages this may cause (mind you, I have been replaying files for ages).
Thanks,
Vartan
EDIT #1: Major update. You can still play EB online using Hamachi no matter where you are. This problem, solvable, may still occur to you even if you are not at a restricted network like a school network. It turns out that our old nemesis, the 'disconnect' trick, is back. Go to your EB main menu, unplug your ethernet cord, go to LAN lobby, plug back in your ethernet cord, and you will finally see the other lobby members. And unfortunately, yes, you need to do this trick every online gaming session.
EDIT #2: I played two more games today. In the first game I was playing as Hayasdan against AS (a loss, also against the aforementioned player). The second game was an FFA between KH (myself), SPQR (SlickNicaG69) and Saka (Jirisys), in which I lose, Jiri leaves the game prematurely and Rome loses. The AI Saka prevails. Gamespy has not disappointed. The only catch? Make sure you're using the MP version of Europa Barbarorum. If you're using Steam, launch using the MP (multiplayer) shortcut. It will fail. Ignore the message. Proceed to launch using Steam (and the appropriate launch settings of course), and you will be in MP mode. If you play in SP (single player) mode, the game you wish to join will show up as incompatible.
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