I wish there was a way to search for pantheon games WITHOUT or, for some people, with AI bots.  Then those who want them, have them, and those who don't, don't.

Pretty much everytime i try to join a custom game using Impulse, im able to connect to everyone pretty quick but once i sit in the lobby for a few minutes waiting for more people ill get a "Disconnected from Nat Faciliter" Msg. It ussually happens right as someone else joins the game.

ive played a few games using Gameranger and it works fine, no lag or anything. Ive also checked all my ports with that port checker program and they are open.

Not my post, but I ran across this while browsing.
http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=1707819&postcount=855

It's not just ports being closed. There's active crazy going on.
I had things configured to forward 6112-6132 on my external IP to my PC. I see traffic coming in on ports near 21690, however, which is then blocked by my firewall.

Turns out that my PC was sending traffic out on 6112 to an external host X, which then went through the NAT layer, and was translated into port 21690 on my external IP. No problem; if host X sends traffic to port 21690, it'll go back through NAT translation and be delivered correctly.
I'm seeing traffic from host Y going to that port, however, which isn't going to work.
Apparently host X contacted host Y, and told it to contact me on port 21690. This is sane and reasonable in a world without NAT. In a world with NAT, it's lunacy.

So, it turns out that you don't just need to forward some external ports to your internal machine. You ALSO need to disable port remapping on those ports for outbound traffic. Which I have now done--except that I'm still having connectivity problems, which may be because I missed something or may be because other people in the matches I join haven't configured things correctly.

In other words, Raknet and NAT punching is failing miserably in some cases atm.
Something like this really needs to be looked at by your network dudes.

Yeah, I've seen this too.

My connectivity issues are kinda inconsistant, and are perhaps best demonstrated by a Pantheon match it tried to set up for me yesterday:  There were 6 players including myself.  4 of the players successfully connected to everyone else.  Myself and one other player successfully connected to those 4.. but then when it came to connecting to each other, it (eventually) "failed to connect".

Unfortunately this happens quite often (though not always quite so frustratingly close to success).  It doesn't stop me getting into games entirely, but thus far I've yet to manage a game with more than 4 players - I can almost always connect to at least one player, and usually more than half the players, but there's almost always someone (who's often also connecting to most players - it's not just "poison pill" types) that my connection fails on, scrapping the game.  Generally if I actually get into a game it's pretty smooth from there (sometimes one or two people disconnect near the start, but not sure if that's deliberate on their part or not - only once has it disconnected everyone leaving me with just AIs).

I generally have more success with Pantheon/Skirmish than I do with Custom (though I usually give up early with Custom due to how laggy the game list feels, and I'm convinced that half the time it tries to put me in a game other than the one I selected).

I've got my router forwarding ports 6100-6200 and 6073, I've set the impulsereactoroptions to use that port range, I've set Zonealarm internet zone to medium (on high I get alerts clearly showing UDP attempts being blocked from other players on the relevant ports, on medium I don't get any), and I've checked with portchecker that the relevant ports are open.  I've also tried shutting down Zonealarm completely, and setting my router to have me as DMZ, but neither (or both) have any discernible impact on my success rate.

I live in USA midwest w/ comcast cable, ports open and forwarded. Standard modem (w/ voip phone service) + Router

Here's my experience:

1.) Pantheon: about 3 times out of 5 I can get into a game after about 5 minutes of letting the game "do it's thing". However, usually one or two people get dropped right before the game starts and is replaced by AI. The team that has to rely on AI is at a supreme disadvantage because the AI is pretty weak in my opinion. However, Pantheon matches are otherwise a ton of fun. I will occasionally get the "d/c'd from NAT facilitator" which is not fun.

2.) Custom games: Often I will get the "unable to Join game" message, I assume because it's full. However, if I can get past that to the "connection info" box then I have no problems connecting to other players however it still seems about 2 out of 6 people have problems connecting to others and it slows things down and sometimes the game is aborted. If I can make it to the "pick your Demigod" screen, then the game usually fills up and works. Overall the process is slow and tedious.

3.) Skirmish: I've only been able to get this to work once or twice and most of the time I am just waiting forever without a game being established.

4.) LAN: works just fine w/ me and my son. He's six and thinks the game is cool and loves the Rook.

5.) Solo: obviously works fine but the opposing AI is pretty bad, the heroes usually just get themselves killed by getting too close to my towers.

==============

Bottom line: I've had most of my online success with Pantheon and when it works, it is fun. However, it still has a limited success rate and no matter what, starting a game is slow.

The game is great from an art, graphics, and gameplay standpoint, so I'm sticking with it.

I've been doing just skirmish games, until today, which were working fine, but now I've been trying Custom games which connect fine, have no problems, but after 15-20 mins every game I get DC'd.

Been pretty annoying, as it doesn't happen right away, so I'll be well into the game, and right when it's getting good I'm DC'd  

No idea what could be causing it, as I do skirmish and pantheon games just fine, 30+ min games.

Hi guys,

I just wanted to chime in here and thank you for the great feedback here.

I think it's pretty obvious that some pretty bad assumptions were made regarding NAT fascilitation being some sort of end all, be all.  

Clearly, a better route is going to be the UDP proxy where your connectioin is reflected from a nearby server between you and the other player. Then you don't have to directly connect and it should (I hope) dramatically reduce the pain some of you are experiencing.

It IS a lot of fun but it will be a lot more fun when it doesnt take 15min to start a game that takes 15-40min.

Just to hammer home the point, here is a screen of the game, approx 1:30 into the movie you'll see what i mean (top right = trace route, red = packet loss. Bottom right, bandwidth monitor)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARIdeu5tK-0

Game is fine....then splurge, saturates upload (resulting in game freeze) then 2 seconds later, fine.

STICKY THIS PLEASE

It is probably the best way you guys will know what problems people are having and it is also the only way the community can contribute the helping solve the connectivity issue but it always ends up in the bottom of the page which it shouldn't.

cant play any multi player game. when i try to join a custom it says connecting to players, in the connection window, my name has not connected to anyone yet, and there are no other names.

 when i try pantheon i get a match is attempting to be made but not completed, then im disconnected from the nat facilitator

tried pantheon again.match is attempting. all 5 names not connected with anyone yet

no one attempts to join a 1v1 game i host. connection info still reflects the pntheon game i gave up trying to get into.

Since buying the game a couple of days, I have managed to get into 3 games from about 30+ attempts. I have a T-Online, Germany 50mbit connection. I have forwarded all the relevant ports on my router, run no software firewall and generally disable most background tasks when I am running a game.

Normally, I get the NAT Facilitator error about 70% of the time when trying to connect to a custom, skirmish or pantheon game.

I occasionally get disconnections from the lobby that I get through to with "Connection to host lost" after a few minutes of hanging around in it. However, I can normally reconnect to that lobby with no problem.

Some of the time, I get told I cannot connect straightaway, this happens to all custom games in the lobby. I then have to log out and relog back in and I can try again.

It seems strange but the lobbies I manage to hit seem to be mostly US rather than the EUs I try.

Hope you can get this resolved soon, I think this game looks really cool.