Complete newbie, in a world of confusion

[DevilsAdvocate]

So, I bit the bullet and subscribed, and now I am supposed to be able to make a world?

I can run "world.exe" and get "universe connection active". Clicking on gateways gives a list but the refresh status does nothing.

I try the members area of the game to connect to my "world", and get "could not connect to this world, the server did not respond to join messages.

Tried many variations in server config, for example, tried both my screen name for civilization and for the forums, neither worked.
Tried my static ip, my router ip, my external ip, nothing works. Tried port forwarding for my PC ip address, still nothing works.

Using BT homehub 3 and less than half my brain, someone please help me get this thing up and running before I pull the rest of my hair out.

[zaroba]

-In the serverconfig, whatever port you specify in the PORT= line must be forwarded to your computers network ip address, which is usually 192.168.1.###. In windows its usually best to use a higher number, like over a few thousand due to reserved ports. No clue about your OS though.

-make sure any firewall you have installed isn't blocking the server

-any ip in the serverconfig file should be in the EXTERNALIP= line and is your external ip. It used to be needed when hosting on a lan, but it's not needed much anymore.

-Could try making a reroute.txt file for in your clients directory:
it's just a plain text file with a single line in it: external ip:port=lan ip:port

-The screenname in the OWNER= line must be your in-game name, it's only used to give you owner powers when you log onto the server.

[DevilsAdvocate]

I am in now, thanks zaroba :>)