LAN party using VMWare on old games.

Ok so me and some friends meet up and play older video games or newer games together from time to time. There is one game that we really want to play and just cant figure out how to go about doing it. Its AOE3 (ages of empires 3).

We can only seem to get the game to work on xp using VMWare. I have windows 8.1 pro x64 they have windows 7 ultimate x64

How can we set up VMWare, game, and network to be able to play AOE3 in a LAN party? Everything we try to do ends up with no one being able to see the host in game.

Only input I can offer is once you're in XP in VMware Player you just set everything up like you normally would including the host. There are network settings in Player than may make a difference such as Bridging, NAT, Host....etc. You may have to experiment a bit to see what, if anything, works.

Excuse me for not being completely up there, I am unaware what VMware is ? However we all play AOE3, we have it on computers running XP, 7 & 8/8.1. We used to play it using an ad hoc wifi connection, a little more difficult to do once I got Windows 8 however this was most helpful just be sure to disconnect from any internet connections before starting the hosted network) -

How to set up Virtual Wifi in Windows 7 - Spiceworks

That works fine for us. Until my little sister also got a windows 8 laptop computer and for some reason we can't get the two laptops to connect ? Mine is now 8.1 and hers is still just 8 (I think those are how the numbers work, hers came standard I did the free update on mine).

We can also play AOE3 on a Netgear Switch (5 ports) that I recently bought to try and solve the above issue (which it hasn't).

Send me a message or something if I can provide more info that might help you with your problem and nice to meet another AOE3 player !!