I like to play private multiplayer games with one friend. We have a lot of problems with the lobby usually, but normally after restarting the game two or three times those get ironed out.



Tonight though, we loaded up and we cannot get the lobby to work. This is what happens:



Possibility 1: The box listing all of the participants is faded out and displays no information. All of the game and world settings are incorrect. The Empire Summary box always displays me as the Broken Lords (in this particular game I'm playing the Ardent Mages). Clicking the buttons to see the advanced settings brings up a blank screen. Loading the game will give me a loading screen for a random faction, and the game will not load.



Possibility 2: Everything will display correctly, except the Empire Summary will still say I'm the Broken Lords. The exception is that my friend (who hosts it) will be faded out in the participants box. Loading the game sometimes works, sometimes results in the same thing as Possibility 1.



Normally these things will happen whenever we try to load our games, but restarting our clients a few times will fix it. Tonight, one of them has happened every time we've tried over a dozen times now. My friend says everything is displaying correctly on his end.



I just want to know how to fix this. What can I do?