Opening Ports for Total War: Shogun 2 using Your Router

Total War: Shogun 2 is a Real-Time and Strategy game published by Sega released in 2011.

Total War: Shogun 2 has the following styles of play.

In a real time strategy game multiple players are fighting for control of a battlefield, usually in a top down view. RTS games can also be in a 3rd person or isometric viewpoint. They tend to involve time and resource management as well as troop and building construction.
In a strategy game the player is required to use skillful thinking and a strong focus on planning ahead in order to achieve victory over their opponent. They can be either single player against bots or multiplayer against other players. They come in both turn-based and real-time versions, the former allowing each player a chance to complete their turn, the latter having a continuous running clock without stopping. Resource management and exploration are common themes in strategy games.

Forward Ports for Total War: Shogun 2

When you are playing Total War: Shogun 2 you might need to forward some ports in your router. Forwarding ports is a useful trick in gaming because it can really help to make your network connection most stable and frequently even faster. Routers were not designed to allow incoming network requests and some games can play tremendously better if an incoming connection is forwarded through the router to the game.

Use a VPN Instead

Have you considered using a VPN instead of forwarding a port? For most users, a VPN is a much simpler and more secure choice than forwarding a port.

We use and recommend NordVPN because not only is it the fastest VPN, it includes a new feature called Meshnet that makes forwarding a port no longer necessary for most applications. With NordVPN Meshnet, you can connect to your devices from anywhere in the world, completely secure, over a highly encrypted VPN tunnel.

When shopping for a VPN, make sure that they meet the following criteria:

Your VPN provider should have a no-logs policy. This means that they do not keep any logs of any kind.
Make sure that your VPN provider has lots of exit nodes all around the world.
Check that your VPN will not affect your speed.
Verify that your VPN provider uses WireGuard as the underlying protocol.
Many people prefer a VPN provider that is not based in the United States.

This is the list of requirements that we used when we were shopping around for a VPN provider. There are lots of free, shady VPN providers out there that we looked at and dismissed.

Based in Panama, using diskless servers, and with over 6,100 servers in 61 countries, we can safely say that NordVPN satisfies all of these requirements.

Once you've set up your NordVPN account on multiple computers and enabled Meshnet, you can seamlessly access all of your devices as if they were on the same network. You don't even have to log in to your router. It's very simple.

Every time you click on one of our affiliate links, such as NordVPN, we get a little kickback for introducing you to the service. Think of us as your VPN wingman.

Before You Forward a Port

Before you can forward a port you need to know the following things:

Your router's IP address.
The IP address of the device that the game will play on: either your computer or your console.
A list of TCP and UDP ports that need to be forwarded.

How to find your router's IP Address

The easiest way to locate your router's IP address is to run our free Router Detector utility. It's a part of the Network Utilities suite of tools and it's completely free to use.

How To Forward Ports

An easy way to do this is use our Network Utilities software. It can open your ports with just a few clicks. Then when you are done you can just was quickly close your ports again. Alternatively you can do it by hand.

The general process for forwarding a port is:

Open a web browser and navigate to your router's IP address.
Locate your routers port forwarding section.
Put the IP address of your computer or gaming console in the applicable box in your router.
Put the TCP and UDP ports for your game in the matching boxes in your router.
Frequently you have to reboot your router for the changes to take effect.

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