Vista - Vista to Vista LAN Gaming

Hi,

Ive been having trouble trying to allow two Vista Laptops to connect to each
other to play Civilization IV Complete. The first laptop is mine and the
second is my friend's.

Specs for the computers are below

1)
ASUS F3Sv
Core2Duo 2.2Ghz
Vista Ultimate
2GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce
Running Windows Firewall and CA eTrust Antivirus

2)
SONY Vaio
Core2Duo 2.1Ghz
Vista Home Premium
2GB RAM
ATI Radeon
Running Windows Firewall and AVG Antivirus

Yesterday we tried networking the computers together but couldnt get the
games to connect properly. The games work perfectly under single player.

Also, the network itself is fine. The network cable works, is connected to
the right spot and the computers recognise the network. I have set the
connection to a Private network and allowed Network Discovery and File
Sharing.

Both computers can see each other in the 'network and sharing centre' and
are connected accoring to the 'Full Map'. Also they can ping each other no
problems using both IP addresses and computer names (Although the latter
option displays some sort of wait period before the ping begins)

Other games such as Warcraft III connect easily, but I cannot get
Civilization 4 to connect by LAN.

I have allowed the program (Civ4BeyondSword.exe) through the windows
firewall and granted UDP Port 2056 access (As I believe this is the port the
game needs) but they will still not see games the other has created.

I have tried automatic IP addresses and manually setting them to no avail. I
have tried various suggestions from other forums such as disabling IPv6 and
QoS Packet Scheduling. Throughout this, both computers can still see each
other normally but cannot connect through Civilization IV

I have used the 'DirectIP Game' option to limited success though. When My
friends computer creates a game and I join it, I connect to his computer and
we can launch the game. However it drops out as soon as the game begins. If
I create the game though, he cannot connect to my PC using DirectIP.


Please Help!!

Extra conundrum

I tried something I didnt last night which was networking the laptops
wirelessly, and the DirectIP game worked no problem, which means it wasnt a
firewall problem...