mrelusive603: I think I've found a fix for anyone who's still interested.

Please refer the attached image on this post - make sure all players change their compatibility settings on your AOW executable to exactly as shown.

I've tested this on a few maps with friends and so far it's worked every time. I even did a comp-stomp on Yellow Cake with 3 humans vs all AI. No timeouts, no disconnects, just worked first time.

For anyone who can't view the attached image in my last post, here's a TL;DR set of instructions:

1. Go to properties on your AOW executable, select the compatibility tab.
2. Click "change settings for all users" at the bottom.
3. Select Win95 mode from the drop-down box.
4. Tick "disable visual themes", "disable desktop composition" and "disable display scaling" (the bottom 3).
5. Click OK on both windows to close them.

You do not need to run AOW in administrator mode.

mattanja1992: Hi, Just tried your method. Tested it multiplayer with two laptops and played all 8 Player Maps as well as two 6 Player maps (empty slots filled with AI). It seems to work, at least fixed my problem so far. Only had a disconnect in the first match, not afterwards. Thank you so much. I have been looking for years and finally have a solution!