Race partraits/ships in multiplayer games?

[Aub]

I've noticed that in LAN-based multiplayer games (sim turns), the ships and portraits of the other people's races are random, and, moreover, they change from turn to turn. All of us customize their empires and password-protect them.

Putting other people's .emp files in my local \Empires folder didn't help.

Does anybody know what I need to do to see all race protraits and shipsets in a consistent way?

I hope people here have enough experience with mulitplayer games via PBW to answer this...

Thanks -- Aub