Fall From Heaven II PBEM - skilled players

Hi, I am interested in starting a FFHII mod PBEM game. FFH is a fantasy civ mod, for anyone who is not acquainted, the thread is here.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=171398
FFHII requires BTS.

I would prefer players who will be able to hold their own, militarily and economically.

Experience in Fall From Heaven is not necessary, I personally have only played a few single player games in it, a while ago.

Here are the most likely settings.

Players: 4-7(maybe more, more is better imo, but I want the game pace to not be too bad.
Map: On the smaller side, Tiny or Small probably, unless we get more players.
Map Type: Most likely one landmass, or at least land in range of triremes
No tech trading.
Villages on, Barbarians on.
quick or normal speed.
MONARCH or EMPEROR difficulty(mostly depending on whatever is more balanced), this is to increase unit and city maintenance, to balance conquest/expansion versus peace/turtling. There are no happiness or health penalties so the game is mostly the same. Less skilled players could perhaps play with 1-2 lower difficulty levels than others.

If enough players are receptive to the idea, there will be some role playing emphasis in the game. Meaning, you need justification for wars. There are Good, Evil, and Neutral civs, so players should loosely act in that way (good civs more honorable, evils backstabbing, Good + Evil alliances are okay, if there is good reason... and trade is not prohibited).

Post here if interested!

I would like to try. Not sure if I am "skilled" enough for it and have not tried this mod but it looks good.

I am of the mind that less is better than more for a PBEM but the size is up to you (more people, more delays, more drops...). Vacation coming in July too.

well you don't have to be a pro, I guess a good measure would be you win prince games with ease, near 100% win rate (I personally do pretty well on Emperor, haven't tried deity).

and have MP experience, or feel you otherwise understand military pretty well and can stand up to human players who do have experience battling smart military opponents rather than the dumbass AI.

As long as you can hold your own and aren't at risk of getting streamrolled it's all good, because politics can be just as important as game skill, and it is mostly just for fun (but competitive)

I do not do SP but like PBEMs. Not thrilled with playing the AI. As such, I do not get that much practice.

you're probably good then, MP teaches you how to play much quicker

Plus doesn't look like we will be crowded with players anyways

I am interested

So that's 3 of us so far. at least almost half way!

You two should start looking at leaders and perhaps practicing a bit. Here is what I would like you to do... pick a 1st option and a 2nd option, for your leader+civ. I'll give precedence in the order people pick, however, if you decide to change your mind your 2nd option will give you precedence over other peoples 2nd options... If you don't want to give a 2nd option you don't have to. And you can switch your options at any time, except you obviously can't switch and take someone else's.

If someone else takes your 2nd option as their 1st option, then they get that civ, but if they decide to switch you get their 1st option you can switch and take that 2nd as your 1st, since you were "waiting in line".



Duplicate civs are not allowed.
Also, good cannot outnumber evil too greatly and vice versa.
So with 6 players, there couldn't be 3 good 1 evil, or 4 good 2 evil. There could be 2 good, 1 evil, and 3 neutrals, or 3 good 3 evil. There could also be 5 evils and 1 neutral, if no one decided to be good, since then no good civs will be stiffed.

maybe you could make a post in FFH forum and link it to this thread ?

I replied on the TG game thread. I would like to play. I have some MP experience and I've played a little Fall from Heaven, but not much....

I'm interested. I'd much rather do a FfH pitboss as it goes much, much, much, much faster but i can't seem to get pitboss working for FfH.

I've got a lot of SP FfH experience and i've played FfH a little bit multiplayer and a few other Civ games pitboss and PBEM with friends. I love the RP emphasis but i hope you don't mind if i change my names a bit. Nothing out of character like 'Bob' but i like to personalize my leader and develop the personality as play goes.

Your settings sound good. A couple suggestions, feel free to ignore them...
A little bigger map size to allow for some room before conflict btwn players.
Either throw in a couple AI civs or go with Labrusum (sp?) aka Barbarian World to throw a few extra adversaries in.
There have been some reported problems with Pangea maps not generating any Regents. I've not seen this fixed in any versions or patches.
A couple good maps that usually make one land mass are Big & Small and Global Continents. To get the best chance of one land mass you've got to set it to Massive Continents.
As much i prefer slower game speeds i think Quick is likely the only playable PBEM speed unless we want to be playing for years.

If you are ready for civ picks i'd be interested in...
First choice: Pentach of the Balseraph
Second choice: Flauros of the Calabim

I am interested in this, thou I have never played by PBEM before. I have a bit of experience in FFH and can hold my own against the AI on monarch.

right now my 1st choice is Kuriotates.

We have 6 players, so we will start within a week probably(maybe just a couple days), perhaps 1 more player will join.

Hello,

I would like to join as Amelanchier/Ljolsalfar. 2nd choice Doviello.

But I must admit that I will be only able to send files in the week days, not on weekend.

If you still accept more players, I'd like to join as well.
I've only played a few MP games so far, but I play FFH in SP quite often (nearly 100% win on Monarch).

My civ choices would be:
1: Cassiel/Grigori
2: Tasunke/Hippus
But I would play an evil or good leader as well, if it was needed to balance the alignments.

And I really like your idea about adding role playing via alignments/religions.

I second feydras suggestions about a bigger map size and some additional AI civs. Having some more room to expand and some extra enemies would be nice.
I normally play on epic speed, but I fear we'll have to use quick speed for PBEM

Is there a way for the host to kick a player to AI if they decide to quit? Or more to the point if they become non-responsive and need to be kicked without having them go in and retire manually? I don't mean to be a pessimist but this is probably a realistic concern.

Have you given any thought to restricting tech trading? In the multiplayer games i've played tech research consortiums rose up quickly with one player agreeing to research this tech and the other that and then trading. Trying to avoid this for RP reasons always meant that you would get quickly left behind and so it forced us into two artificial tech coordination researching factions. This shouldn't happen if we all RP (and i'm committed to that) and so maybe it's a mute point but it may be a good expectation to set ahead of time if you have feelings on it. It is a hard thing to resist if you notice two players doing it.

Other note: sounds like the regents thing may have been fixed (saw a post from Kael saying he was going to make a change fixing it in an old post) so Pangea should work i think.

What contact info do you need from us Levgre? And when's game start? Oh, and am i actually accepted into the game? I guess i should ask that too..

Hello,
I'm interested too. I hope a slot is available...

feydras said:

Is there a way for the host to kick a player to AI if they decide to quit? Or more to the point if they become non-responsive and need to be kicked without having them go in and retire manually? I don't mean to be a pessimist but this is probably a realistic concern.

Click to expand...

I haven't played PBEM before, but afaik everyone can chose a password for their civ. If everyone gives their password to the host (or someone else), he will be able to take control of a disappearing players civ and make them retire.

Have you given any thought to restricting tech trading? In the multiplayer games i've played tech research consortiums rose up quickly with one player agreeing to research this tech and the other that and then trading. Trying to avoid this for RP reasons always meant that you would get quickly left behind and so it forced us into two artificial tech coordination researching factions. This shouldn't happen if we all RP (and i'm committed to that) and so maybe it's a mute point but it may be a good expectation to set ahead of time if you have feelings on it. It is a hard thing to resist if you notice two players doing it.

Click to expand...

Levgre stated in the first post, that he will disable tech trading.

My choices

first : Kandros Fir of Khazad
second : Perpentach of Balseraphs

never played this one but would be interested

I am thinking we will have a bigger map for more separation earlier.
I also think I may reduce the difficulty to noble/prince for the following reasons:

1.There is an early civic available, City States, that drastically reduces city maintenance. A higher difficulty would therefore make this civic absolutely required, and it would make so military/expansion mind civs could go on as normal anyways.
2. siege weapons do not become available, nor especially powerful offensive units. Therefore I think this mod is more balanced against early war than normal civilization is, so extra unit and city maintenance is not necessary.


It seems that we have extra players as of now, BUT, I would gladly hold a 2nd PBEM game also. Sometimes one game ends quick, and then you are left in the dust, and I personally have enough free time to take turns for 2 games.

It looks like we are close to having enough for two separate games, and we'd definitely have enough if a couple players besides me participated in both games. I'll post the rosters as of now, later today.