How do you play FfH2?

[Korias]

I used to always play on Planet Generator 0.68, but have moved to Pangaea. I play with anywhere between 13 and 38 Civs, Handpicking my leaders at the start. I also turn on "All Unique Features", "Amathons Blessing", "Permanent Alliances" and have recently started playing WITHOUT "Last days" because I recently had agame hit AC 75 by turn 50.

I dont know why. -shrug-

I myself play almost exclusively on Hotseat Multiplayer mode, enabling me to "Multi-box". While this does increase the amount of time, it also lets me play multiple civs. I do this in normal Civ4 as well, but as it is currently I do have rules. Depending on the difficulty, I may or may not allow myself to create a Permanent Alliance with my other civ. I may dissalow techtrading between myself. I know I sound like Perpy, but I hardly play him.

Instead, I play a few civs. In Vanilla FfH, I play as the Amurites, Bannor, Ljosalfar, Sidar, Elohim, Grigori, Malakim, Sheiam, or Calabim. Modded, I play as everyone. Note however, that I only play 4-5 civs per game. When avaliable, I do try to switch to Mercurians or Infernals.

I never tend to really finish my games though, once I've hit the point of "Ok, now all that's left is boring mopup"

 

[Doug Piranha]

... forgot to mention that I'm using the better economic AI mod. The game's a lot more fun playing against a non-braindead AI.

 

[Randolph]

Thanks Tholal, that was exactly what I was looking for and very useful! I’ll have to give perfect world a try, but I have a feeling I’m going to immediately miss the customizable features of Full of Resources.

I hadn’t been playing with any of the AI mods because I was kind of assuming that Kael was integrating the good changes that these mods made into the standard game. My gut was that the AI mods were more for people who wanted to help work on the AI themselves, and being a complete lecher around there I avoided them, but if you (and others) think that there are substantial positive changes to the AI that are unlikely to be included in the main mod in the immediate future, then I’m definitely ALL FOR picking them up.

I definitely agree that anything to make the AI better without the big cheating bonuses of the high levels is a very good thing. I don’t mind a little bit of AI cheating on prince, monarch and maybe even emperor, as it seems like a reasonable, if blunt and far from ideal, way of making up for poor tile placement, build order, and the like, but on the high levels it seems to primarily narrow the range of effective strategies rather than truly increasing the overall challenge.

Unfortunately, I already “upgraded” to 3.19, I hadn’t been playing CIV for a few months and when I loaded up civfanatics and saw “3.19 has been released” I just clicked and installed without really thinking about it’s impact on mods. Oh well, it sounds like they’ll have a 3.19 compatible version reasonably soon.

 

[Randolph]

... forgot to mention that I'm using the better economic AI mod. The game's a lot more fun playing against a non-braindead AI.

Another good tip, thanks Doug. I look forward to the day where I get my ass handed to me on prince!

 

[Randolph]

I myself play almost exclusively on Hotseat Multiplayer mode, enabling me to "Multi-box". While this does increase the amount of time, it also lets me play multiple civs. I do this in normal Civ4 as well, but as it is currently I do have rules. Depending on the difficulty, I may or may not allow myself to create a Permanent Alliance with my other civ. I may dissallow techtrading between myself. I know I sound like Perpy, but I hardly play him.

Ok, Korias, you definitely win for the strangest play style.

 

[JonathanStrange]

I choose pangaea maps mainly because I like the extra challenge that arises from early and frequent contact with hostile civs; winning means more to me then. Other maps allow for things like relatively isolated starts or chokepoints that make the early game much simpler and the early game, I've found, is where it's at for me: I love exploring, fighting for resources, taking the good land, that's good civ.

 

[Honor]

Difficulty: Immortal or Deity
Victory Conditions: Conquest only
Map: Inland Sea (Cold Climate, Medium Sea Level)
Map Size: Standard
Game Speed: Epic
Players: 11
Civ: Sidar
Toggles: All Unique Features, No Inflation, No Tech Brokering
Reloading: Not allowed
Worldbuilder: Not allowed

 

[MorpheusAk]

I'm working on beating the game on Emperor with everyone, in alphabetical order. I play on Erebus, Large, Epic, with Aggressive AI, Living World, and End of Winter

 

[Neomega]

Difficulty: Immortal or Deity
Victory Conditions: Conquest only
Map: Inland Sea (Cold Climate, Medium Sea Level)
Map Size: Standard
Game Speed: Epic
Players: 11
Civ: Sidar
Toggles: All Unique Features, No Inflation, No Tech Brokering
Reloading: Not allowed
Worldbuilder: Not allowed

I was impressed by the immortal deity..... until I saw no inflation.... weak!

I play on Erebus, Large, Epic, with Aggressive AI, Living World, and End of Winter

! All civs on large epic speed? That would probably take me 1 year of solid civ playing, 16 hours a day. I don't know how you all play so fast.

 

[Honor]

I was impressed by the immortal deity..... until I saw no inflation.... weak!

I would have been more de-impressed by the "Conquest only" victory condition.

 

[Randolph]

I choose pangaea maps mainly because I like the extra challenge that arises from early and frequent contact with hostile civs; winning means more to me then. Other maps allow for things like relatively isolated starts or chokepoints that make the early game much simpler and the early game, I've found, is where it's at for me: I love exploring, fighting for resources, taking the good land, that's good civ.

Jonathan, I'd definitely recommend trying Full of Resources. I also like playing with single continent maps, and FoR allows you to do with with a much better variety of options then standard Pangaea. I like using Fractal script with minimal water, it creates a Pangaea about 90% of the time, but the blobs usually have a bit more character which is nice.

 

[Onionsoilder]

I don't have my gaming computer atm, so I can't check the exact settings, but if I remember correctly it was usually something like this:

Large Tectonics Map
Emperor Difficulty
Epic Gamespeed
19 Civilizations

Raging Barbarians
Aggressive AI
End of Winter
Wildlands
All Unique Features
Sure there are some more I can't remember...

Never Reload/Worldbuilder
All Victory Conditions

 

[loffenx]

Lately I've been trying out perfect 2 modded to generate hmm 45% land instead of the default 30%. I really like the scripts terrain and layout, feels very well worked through.

Beyond that I play on emperor atm (dropped down from immortal/deity, too much booze), ~130% of the standard number of civs/size, no tech brokering, normal speed.

I've also decreased the spread-factor of Runes of Kilmorph and Fellowship of leaves to 50, and made Mask require CoE as state religion instead of unit religion (I'd prefer an either-or-setup, but don't know how to code it :/ )

Last but not least I've used some trick I found here on the forums to make the elves' improvements appear under the trees instead of over them, so that my sweet Svartalfar realms retain their woodland feel.

EDIT: Uff, got tired of all the big maps. Now I'm back to small, 300% players (me and 14 AI:s), perfect world 2 and Rystics Tweakmod (including Turinturambar's economic mod) and loving it. Had to drop down a few notches though. Anyone know at which difficulty-level the AI starts to get free promotions?

 

[JonathanStrange]

Last but not least I've used some trick I found here on the forums to make the elves' improvements appear under the trees instead of over them, so that my sweet Svartalfar realms retain their woodland feel.

What's that trick again? and where can I find it? I seem to remember it too. I used to love the way the Elven kingdom looked with it.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=308955

 

[Dumanios]

Map Type:Erebus or Pangaea
Speed:Normal,Sometimes Epic
Civ:Kurios Usually,Sometimes Sheaim,Illians and Svarts
Map Size:Huge
Victories:All but Time
Difficulty:Usually Noble.
Options:Raging Barbs,Wildlands,Living World,End of Winter,Last Days,Amatheon's Blessing and Permanent Alliances

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

ninja'ed

 

[JonathanStrange]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=308955

Just what I was looking for. Thanks!

 

[Randolph]

I missed that also, it looks nice. I wonder if the art team would accept a bribe to make a really cool Ancient forest graphic that works with improvements and roads . I've had a very hard time playing the elves since the new Ancient forest graphic was put in place, my Kingdom just doesn't feel as sylvan.