Marathon

[MetalMilitia-]

So, anybody have any experience with playing the mod on marathon speed?

Specificly does the AI seem to play worse (than usual)

 

[Verily]

Marathon is generally easier for the human player, but not for the reasons you'd expect. The main problem is that unit movement is not scaled with the rest of the timing. Since the biggest advantage human players have over the AI is in warfare, Epic is about one difficulty level easier than Normal, and Marathon another difficulty level easier than Epic (assuming you do go to war fairly frequently; pacifist humans would get no such advantage).

 

[DrStalker]

Some things scale in ways that work much better in marathon; for example, Shieam planar gates have a chance to spawn units that doesn't take the game speed into account. Combine that with summoning and you have some huge advantages over civs that are slowly building units.

 

[Justicar333]

Only play on Marathon myself. It's my observation that it changes the feel of battle. That huge army the computer sends in can be devestating, but if you take it out, they won't rebuild for a long time. National units become much more valuable, and the computer has a lot of trouble managing effective wave tactics. Where as a human can compensate with summoner armies.

My Calibim ends up working much along those lines. Core of Vampires with disposable skeleton foot troops. Altogether combat relys more on finesse than brute force. Something the computer doesn't manage well. Though it's tendacy for assasain type units can become quite a pain, so it's not helpless in any measure.

 

[Sarisin]

When FFH first came out I played only Marathon games on Huge maps.

However, since Hyborem and other changes were made I had to dial back to Epic and Large maps as that is about all my system can handle. Otherwise late game is really a chore with long times between turns when the map is filled and the AI has to move all their units around.

One reason I liked Marathon speed was that it slowed down the expand-only mentality of the AI as building times were much slower. I haven't played Marathon lately, but I know in my Epic games the bad guys (Skeletons, Lizardmen, etc.) come rather early. When it takes you around 50 turns to build that first Warrior, I would guess it would be problematic in Marathon speed games.

As stated, another reason I liked Marathon was that you had a chance to build all the units after researching everything. Some heroes and units come late and you may never see them in shorter speed games IMO.

 

[marioflag]

I personally find Marathon a lot more unbalanced than Normal speed, mostly due to combat experience.
In general at this speed you could easily get some sort of superunit with a lot of promotions which become nearly unkillable if well supported with other units.
So early rushes, or destroying other empires become a lot more easy.
On Marathon speed there are also lot of features which needs to be scaled down to speed, these are some examples:
-I played only one time as Sidar at Marathon and they were clearly unbalanced for their mechanics
-considering that Hero promotion give 1xp/turn on Normal it can be balanced but on Marathon which is 1800 turns instead of 600 it becomes clearly out of balance. For that reason heroes are completely overpowered
-early rushes are too much effective particularly if you have a stronger unit like the Worg Rider or Doviello units


In general considering that combat experience is broken at Marathon speed i would strongly advise to turn on the option to halve xp gained from combat, to balance a bit the combat factor, and to play at higher difficulty levels than you normally would have played at Normal speed

 

[Alzara]

I personally find Marathon a lot more unbalanced than Normal speed, mostly due to combat experience.

You can select the "slower XP" option if you play on this speed which will prevent this issue. Personally I don't go slower than epic

Al

 

[Arctic Circle]

Why havn't anyone mentioned Sidar, when you mention Marathon speed. Hmm, I suspect that the -long- time-span to gather experience really benefit them. Honestly I feel that Sidars units should be able to become 'Shadows' at a level that is modified by the game-speed.

 

[Blackmantle]

@ Arctic Circle: You are right. Even at Epic Sidar are about 1-2 difficulties easier (In Marathon its completely riddiculous but that takes to long for FFH2 anyways imo. And i do like long games. But FFH2 takes care of that without tempering with gamespeed already.).
Not least because their more or less best way to research is straight for Warmongering (rush military strategy after mysticism if you find copper near at mining. Then go KotE for Enchanted Blade) which is much more potent in slower gamespeeds.

But they are allready "balanced" somewhat on paper by the different value of the yields (1 7 is worth much more in quick than in marathon.).
But that doesn't really translate into a real parity due to a maximum number of units gained per Turn = 1 so you proportionally get up to 4 Times as many Warriors / Scouts built at Marathon in comparison to normal or 8! Times as many as in Quick. Which more or less directly translates into shades gained. Also the critical time to get the first 3-5 Shades gets to be proportionally much later.
Also if given the choice of 1 Shade in quick or 4 in Epic (more or less the same balanced yield on paper) i whould take 4 in Epic any day of the week because of the ability to customize and spread out. (all 4 Choices are decent.)

Sidar are only really fully playable / balanced at normal speed (and they are a rather powerful civ at that speed + my favorite civ.) at slower they are to powerful to be balanced (since there is no difficulty above deity their is no constant challenge possible in all games the way the AI is now + the harder you are pushed, the stronger you get. But sure that will change soon enough.) at quick they become a rather weak civ since all their strong points suffer and their traits are weak for that gamespeed.
(Problem with adding one Level for each gamespeed for Shading and Starting at 5 at Quick / 6 normal / 7 Epic / 8 Marathon whould be that free XP can be made available out of the box. That again whould make it to easy to get shades at quick just to get it balanced for epic. And at Marathon the curve might be to steep + the half-xp option is there for a reason.
Thats enough of a fix which can be done and is highly reccomended if you want any challenge from the game while playing sidar at marathon.)

So if you play slower just enable half-xp from combats. Should fix the thing allright.
FFH 2 is balanced for nomal speed (qoute from Kael / FFH 2-Team)