Multiplayer Co-Op in FFH 1 or 2...

[Steven Aus]

What are good settings for a co-op game in either FFH 1 or 2? And can DirectIP be used for multiple-session games? I know that the AI players aren't perfect and as much of a challenge as other humans, but I would like to play my first few multiplayer FFH games as co-op rather than competitive. What settings would you suggest for a difficulty level no higher than Warlord in FFH 1 or FFH 2?

Best regards,
Steven.

 

[xienwolf]

Can't speak for FfH 1 at all (kudos for still having a copy!), but I would say if you can normally play Warlord in BtS, go ahead and pop up to Monarch here, and put the AI into 2 man teams to oppose your 2 man team. If you are fairly new to FfH in general, start off with the AI still needing to use building requirements. If you have played a lot of Single Player and are accustomed to things, turn off the building requirements.

 

[Steven Aus]

I have got back into CivIV after spending a while with Guild Wars. I mostly played SevoMod before. I've only got original CivIV at the moment, but I intend to get BtS very soon after hearing how great FFH2 is (FFH is not that bad either, it's a shame people aren't playing it anymore but I can certainly understand the deal about sequels). What settings would you recommend for a fairly new player of FFH2?

Best regards,
Steven.

 

[xienwolf]

I would say that the default settings are excellent for getting into FfH. And if you normally can handle Warlord difficulty in regular Civ, go for Prince here. I used to play on Warlord or lower myself, and find that at Prince I tend to dominate pretty easily. I think I had used Warlord for my first game and even not understanding what I was dealing with I managed to dominate pretty easily.


I suspect there is a bit of an issue right now where Living World option is causing events to repeat themselves and limiting a player to a smaller subset of overall events (based off complaints posted), so I wouldn't reccomend using it right away. Besides, if you are new to the game you have plenty to entertain you without events popping up every other turn (you'll still see plenty).

I advise against Raging Barbarians or Wildlands options to start with. You'll die a LOT in your initial exploration with either and lose some of the fun (Raging Barbs tends to even kill of AI civs, and Wildlands tends to put in a LOT of spiders, which initial units cannot handle easily).


So basically, if you select anything, it should be "New Random Seed on Reload." Leave the rest alone for the time being

 

[Roghar]

New Random Seed on Reload and No AI Building Requirements are highly recommended. I wouldn't bother with anything else.

Definitely play up a level or two difficutly wise

 

[Cuteunit]

No AI building requirements or the AI will try to spam you with stacks of 20 scouts forever, even late into the game. At least Faeryl will.

Blessing of Amatheon, wildlands, and no vassal states are pretty standard in my games with my friends.

 

[Mesix]

I like to play with the No Settler option and then double (or more) the number of civs on the map. I play coop with a friend of mine, and we set the coputer players to teams of 3-4 players to compensate for the AI handicap.

Having No Settlers on requires conquest for expansion. It also keeps the wild lands wild for a longer portion of the game since the players do not spam settlers and tame the wilds.

A typical game will be...

Standard map size
Prince to Monarch difficulty
15 players (humans on 2 man team, 3 AI teams of 3 players, 1 AI team of 4)
No settlers
Wild Lands
Blessings of Amathon (important since there are fewer cities)
Living World (sometimes not)
No AI building requirements.

I like set up the AI teams to be of like alignment. There is no way to do this accept to actually select the civ for each AI player. It would be nice if there would be a checkbox for custom games "Group players of like alignment" that would limit the micromanagement at setup and allow for more randomness.

Another note is that when playing Blessing of Amathon it is also desirable to use a map with Balanced Resources. If you don't, it is very unlikely that reagents or mithril will appear on the map at all. Many of the late game features require these two rare resources, and the additional resources placed with the Blessings of Amathon script seem to crowd them out unless Balanced Resources is used.