Fall From Heaven VII Organizing Thread

[Kyan]

I like the idea of two games, though from my understanding, we'd need at least 5 players per to make it work in any way that doesn't heavily favor the rush civs. Regardless, I'd like to see settings in some format like this:

Map: Erebus Continent, edited for balance but otherwise untouched. Namely, nothing too cute, none of us are ready for that kind of variant play just yet, that's the whole point.

Extras:
Normal Barbs
NTT
All Unique Features
x-y wrap
Monarch Difficulty? [From my understanding of FFH2, anything less than this will produce really weak barbs]
Acheron I would say either off or pre-placed, but Duin and Orthus are fine IMO. Duin is pretty broken from what I read but requires an expensive tech, and Orthus is part of the fun.

Mostly I think we should be looking for a flavorful game that has as much of the normal FFH2 experience as possible, without being so hard that we get a FFH2PBEM4 situation, which none of us are experienced enough to handle just yet.

Beyond that, I'd just like to see us get going as quick as possible, before people lose interest. I've seen that happen with countless games before, so that's my #1 would like to avoid. Either 2 unique games with ~5 players or 1 game with 6 and some teammates, but either way, we should be aiming to have civ picks and a map thread before the week is out, or we'll start losing steam.

For what feels like the hundredth time recently, i 100% agree with what Gaspar has written above.

Erebus or Pangaea. My only issue with Erebus is that the start locations for some civs or overpowered and for some are retarded (Malakim vs Doviello). As long as the mapmaker edited as appropriate. That script can also put civ's very close together as noted in FfHPBEM1 by Darrell- Pangaea might be the easy/fair answer here.

As for picking the civs, considering FfH has such radically different civs that play so different, i think we should be able to choose our own. I would endorse doing as has been done in other games:

PM a neutral party your top 3 civ/leader combo's (only picking each civ once max) using restricted leader/civ's. If possible, people get their top pick. If two parties pick the same top pick, one is decided randomly to 'win' and get their selection. The 'loser' moves down to their second choice etc.

eg. 1. Flauros of Calabim
2. Hannah of Lanun
3. Cardith of Kuriotates

The other option would be for Ravus' method which involved pm'ing a neutral party in the same manner *but* if two people choose the same civ, neither of them get it and we go to the second pick. This could prevent a game of just the usual suspects. eg. calabim.

[Rawkking Goodguy]

Also going to be echoing a lot of what Gaspar said but I already had written most of this earlier so...

Map Type:
Lakes or Erebus Continent or Pangaea. As Gaspar noted above, making the player locations relatively balanced with mapmaker editing is ideal, especially capitals.

Extra features:
Huts on
No Tech Trading
Some Unique Features
Difficulty: Agree with Monarch difficulty or higher, let the barbs be a challenge and have city maintenance costs matter somewhat.
Acheron off or preplaced: He can really mess up the land available to a player
Duin on
Orthus on
Living World (extra events) is always cool to have. I like the random factor.

Ravus’s method for drafting is clever but I think it’s more suitable for a veteran game than this, and I don’t really want to get into mindgames of who is going to pick X civ for #1 etc. Instead I’d go with the other method of PMing your top 3 civs and letting the RNG sort it out, with the caveat that this is supposed to be a noob friendly game, so bear that in mind when choosing. If you think you’re going to be one of the top competitors based on prior game experience perhaps the calabim should not be your first choice. If you're fairly new, go for it. Personally, I’m not picking any of the “usual suspects” that I’ve seen here as my top choice.

Of course, worst comes to worst there's always the tried and true method of "free for all diplomacy"

[Brian Shanahan]

I like the idea of two games, though from my understanding, we'd need at least 5 players per to make it work in any way that doesn't heavily favor the rush civs. Regardless, I'd like to see settings in some format like this:

Map: Erebus Continent, edited for balance but otherwise untouched. Namely, nothing too cute, none of us are ready for that kind of variant play just yet, that's the whole point.

Extras:
Normal Barbs
NTT
All Unique Features
x-y wrap
Monarch Difficulty? [From my understanding of FFH2, anything less than this will produce really weak barbs]
Acheron I would say either off or pre-placed, but Duin and Orthus are fine IMO. Duin is pretty broken from what I read but requires an expensive tech, and Orthus is part of the fun.

Mostly I think we should be looking for a flavorful game that has as much of the normal FFH2 experience as possible, without being so hard that we get a FFH2PBEM4 situation, which none of us are experienced enough to handle just yet.

Beyond that, I'd just like to see us get going as quick as possible, before people lose interest. I've seen that happen with countless games before, so that's my #1 would like to avoid. Either 2 unique games with ~5 players or 1 game with 6 and some teammates, but either way, we should be aiming to have civ picks and a map thread before the week is out, or we'll start losing steam.

Consider Gaspar to be speaking with my voice here.

And I've already 3 civs picked based on the RNG.

[Kyan]

Ok, in an attempt to speed this up. Anyone have problems with:

Players/Teams:
Acalostas / mackoti
Rawkking Goodguy
Brian Shanahan
Kyan & Twinkletoes
Gaspar
Nicalae Carpathia

Amelia as map-maker. Although, i would heavily endorse you to let some other lurkers that aren't ded-lurking to double check it for fairness. Making a fair map is difficult. Shudder.

If there are no issues to the above, we just need a few more votes on map settings. In the mean time, we could PM our civ/leader choices to Amelia allowing her to start the map. A couple of days for lurker input and maybe we can aim to start next Monday?

It would help if we could collate all of our timezones together. I know that myself and Brian are GMT. I prefer to play late at night Brian so if you can play early, you're better off going before me.

[Kyan]

Consider Gaspar to be speaking with my voice here.

And I've already 3 civs picked based on the RNG.

That's 4 teams with identical picks out of 6. So, yeah...

I have mine chosen as well Brian. Gonna be gutted if i don't get my first choice though.

[Amelia]

Very well. Civ Choices PM to me please. I'll let you know your picks in 24 hours, if everyone gets in their pm in time.

[Thoth]

There is also the matter of which Vet ded-lurks which Apprentice....

Anyone have any thoughts on how to decide?

[Twinkletoes89]

There is also the matter of which Vet ded-lurks which Apprentice....

Anyone have any thoughts on how to decide?

How about something different like everyone gets one 'token' for each of the veterans at the start of the game & its up to them when they 'cash it in' for advice?

[Mardoc]

There is also the matter of which Vet ded-lurks which Apprentice....

Anyone have any thoughts on how to decide?

I kinda figured it'd just be a matter of working things out with them; picking someone whose style you can match. I've already started talking with Gaspar and was planning to dedlurk him; Kyan said he persuaded Bob to hop on board, Acalostas was trying to talk Ilios into joining their team.

We do have an excess of vets, so the more the merrier once each noob is accounted for.

[Mardoc]

How about something different like everyone gets one 'token' for each of the veterans at the start of the game & its up to them when they 'cash it in' for advice?

The only downside I see to this is how to keep spoiler knowledge out of it if a vet is giving advice to more than one team.