Ok so I played the hastings and tours with my gf. She’s a bit of a noob, so I had to play them on a standard difficulty and I can’t really have an accurate idea on how difficult they are, though there are some other things that I can point out.
- First, different civs with for the 2 players
This isn’t a suggestion necessarily for all scenarios, present and future ones, but on every possible scenario, when the history allows it.
For example, on hastings, both players use franks, which is a bit boring.
In this case for example, the second player, could perfectly play as sicilians (DLC problems aside) since they could be used to represent normans.
In general, 2 different civs would make the game more unique and dynamic. The different bonuses and tech tree would incourage the 2 players to go for different, and possibly complementary, strategies. The different team bonuses could also add a bit of a flavor to the player that uses the old civ.
- Not everything have to be perfectly balanced
At the cost of angering the mad titan, not every scenario has to give each player the same experience (since you can replay it switching sides…).
For example, in the hastings battle, when you ally with the vikings (not giving the vikings to the 2nd player with some vills to settle in england was a waste but let’s move on…) you don’t have to split in half their units. One can have the berserker, the other the longboats, or the first that ally with them have all.
The same reasoning can be made for tours. One start controlling the big city, the other the army, but essentially both do the same thing. Yeah one have 3 TCs but no army, the other have 1 TC but castle age soldiers. But still, this brings both players to simply boom.
It could have been different. For example, the “army player” could start with just the army (adding some upgrades or units) and no TC or vills. This way, the 2 players can decide on trying to rush the enemy, with the strong castle age army of the “army player” supported by every feudal and siege units that the “city player” can provide, or having the “army player” defend the “city player” until he booms into imp and can take all the enemy all by himself. Triggers could give some reinforcements to the “army player” so that he can in part replenish his forces.
Those 2 kind of changes would also force more cooperation and coordination between the 2 players. Now, with patience, one can actually beat the mission alone, or with little effort, or both players simply mirror each other.
This way instead the 2 player would have to do different actions and implement different strategies, but still rely on each other, since there are things that you can’t do but you ally can, and viceversa.
For the rest, the CO OP seems fine, and it’s fun.
