Victory and Difficulty Settings

[Anthropoid]

I'm curious what different guys are using for the games their playing and whether they are finishing them or getting stuck and restarting or what have you.

I never read the manuals on these things but just start fiddling around and then consult the manual in piecemeal fashion to clarify about things that I cannot figure out through practice play.

I've now started up about four or five games. The first two or three I only played a few turns really, just to kinda get a feel for game mechanics. I've only played France so far, and always used the 1792 scenario (though the first time or two I misunderstood and set it for 1792 Bavaria but playing France, still started up as France though).

By about the third startup, I understood that 1792 scenario was what I wanted, but I foolishly set victory conditions to Path of Napoleon: which limited my total game duration to only a couple years. Didn't finish and restarted with about 500 victory points, and within a year or so (playing on normal no handicap) I already had about 300 points so I again restarted with normal, no handicap and 1000 points.

Well in this most recent game, my knowledge of how to play the detailed battles from FoF combined with progressively more browsing of the forums and the manuals, and I'm basically kicking butt big time on the battlefield. I've now got surrenders from Austria, Prusia, Britain, and Spain. I have trounced the navies of Spain several times, and one definitive naval battle against Russia. Pretty soon Spain will surrender, and probably Russia not too long after that. It is like early 1794 and I already have about 500 victory points and don't see any reason that I won't win with 1000 by about 1796 or so.

What I'd like to do is play it through all the way through maximum years to check out the whole game, so I'm thinking that "Highest Score" or maybe 10,000 glory points is what I should try next?

I tend to be annoyed playing against the AI with the massive bonuses and handicaps that get called "difficulty" in most of these games, but on the other hand, games that are not challenging become tedious and boring too. Seems like I was playing FoF at about Sarge Major or maybe Lieutenant and feeling fairly challenged back when I used to play it regularly.

If at all possible I'd like to start up one that will last for several weeks of game play so any recommendations on settings are appreciated. For now I want to just focus on playing France. Perhaps I should consider giving specific rival nations particular boosts in power, and maybe boost the strategic difficulty and combat difficulty up one level, and go for 10,000 victory points?