The commander’s guide

Multiplayer, highscores and ranks

Host or join a Petalwar match, choose teams, play with up to eight commanders, and understand ratings, experience and ranks.

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Play Together

  1. Host. Open Multiplayer, choose Host game, and pick a map and how many players. The lobby shows an invite code such as ABCD-2345, with buttons to copy the code or a whole invite.
  2. Join. Your friends open Multiplayer, choose Join game and type the code, or a host address and port. View games lists the matches on your network and nearby.
  3. The lobby. Everyone picks a faction and a colour, and the host can set teams (Team 1 to 4) and give each empty seat to a player or the AI, or close it. Chat while you wait, press Ready, and the host launches the match.

Up to eight commanders can play together. The game connects directly on your local network, and through petalwar.com when two computers cannot reach each other, so there is nothing to set up on your router. Everyone needs the same version of Petalwar. Pause and game speed are for Skirmish only.

Highscores and ranks

Once you have chosen a commander name, your matches count towards the highscores: one-on-one Together matches on the Together board, and every Skirmish on the Skirmish board, where a Skirmish against several AI opponents is rated as your side against theirs. Together matches with more than two commanders are played unrated. Skill ratings use TrueSkill with the settings Forged Alliance Forever uses, starting at 1500, and your first five matches on a board place you. Matches shorter than a minute do not count, and leaving an undecided match first counts as a loss. Every counted match also earns experience, 150 for a win, 125 for a draw and 100 for a loss, towards 56 ranks; experience never goes down.

After a counted match, a rank card fills your experience bar with what the match earned and shows how far you are from the next rank. When you reach a new one, your old badge bursts into the new one. A click or Esc skips the animation.

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Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance are trademarks of their respective owners. Petalwar is an independent game and is not affiliated with or endorsed by their makers or the Forged Alliance Forever project.