Co-op Campaign frustrations

[Izak]

So I tried playing a co-op campaign with a friend over the past few days. It's driving me nuts. It takes so long to get to take a turn. The second time I put on a 10 minute timer on, but his turns would still take 7 minutes while mine would be 1-2. I tried to remain productive on my end by doing non-shogun 2 things nearby, like organizing things in my room, etc.

But it turns out that enabling a timer also means that I have a very short window when he would initiate a battle requiring me to select observer or auto-resolve. Since I wasn't always at the PC itself but had my back turned I would know this secondary countdown would start. Then he would get pissed because it would auto-resolve and he felt he would lose battles because of this.

My vindictive side said I should play as the AI as his opposition in battles but that option was disabled for some reason (I assume because it's a co-op) campaign. So basically I walked away from this whole setup with a very negative experience. I'm curious, is this the same for other people or would any of you have any suggestions on how to improve this experience?

[Knowing Crow]

You have to play Head to Head in order to play as AI against him.

Otherwise, it sounds like the problem is between your partner's chair and keyboard.

I would recommend playing over a voice program, like Skype, Ventrillo, Steam voice chat, or Mumble.

[daniu]

Indeed, in the one MPC I played neither of us hit the 5 minutes limit (well it did get close later on but we never finished the campaign).

Actually, you can use Steam VoiP from within, you have to activate it first.