The Will of the Senate - out of character thread III

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

I like your idea, Lucjan, but for a first consul it would be a logistical nightmare.

[Csargo]

I've been reading all the stuff that you and everyone else have been doing and I gotta say good job to all of you its very fun to read.

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

Why thank you
You're always welcome to join as an upper house senator.

[Csargo]

I'de be happy too what would I have to do?

[econ21]

The Upper House Senators debate in the Senate Deliberations thread and vote in the periodic elections and on motions. You will be assigned an in-game character as your general (avatar) in due course.

If you want to fight any battles your general gets in or if you want to run the Republic as First Consul, you need to be a the Lower House Senator. Basically that means you have to install the mod so that you can load up and play out savegames.

The FAQ thread gives the gory details, but it's pretty simple really and we make most things up as we go along.

[Csargo]

I'de be happy to debate and vote on things but I would rather not fight any battles.

[econ21]

OK, I'll assign you to the Upper House. Just passby the Throne room every couple of days and keep up on the threads. The First Consuls's report gives the overall narrative; the Senate Deliberations thread is where policies are made. Every 10 turns, we have 3 day formal Senate sessions which lead to 1 day of voting - I send people PMs to alert them of when they begin.

[Csargo]

Alright econ thanks looking forward to getting into this.

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

Check out the way my lines are almost broken in my last battle. I love the way mass is handled in RTR 1.5. These guys almost broke my line by sheer weight !

[Lucjan]

Ok..so how about we do away with the huge experience requirements and the same army design and just have the Legio Immortalis be the only legion in the Republic that the consul doesn't require senatorial approval to reinforce.

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

You mean retrain ?

[TinCow]

That would violate present game rules and so must be approved by 2/3 vote of the Senate. Propose it as legislation at the interrim session.

[Dooz]

Ok..so how about we do away with the huge experience requirements and the same army design and just have the Legio Immortalis be the only legion in the Republic that the consul doesn't require senatorial approval to reinforce.

Agreed. I think it's pretty necessary at this point in time too, gameplay-wise. We're running thin on troops and it'd be nice to be able to retrain at least one legion freely, not to mention the great RP aspect of it.

*edit*
Ah indeed, it shall be voted on.

[Lucjan]

Not retraining, that would violate present game rules, my idea was that depleted units could be combined and new units raised to replace the ones needed to bring the unit back to full strength. Not retraining.. >.< Either way I think it needs a vote.

[GeneralHankerchief]

Ahh, this is what happens when there is an unbalanced ratio of younger Romans to older ones.

I must say, this feels great from a RPing perspective. Get into a flame war with another Senator. Can't wait until we all get older. Too bad that there's no Civil War in RTR.

[Lucjan]

>.< Maybe we should just drop the ideas surrounding the Legio Immortalis and just give it the fancy name, I'd rather not stir up unneeded troubles or confusion.

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

Not retraining, that would violate present game rules, my idea was that depleted units could be combined and new units raised to replace the ones needed to bring the unit back to full strength. Not retraining.. >.< Either way I think it needs a vote.

This is happening continuously already and is allowed by the rules. The trick is to to merge unarmoured units into armoured ones or units with high experience. I personally am against retraining, except perhaps if it is a of a unit that can be trained at the settlement in question.

Note to everyone :
Make sure you merge the ships in a fleet after each battle. Make especially sure the leftmost ships are up to strength. I believe the second ship in the list is the commander's ship.

[Lucjan]

Oh, I see, I wasn't entirely aware of that (I was under the assumption that unit merging and conscripting had to be senate approved in terms of "reinforcing" or "restoring" a legion to full strength, correct me if I'm wrong.). On a personal note I too am completely against retraining. Retraining is evil, bad, bad mojo.

I still like the name Legio Immortalis though.

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

When the banner reappears, which should happen the moment I assign a bannerless legate to a decent-sized army, we will hold a competition with names and let people vote, how's that. In fact, let's do that at the next senate meeting, 4 turns away now.

[Lucjan]

[econ21]

I wonder if anyone has any thoughts about the length of a First Consul's tenure? I think I originally went with 5 years because 20 turns seemed to be the best length for a traditional PBM. Long enough to achieve something really substantial, but hopefully not long enough to burn out on.

But this is not a traditional PBM - with generals fighting their own battles, I've noticed savegames can be loaded about 6 times or more for a given season. This will tend to make the incumbent player's "turn" last a lot longer, making it a more long term demand on their time. The actual playing time might not be longer, but the period their involvement spans is greater and they have more administration.

I'd be particularly interested to hear what past First Consuls think - DDW, TinCow and FLYdude. Was it too long for you? I don't have a good sense of it because I went first when the Republic was small and greedily fought most of the battles myself. DDW this time said he needed a pro-consul, although that might just be because of the holidays, and I remember TinCow making some remark suggesting his reign was rather onerous.

The obvious alternative length would be to halve it, to 10 turns. That would not mess up our Senate session schedule.

Any opinions? I'm just talking about the future - I have no intention of intervening with DDW and Mount Suribachi's current reign.

[Mount Suribachi]

I think its a good point Simon. I think it might encourage more people to run for Consul as well.

I would be happy to see this change at the next mid-point, only because speaking from a pure RP POV I'm a little uncomfortable about Saturninus being co-consul. I would be much happier with a new set of elections then - depending on how close DDW is to going away.

As for Legio VI, as the late Amulius, I don't really like the name Immortalis. He didn't think he was immortal, he had a Cromwellian, Providentialist belief that he had been chosen by the Gods to perform special acts on their behalf. Unfortunately he was wrong (the jury is still out on Cromwell )

[Mount Suribachi]

*Paging the Senate fixer*

My RTR works fine for loading savegames, but I just decided to start a new H/H campaign as Rome, and it won't let me. When I select Rome and click on the "start campaign" button it takes me back to the previous screen, the "campaign/historical battle/custom battle screen"

Help!!

[econ21]

Yes, I had that problem - it comes from installing the 1.9.3 4tPY mod over the MN one. To solve it, get the descr_strat.txt file from the latter mod and use it instead. The FAQ installation notes explain this and tell you where to get the descr_strat.txt file (it's on the Org PBM uploader) and the subdirectory to put it in.

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

Yes, you have installed 4TPY 1.9.3 haven't you ? You need to replace a text file with the one that gets created by the M&N mod. This can be found in the FAQ I believe, or else several pages back.

EDIT : It's a tie between econ21 and DDW :)

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

As to the limit of consulships, with the empire growing all the time, 2.5 years now is as long as 5 year at the start (or even longer).
I advocate smaller timespans, and more limited goals for the consuls. That is why I went for co-consulship this time. This way we could set long term goals, but would not be required to play the entire 5 game years. I still greatly favour the co-consulship idea, but I also see no problems with consuls who want to take the burden of five years. Can't the two system exists alongside ?
If Mount Suribachi does not want to be co-consul that is no problem, then we'll have early elections. It does seem right, seeing that Amulius got killed and all, and that his new avatar hasn't been officially elected.

[Lucjan]

Perhaps a singular consulship election with a reigh of 2.5 years and a co-consulship election with a reign of 5 could be in order? What I mean is the senators, whether choosing to run singularly or with a co-consul, could be running for variable amounts of time according to their preference, solely by choosing to run with or without a partner.

EDIT - And as for the term Immortalis, that is derived from the speech Amulius gave before the battle, stating that the Legio VI would become immortal that day, forever remembered in the histories of Rome.

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

I agree with you, Lucjan. We do want to offer the perspective of being first consul to all lower house senators within a reasonable span of time. As it looks now, with the fast progress I have been making, 2.5 years is still going to take 3 weeks or something thereabouts.
Historically, consuls were elected for a year if I recall correctly.

[Mount Suribachi]

Thanks guys, that worked

[Lucjan]

Yes, yearly consular elections....and to think I get frustrated having to look at those ugly 'vote for' signs for about 3 months every four years..