Quote:
It seems to me that a lot of the info needed is contained in the file [game install]\Data\descr_senate.txt, the problem is making sense of it and filling in the gaps.
From the comments it appears there is a difference between the senate generating a "random mission" and "other missions".
This would indicate to me that the Senate generates some missions according to specific events in-game (my suspicions on this would be events like being ordered to re-capture cities, remove forces from allies' territory, et cetera, but quite possibly there are other, more subtle things here). While any mission remains active you will not get random missions generated. When there are no current missions then there is a percentage chance of a random mission being assigned, un-modded this appears to be a 15% chance per turn. It might be interesting to mod this figure to 100% and 0% just to make sure it really works this way.
Next point of interest are the comments about Pleasure/Displeasure duration. By default these variables are both set to 10 turns (5 years). I am not too sure what effect these variables have directly on the game as they don't seem to logically be likely to impact on the "senate popularity" value you see in the Senate tab of your faction overview. If the senate liked you more for only a few turns because you completed a mission then it seems likely that instead of going up and up you would reach a threshold maximum as soon as you had completed 10 missions in 10 turns and be unlikely to go up further (and very likely go down). If it worked that way then it's be (theoretically) possible to reach maximum popularity with the senate within 10 turns of starting a new campaign. Far more likely (to me) is that these affect the odds of getting assigned senate offices after you get the specific reward (I forget the exact wording) which talks about making you more popular with the senate, or more likely to get senate offices (sorry, I really cannot remember the wording: blame prolonged play in BI, and with Eastern factions). As senate offices are held for 8 turns (see below) each this means that such mission rewards could have an effect over 2 sets of title-elections and could be modded to last longer (or shorter), though it'd be tough to test these values.
Next up are the coefficients on Senate attitude, and frankly this is where I start getting lost. The first comment on this helpfully states "The attitude coefficients are as in the algorithm documentation" which means sweet f-a to me. The 4 coefficients and their original values are
turn_coefficient 200
strength_coefficient 25
relative_strength_coefficient 25
combined_strength_coefficient 25
I'd guess that combined_strength_coefficient is likely to be affecting some measured value of (i) the overall strength of either *all* the Roman factions together, or (ii) the overall strength of all roman factions except yours, or (iii) the combined strength of your faction + the Senate.
relative_strength_coefficient seems likely to be affecting some measured value of (i) your strength relative to the other roman factions, or (ii) your strength relative to the "rest of the world", or (iii) total roman strength compared to the rest of the world.
strength_coefficient seems likely to be affecting some measured value of your own strength.
I wouldn't care to seriously postulate at this point what turn_coefficient is for.
In this way you could construct an equation to measure each Roman faction's current senate standing by measuring values for the strength of the faction, how strong it is compared to the roman empire as a whole and how strong Rome is as a whole compared to the whole world. Again, modding these numbers may provide better indications as to what's going on.
Suggestions for the turn_coefficient are also welcome, as the only obvious idea I have is that each Roman faction gets progressively more (or less) popular as the campaign progresses just by still existing.
Next up we have values for Senate attitude boundaries:
attitude_boundary_1 30000
attitude_boundary_2 60000
attitude_boundary_3 90000
attitude_boundary_4 120000
attitude_boundary_5 150000
attitude_boundary_6 180000
I'd guess that this is used for comparing the figures you get out of the equation using the attitude coefficients to tell the game how the Senate should treat each Roman faction. I'd also assume that higher is better, and this could be tested easily enough by adjusting the values and seeing the in-game effect. Note that there are *6* boundaries and so presumably *7* states of senate attitude (take a piece of string and make 6 cuts through it to see what I mean). This value is important later.
Next up are the Senatorial offices, I know that this section is not directly relevant to the subject here, but I couldn't find a topic on this subject in this forum, I'll enclose this section in ***** lines to make it easy to skip.
**************************************************
(I have slightly tidied the formatting to make it easier to read):
;Title
;Quantity ; How many hold this office at any one time
;Duration ; Duration of tenure (turns)
;Settings ; Number of times office can be held - 0 implies unlimited
;Restrictions ; What restricts office being taken
; not_consecutively ; Can not be re-elected while in office
; quaestor_tenure ; Must have held office as quaestor
; aedile_tenure ; aedile
; praetor_tenure ; praetor
; consul_tenure ; tenure
;End_restrictions
;Senate_benefits ; The crony-perks of the office
; no_censor_suicide ; Censor investigation will not result in your suicide
; censor_immunity ; You will avoid investigation by the censor
;End_senate_benefits
;End
If we look at the example of the Consul office:
Consul
Rank 40
Quantity 1
Duration 8
Sittings 0
Restrictions
not_consecutively
praetor_tenure
End_restrictions
Senate_benefits
no_censor_suicide
End_senate_benefits
End
The tenure restrictions we already know about: you need to be a Quaestor before you can be an Aedile, an Aedile before a Praetor, et cetera. The Senate_benefits also tells us what we already pretty much know from playing the game.
Interestingly it seems that it would be possible to mod:
(a) the length of time senate offices are held for
(b) the number of people who can hold each office concurrently
(c) how often an office can be held by any character
(d) what senate benefits a character receives from the position
and (e) adjust whether characters can get re-elected for their current position or not.
Remembering, of course, that we seem to be able to modify how long your faction gets bonuses for qualifying for offices from certain missions it would be possible to significantly alter the way offices get dealt with.
What I don't get here is why there is a *value* for the Rank. It goes up by 10 for each increasing rank (10 for Quaestor, 60 for Pontifex Maximus), but why is there an integer value here? Why multiples of 10, rather than just 1 through 6? Suggestions, please.
**************************************************
Then we get to the missions section, and it gets tougher to interpret the data. First we appear to have some data relating to rewards and penalties
; Fines are expressed as percentages of current annual income
major_fine 10
moderate_fine 5
minor_fine 1
; Rewards are expressed as direct denari payments
major_reward 10000
moderate_reward 5000
minor_reward 1000
Easy enough to understand what it means, but the formatting of this section confuses me. Also seems easy enough to mod these values. Notably missing here is any data regarding non-financial rewards, like gifted units which are not mentioned anywhere in this file.
Next in this section appear to be the actual missions. Rather than reproduce the file verbatim I copy across the mission titles only and my guess as to the meaning in [] (where necessary).
Help_Player [where the senate gives you a present because they like you]
Demand_Suicide
Attack_Outlaw_Faction [you have to attack a Roman faction the senate dislikes]
Assassinate
Break_Alliance
Cease_Hostilities
Declare_War
Give_Back_City
Exact_Tribute
Subjugate [probably getting a protectorate]
Broker_Peace
Make_Trade_Agreement
Get_Map_Info
Appease [Not certain what this one would be]
Make_Alliance
Give_Cash
Annex_City [not sure of the difference between this and the Take_City options below]
Blockade_Port
Capture_Rebel_City
Destroy_Rebel_City
Take_City
With a format example using the last mission:
Take_City
max_region_traversal 3
Duration 10
-3 E p3
-3 M p2
-3 D p2
-2 E p3
-2 M p2
-2 D p1
-1 E p2
-1 M p1
-1 D r1
0 E r1
0 M r1
0 D r1
1 E r1
1 M r1
1 D r2
2 E r1
2 M r2
2 D r3
3 E r2
3 M r3
3 D r3
End
take_city_lower_boundary 0.6
take_city_higher_boundary 0.8
The format appears to be:
__________________________________________________ _
Mission_name
Additional_info
Duration How many turns allowed for completion
A penalty/reward matrix
End
Further_info
__________________________________________________ _
There is all sorts of interesting stuff in here.
Each mission seems to have a preset number of turns within which the mission must be completed. For Help_Player it is 0, you get given the money and the mission ends. For most other missions it is 10 (5 years) (look through the file for the exceptions).
Certain other missions have additional values describing them which I'll describe here:
For the Assassinate mission you have the Additional_info lines
difficulty_boundaries_0 75
difficulty_boundaries_1 60
difficulty_boundaries_2 40
I have no idea what these mean, but I'd guess they help ensure you only get assassinate missions when you have a good enough assassin near a suitable target...
For the Break_Alliance, Cease_Hostilities and Declare_War missions you have an Additional_info line saying
reissue_delay_in_turns 20
which I assume means that after this mission has been issued (or after it has been completed: would need to be tested to see which is true) this specific mission cannot be issued again for 20 turns.
The Destroy_Rebel_City and Take_City missions are unique as they appear to have two additional lines associated with each *after* the End line of each mission. Again, I don't actually know what effect these lines have in-game.
Take_City has the Additional_info line saying
max_region_traversal 3
which I suspect means that you're only going to get told to take cities within 3 regions of one of your armies? I am not really too sure how this works in practice though, as I am sure I remember being told to take cities separated from my armies by sea (Carthage, for example). It is a long time since I played as a Roman faction though.
The final point of discussion in this post is the penalty/reward matrix:
E, M and D probably refer to Easy, Medium and Difficult, (the hint is in the comment at the beginning of the file saying "Penalties and rewards are marked next to the difficulty") and presumably these are pegged to certain campaign difficulty levels. This would indicate that the reward on offer might vary according to what difficulty level you're playing at. Now remember that ages ago I mentioned that there were *7* states of senate attitude? Right, well, my guess is that this translates into the matrix as the -3,-2,-1,0,1,2,3 values in the matrix. The final part of the matrix is the p3,p2,p1,r1,r2,r3,Outlaw column which seems to clearly correlate to 3 levels of Penalty and 3 levels of Reward, + a special value of Outlaw for certain missions.
For some missions there are only values for E and M, or even E only. Presumably the rewards on offer and and penalties threatened are going to be the same no matter which difficulty level you're playing at (M and H = M for the former, E, M and H = E for the latter).
There is a clear correlation in the matrixes that as the senate likes you less you are going to get more penalties offered and fewer rewards, and in some missions you might be threatened with being outlawed, rather than just an ordinary punishment.
There is also (surprisingly to me) a clear correlation that on the easier difficulty levels the Senate is harsher; offering lower rewards and harsher punishments at equivalent levels of senate attitude. I would guess that this is because as other factors in the game are made easier, the missions are easier to achieve, but it's a very interesting note.
This is about all I was able to make sense of from this file without fiddling with the values. Hope it helps someone.
