Problems with Senate Mission to capture Sardis

This is a post regarding some issues involving the capture of the city of Sardis under the auspices of a Senate mission. I'm new to these boards, so if this is in the wrong forum my apologies.

I've placed posts in the Support Requests forum on totalwar.com and on the Total War Center website regarding this issue, apparently it's not well known or the people who have encountered it haven't thought it was usual. I was inspired to post regarding the issue as another .com member, Mindblank was going through a similar issue, thus probing the problem wasn't isolated to me and me alone.

I was waging a relatively successful war against Pontus in Asia Minor when I was tasked with taking the city of Sardis. At the time I had 19 provinces, and my rating with the Senate was high, with the Plebs seeing me as average. For the first few times, the game CTD directly after I'd defeat the Pontic Garisson and take the city. Eventually I remedied this issue and then the real problems begain.

Sacking the city results in immediate outlaw-status imposed by the Senate. I restarted several times and in each case taking Sardis resulted in outlaw status. This isn't the end of the problems however. Once I was outlawed naturally I lost all my alliances (even with non roman factions). As time progressed my faction (the Brutii) and the other Roman factions would be outlawed again and again at Random. I would be given missions to attack the other Roman factions, and recieve rewards, though sometimes the missions wouldn't end resulting in something like "-6 turns remaining." in the mission status window.

In any event I was not tasked to assassinate my faction leader, the Senate never indicated a dislike for me, I did not have 30 or 40 or 50 provinces, I could not sack Rome, and my popularity with the people was mediocre at best. I believe this to be some kind of scripting bug involving a Senate mission to take Sardis. I recall that in an earlier Brutii campaign I took Sardis without issue. Possibly because it wasn't under a mission status (seems likely).

Any ideas you guys may have or thoughts on this issue would be welcome, Cheers!

Other factions can start the civil war you know. My first Julii campaign I figured why start it I'll provoke it. I took diplomats to both the Scipii and Brutii and talked dirty to them. At the end of the turn the Brutii attacked me starting the civil war, I got outlawed 1 turn after the Brutii did

Once 1 faction gets outlawed they all do from my observation, maybe on a rare occasion the senate will side with a weak Roman faction but so far I have'nt seen that only heard about it.

Also think more into what's going on, did you have a spy in an enemy city then a Roman faction took it over and later got caught by the Romans.

I'm another newbie and I had a problem taking Sardis with the Julii. It caused the game to crash completely about a dozen times.

I only got it to work by bringing up another army and attacking it. After that it was ok, none of the behaviour described above but again it was a senate mission and I have only seen that behaviour with Sardis.

HTH.

I havent had that problem. I conquered Sardis but it wasnt in a Senate mission