Re-unification – an epic, themed WRE PBM

********************EDIT: THE SHORT VERSION *****************************

Game settings: VH campaign, M battles. Large units. Timer on. Patched to 1.6. Bugfixer 3.02.
Optional setting: brigand_spawn_value 50 pirate_spawn_value 60 [1]

House rules

1. The campaign ends when we conquer all starting WRE and ERE provinces[2], plus Tingi (43 target provinces). The game will award victory sooner (34 provinces), so choose to play on. Game ends in Summer 476 AD though.
2. Non-target provinces cannot be garrisoned at the end of a turn.
3. Target provinces cannot be enslaved or exterminated.
4. The following factions should not be eliminated: Celts, Berbers, Allemanni, Saxons. But if their last province is a target one, they are fair game.
5. Only full strength units, first cohorts or ships can be retrained.
6. The only buildings in target provinces which may be demolished are religious ones.
7. Play a full reign and try to choose a faction heir in his 50s, where possible following the hereditary principle.

The Order of Play
(Apologies for bumping people down one)
1. Simon Appleton
2. Mount Suribachi
3. TinCow
4. Dutch_guy
5. Zomby_Woof
6. Simon Appleton
Tricky_Lady (TBC)
The Emperor (TBC)

Explanatory Notes:
[1]Edit the file descr_strat.txt in:
C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War\bi\data\world\maps\campaign\barbarian_invasion
to change "brigand_spawn_value" to "50" and that for pirates to 60.
This will reduce the spawn of rebels and pirates to 20% of the original version.
If individual players don't want to do this, they don't need to. But I hate fighting smelly rebels.

[2]WRE provinces: Eburacum, Londinium, Tarraco, Salamantica, Carthago Nova, Corduba, Carthage, Lepcis Magna, Burdigala, Avaricum. Samarobriva, Arles, Massila, Colonia Agrippina, Augusta Treverorum, Augusta Vindelicorum, Mediolanium, Ravenna, Rome, Tarentum, Syracuse, Caralis, Carnuntum, Aquincum, Salona
ERE provinces: Thessalonica, Sirmium, Constantinople, Ephesus, Ancrya, Caesarea, Tarsus, Sinope, Antioch, Sidon, Philadelphaea, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Cyrene.
Tingi is the Berber capital and used to be part of the Empire; we want it back.

********************EDIT: WHAT FOLLOWS IS OLDER INFORMATION***************

Anyone want to play in an epic story-heavy WRE BI PBM? The emphasis will be on trying to produce good write-ups rather than blitz the game. Ideally, I’d like the thing to run close to the maximum length of a BI campaign (100 years?).

Anyone can sign up, but it is not necessarily first come, first served – I will oversee the campaign and may give priority to those who have produced good write-ups in the past. If people do not take up their reigns promptly, they may lose their position in the ranking in order to keep the show on the road.

Here are some suggested rules:

1) Play a full reign: To allow people to get into character, players will play for the entire reign of an Emperor. To stop this being too onerous and to allow more players to participate, I propose players ensure the faction heir is in his 50’s when the faction leader dies. To this end, players may want to save every turn so they can reload their last turn and chose a new heir if the designated one was too young or too old when the Emperor dies.
2) Have fun!: Players are encouraged to role-play the game and exploit story-telling opportunities. They need not always write from the perspective of the Emperor – they could follow a specific general who catches their eye or even an ancillary. They could get their generals to do something quixotic if it is in character for that general (or seems like fun). But they should not to leave successor players in very difficult situations (e.g. by disbanding the entire army or withdrawing entirely to Britain etc) and should work towards the general theme of the campaign, re-unification.
3) Re-unification: The overall theme of the campaign will be re-unification of the Roman Empire. To this end, players should aim to conquer all the ERE starting provinces and hold every last one of their starting WRE provinces. I am not sure if holding all WRE and ERE provinces alone is sufficient for a WRE victory, but it is close. I will check later on and produce a specific list of the provinces needed to meet WRE victory conditions.
4) Respect the frontier: As a corollary of the re-unification theme, players are not to try to hold any provinces that were not originally parts of the WRE or ERE. They may pillage them, but should not leave a garrison there. The idea here is to work within the frontiers of the Empire. Historically, there were presumably reasons for the frontiers being where they were – logistics, guerilla warfare etc. – and a WRE campaign that is won by just picking up some weak barbarian provinces would be too short to get an epic PBM going (someone won in 380AD on VH/VH).
5) Friends, Romans, countrymen!: Players should not exterminate any towns that start under Roman rule (WRE or ERE). The theme is re-unification, not fratricide. Players may exterminate barbarian towns, but may not hold them. Even these exterminations should be done sparingly, for role-playing reasons (e.g. to avenge the loss of a city or army) – not as a quick exploit to pre-empt the AI building up its armies or to get some easy money.
6) Don't kick the underdogs: Players should not wipe out the weak non-horde barbarian factions – IIRC, Celts, Berbers, Allemanni and Saxons. This is to better simulate the ever-present “frontier” and the threats posed by smaller tribes neighbouring Rome.
7) No Vandals here!: To try to keep the economy tight, players should not disband any buildings for cash. They may freely dismantle religious buildings in order to manage religious discontent or convert populations to a favoured faith.
8) No dirty peasants: No peasant units may be recruited or retained. They are too cheap as garrisons and anyway, that is what the limitanei and foederati were for.
9) Game settings: The campaign will be on VH campaign, M battles. Large units. Timer on. Patched to 1.6. I think we should probably adjust the settings to reduce the rate of spawn of rebels and pirates, as they are tedious to fight – I’ll look into this.

List of players (in no particular order):

Simon Appleton
TinCow
Mount Suribachi? (TBC)
The Emperor? (TBC)
Dutch_Guy? (TBC)
Tricky_Lady? (TBC)

Please post if you would like to play and also give a preference for your order in the list of reigns (first turn, early, mid-game, end-game).

I think TinCow is happy to go second. I am happy to go first, but someone else might enjoy that too – the first few turns of WRE are very tense and fun, especially under the above rules.

We all have real lives to attend to, but ideally I’d like people to play out their reigns within a week of coronation and to post write-ups at most a few days later. If they cannot do that, they should ask for a later reign and let someone else take their place.

Any volunteers?

As mentioned, I'm definitely in. A few comments:

1) What is our policy on enslavement? I would say forbid that in Roman settlements as well unless there is an extremely good storytelling/roleplaying reason for it. Part of the reason for the no extermination, no building destruction, no abandoning provinces and no peasant garrisons is to make the game harder in addition to more entertaining and realistic. I think heavily restricting enslavement of fellow Romans would apply here as well.

2) Would we be allowed to engineer defeats? Part of the problem with many PBMs (and pretty much any TW campaign really) is that we never lose. Frankly, we've all played this game so much that we're damn hard to beat, even when outnumbered 4 to 1 and have inferior troops. It might be exciting to intentionally fight a few major battles badly. For instance, if an emperor got too old and it fit his character, it might be fun to have him die and lose a massive army in a major blunder. This could leave the empire vulnerable, provide excitement in the story and provide a challenge for the next player who would have to deal with the immediate aftermath. Late Roman history was certainly not an unending string of victories; I think ours shouldn't be either. That said, I wouldn't want such things to be clichéd or to have every emperor die on a spear.

3) Similar to the above, can we intentionally cause religious chaos if it fits? Say most of the empire is Christian, but for whatever reason a player is given a Pagan emperor who is very fervent in his beliefs; would it be acceptible for him to try to reconvert some provinces even if we all knew it would cause internal problems and revolt? I could see an emperor like this spending his entire reign just fighting rebellions over his Pagan reconversion. I would love to read about something like that.

4) Heirs. While I agree with choosing someone who is in their 50s to make the reigns keep revolving, I think we shouldn't just pick new heirs at random. Unless the Emperor has a very good reason for doing so (or if his sons are all in their 20s), I think we should try to stick to hereditary rule. Even in those circumstances, I would say you MUST pick the closest relative to the emperor who is in the proper age catagory. This would allow people to play reigns of very bad emperors in addition to the military and economic geniuses. Since so much of the Roman drama came from the mix of good and bad emperors, I think this would be a positive move. We could use a ranking system as follows to make it easy for people to choose which person inherits. An example would be:
1 - 50 to 59 son
2 - 50 to 59 grandson
3 - 50 to 59 brother
4 - 50 to 59 nephew
5 - 45 to 50 son
6 - 45 to 50 grandson
7 - 45 to 50 brother
8 - 45 to 50 nephew

Under no circumstances would a someone be allowed to inherit if they had been adopted into the family or married into the family unless there was an extremely good storyline reason for doing so. An example would be an extremely religious Christian emperor whose legitimate heirs are all Pagan, and a major battle is won against a pagan horde by another fervent Christian who is then adopted.

I guess the majority of what I'm interested in is just making an interesting history. We need to actively struggle with this and while the rules will by no means make this easy, I think a few more realistic aspects would help. If we want to make it really hard would could even forbid retraining.

All good suggestions, TinCow, I agree.

On (1) "No enslavement" is within the spirit of the "no extermination" rule, so yes, I agree with that.

On (2) and (3), I think they go under the heading of my "have fun" rule. If there is a story-based reason for doing something that has adverse consequences, then fine. The only caveat is don't leave something too horrible for the next player to sort out (we had that once in a MTW campaign - I think it was England and we had got to the steppes to face the Huns, then a player withdrew all armies to the British Isles, so we lost the Empire in wave of rebellions - it sucked the life right out of that PBM).

On (4), I was hoping for some input on how we should choose heirs and your thoughts on this are good. Are they currently chosen by the game on hereditary principles? Regardless, it does sound like the best way to go about choosing the heir, unless there is a good story-based reason to deviate as you say. Hopefully, the hereditary principle will tend give heirs of the right age but I have not paid much attention to it in the past to confirm this.

I'll give other people a chance to make further suggestions and then revise the rules to take on board these great comments. :2thumbsup:

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1) Play a full reign: To allow people to get into character, players will play for the entire reign of an Emperor. To stop this being too onerous and to allow more players to participate, I propose players ensure the faction heir is in his 50’s when the faction leader dies. To this end, players may want to save every turn so they can reload their last turn and chose a new heir if the designated one was too young or too old when the Emperor dies.

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This sounds good and as the title says : Epic.

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2) Have fun!: Players are encouraged to role-play the game and exploit story-telling opportunities. They need not always write from the perspective of the Emperor – they could follow a specific general who catches their eye or even an ancillary. They could get their generals to do something quixotic if it is in character for that general (or seems like fun). But they should not to leave successor players in very difficult situations (e.g. by disbanding the entire army or withdrawing entirely to Britain etc) and should work towards the general theme of the campaign, re-unification.

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agreed.

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3) Re-unification: The overall theme of the campaign will be re-unification of the Roman Empire. To this end, players should aim to conquer all the ERE starting provinces and hold every last one of their starting WRE provinces. I am not sure if holding all WRE and ERE provinces alone is sufficient for a WRE victory, but it is close. I will check later on and produce a specific list of the provinces needed to meet WRE victory conditions.

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Again, this sounds epic. I can imagine it to be great fun reading - or perhaps writing - about the great final battle before the gates of Antioch...:2thumbsup:

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4) Respect the frontier: As a corollary of the re-unification theme, players are not to try to hold any provinces that were not originally parts of the WRE or ERE. They may pillage them, but should not leave a garrison there. The idea here is to work within the frontiers of the Empire. Historically, there were presumably reasons for the frontiers being where they were – logistics, guerilla warfare etc. – and a WRE campaign that is won by just picking up some weak barbarian provinces would be too short to get an epic PBM going (someone won in 380AD on VH/VH).
5) Friends, Romans, countrymen!: Players should not exterminate any towns that start under Roman rule (WRE or ERE). The theme is re-unification, not fratricide. Players may exterminate barbarian towns, but may not hold them. Even these exterminations should be done sparingly, for role-playing reasons (e.g. to avenge the loss of a city or army) – not as a quick exploit to pre-empt the AI building up its armies or to get some easy money.

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I can see this producing some good ingame moments, especially if that frontier tribe eventually becomes a superpower, we'd be hard put.

as for the last 4 points:

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6) Don't kick the underdogs: Players should not wipe out the weak non-horde barbarian factions – IIRC, Celts, Berbers, Allemanni and Saxons. This is to better simulate the ever-present “frontier” and the threats posed by smaller tribes neighbouring Rome.
7) No Vandals here!: To try to keep the economy tight, players should not disband any buildings for cash. They may freely dismantle religious buildings in order to manage religious discontent or convert populations to a favoured faith.
8) No dirty peasants: No peasant units may be recruited or retained. They are too cheap as garrisons and anyway, that is what the limitanei and foederati were for.
9) Game settings: The campaign will be on VH campaign, M battles. Large units. Timer on. Patched to 1.6. I think we should probably adjust the settings to reduce the rate of spawn of rebels and pirates, as they are tedious to fight – I’ll look into this.

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Well exept for point 8, I usually play this way anyway, so no big deal to make these above quoted rules official -

So I'm in, though preferably as ...say player number 4.

Do want to play, but spare time is getting harder to come by now a days so I don't want to disturb the earlier fase of the campaign.

That's all for now, If I get any flashes of inspiration I'd let you guys know.

:balloon2:

Yep, I'm definately in. Been a while (too long) since I did this.

Simon, if I may make a request about my position in the order. After this Monday (30th Jan), the way my shift pattern falls I will be off work for 5 of the next 7 days, giving me plenty of time to play BI ~:)

So, depending on when you start, could I go first or second?

A word of warning though, I've only been playing RTW since Christmas and I've not played a BI campaign yet...then again, I'm not like to tear up the map so maybe thats a good thing ~;)

I would be interested to play, as you've so kindly added me in the To Be Confirmed category.

I must add that I've hardly played RTW, leave alone BI, recently so you shouldn't expect too epic wins from me. But as TinCow mentioned, losing some battles every now and then might bring some life into the PBM again, as everyone usually steamrolls over all opponents quite easily.

Due to (or should I say: thanks to) real-life issues I haven't been playing any PC games recently, so I might not really fulfill the request to play within one week and post a write-up and pictures at most two days later, I suggest that you complete the list first, determine the order (I'd prefer not to play the first or second turn), and then I'll try to make sure that game life gets priority over real life again (just for once :2thumbsup: ).

I do agree with all of the suggestions made by both Simon and TinCow. I should make a short memo when I start playing as I do tend to play many rules that you're now explicitely ruling out (peasants for instance). :shame:

And also one thing: I am a very (very!) cautious and slow player (no blitzing for TL) so perhaps my 'reign' would become a bit boring. Perhaps I can engineer a smashing defeat at one of the Western borders... :juggle2:

So, yes, count me in. I'll try to do my best to play and write within the 'requested' time-frame.

EDIT:
Oh, I just realise that my current RTW-BI installation might not be up-to-date... I play ....errrr... what do I play? Hmmm, better check, but I can't remember having installed patch 1.6. I have installed player1's bugfixer and professorspatula's Unlock All Factions and Horde mod. Are these two no-gos? Just RTW-BI, patch 1.6, no mod, modlets or bugfixers?
Perhaps I should reinstall RTW completely anyway, as I'd like to try EB too.... :thinking:

Great to see some quick interest here (maybe the Throne room is escaping its wintery period since VI).

From the responses so far, I propose the following order of play:

1. Mount Suribachi
2. TinCow
3. Tricky_Lady
4. Dutch_guy
5. The Emperor (TBC)
6. Simon Appleton

We can switch around to fit people's real life commitments as required.

Let's keep things open for more players and suggestions for a few more days, then we can confirm the groundrules and Mount can start on Monday or whenever suits him.

BTW: In my reply to him, I missed one of TinCow's proposals - no retraining. I guess the idea would be to stop depleted veteran units miraculously regrowing new veterans and also impose some logistical constraints on conquest. I confess I like it, maybe with the proviso that you can merge units together and retrain full strength units to get the full benefit of better armour and weapons (e.g. from Rome). I suspect if we are conquering ERE, it might be very easy to keep retraining and so maintain a killer army as we conquer because the ERE cities will often have the necessary troop building infrastructure. The no retraining rule would bring the game closer to the RTR/EB/MedMod geographic restrictions on unit recruitment.

PS: TrickyLady, I think bugfixer will not cause any problems but I am not sure about the professor's mods. A reinstall might not be a bad idea - the EB beta is definitely worth tasting as it is amazingly ambitious. But, at least on my rig, it crashed a bit too much for it to be much fun playing long term.

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Originally Posted by Simon Appleton

BTW: In my reply to him, I missed one of TinCow's proposals - no retraining. I guess the idea would be to stop depleted veteran units miraculously regrowing new veterans and also impose some logistical constraints on conquest. I confess I like it, maybe with the proviso that you can merge units together and retrain full strength units to get the full benefit of better armour and weapons (e.g. from Rome). I suspect if we are conquering ERE, it might be very easy to keep retraining and so maintain a killer army as we conquer because the ERE cities will often have the necessary troop building infrastructure. The no retraining rule would bring the game closer to the RTR/EB/MedMod geographic restrictions on unit recruitment.

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Yeah, the general idea would be to make battle losses significant. With retraining we all know we can lose 75% of our forces and still have a formidable army in one turn. I think exceptions to this would be allowed of course. Like you said, full strength and general units could retrain to gain armor/weapon bonuses. I also think we should allow retraining at any time for First Cohorts. I'm fond of giving these things unique names for my legions and it would be hard to keep the 'named' legions around if I couldn't replenish that unit. That wouldn't be that unbalancing though since few cities would have a barracks highly developed enough to retrain them anyway. Maybe allow retraining of ships as well, since naval combat is such a pain as it is.

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Originally Posted by Simon Appleton

I guess the idea would be to stop depleted veteran units miraculously regrowing new veterans.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought experience was tracked on an individual soldier level - the experience on the unit icon is an average across the whole unit. I'm certain this was the case in MTW and STW (thinks: swordsman event), have they changed it for RTW?

So when you retrain a unit to re-stock the numbers, the new recruits will only have the valour/experience that their training centre buildings and/or commander provide, no?

BTW I have no problem with any of these rules, but before I start, can we have a little crib sheet with all the rules on them - just the rules and game details. With all the explanations and stuff above, it becomes hard to keep track of them all, thx.

Yes, they changed the re-training in RTW from that in MTW/STW for some reason. In RTW, if you retrained a unit, it retains its experience (chevrons). I don't know how that squares with experience tracked at the level of the individual soldier - maybe the new soldiers are assigned individual vet status equal to the unit average?

OK, I'll make a short crib list of houserules in a couple of days time when the dust has settled.

Yes, experience is weird. It IS tracked individually, however when you retrain a unit, the new men all receive the average (displayed chevrons) of the remaining men. This means that if you have a unit that has been depleted to 1 man, but that man has three golds, when you retrain the unit the entire unit will have three golds. Ironically, this makes retraining better than combining veterans since combining has them retain their individual experience, even if lower than average.

OK, I've got another possible houserule - we should use our diplomants to seek out AI factions and trade maps with them. It appears that if the AI has your map, it will be able to target your less well defended cities:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...3&postcount=30

I think map trading will make the game more challenging and also historical (the barbarians were perfectly aware of the attractions of the Roman hinterland). But I don't want to make Mount Suribachi's reign impossible. What do people think?

To make that a house rule would go to far in my opinion.

I mean, did the Romans trade their maps to their sworn enemies ?

I'd say no, maybe to say Egyptians, but not to neighboughring barbarians.

For game play reasons we should do it, for realisms sake I'd say we shouldn't - I prefer realism in this case.

:balloon2:

OK, I see your point & maybe we are in danger of descending into masochism!

Yes, please let's not drive it too far as I'd lose my head before we even get started :dizzy2: :sweatdrop:

Personally, I like the idea of always giving map information to the other factions. Quite simply, the Western Roman Empire was preyed on historically and usually is in-game; if we can make that more dramatic, all the better.

Another thing I'd like to adress is the reconquering of once Roman cities. For instance, if the Celts or Saxons were to take Eburacum and completely de-Romanizes it over a course of time would it still be okay to go ahead and repossess that territory?

Lastly, are our reigns to be in-character? For instance, if we have a devout Christian emperor should we play the game as if he was actually in charge by attempting to convert the Empire soley to Christianity or if we had an emperor who had the "Fears Barbarians" trait should we make our frontier border well-defended?

Lastly, I'd like to ask about the raids against barbarians. From my understanding one is allowed to take a barbarian settlement but one cannot leave a garrison of any type in that settlement? So in theory you can send an army as deep into the frontier as you like just so long as you don't leave a garrison in any conquered territory? That seems like a good way to bring in easy revenue, even if you're not allowed to completely wipe out some of the "one-territory-non-hordeable" factions like the Alemanni or Burgundii.

Anywho, as the hoplites used to say, "You can sign me up for the back."

Good questions, Zomby_Woof, I'll deal with them in turn.

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Originally Posted by Zomby_Woof

Personally, I like the idea of always giving map information to the other factions. Quite simply, the Western Roman Empire was preyed on historically and usually is in-game; if we can make that more dramatic, all the better.

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I agree but given the responses, let's leave this to each reigning Emperor to decide.

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Another thing I'd like to adress is the reconquering of once Roman cities. For instance, if the Celts or Saxons were to take Eburacum and completely de-Romanizes it over a course of time would it still be okay to go ahead and repossess that territory?

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Absolutely. The aim of the game is to re-unify the Empire as a whole - if WRE starter provinces are lost, they should be targeted just as ERE starter ones.

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Lastly, are our reigns to be in-character? For instance, if we have a devout Christian emperor should we play the game as if he was actually in charge by attempting to convert the Empire soley to Christianity or if we had an emperor who had the "Fears Barbarians" trait should we make our frontier border well-defended?

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I think we should have artistic licence. Sometimes, I find a game writes itself in a certain way - for example, in my turn in the ERE PBM, I decided to focus the story (and action) on a group of up and coming generals, sidelining the Emperor (I think in-game I was worried he would become disloyal and cause an inexplicable civil war). TinCow suggested one idea of telling a story through the eyes of an ancillary. So, I would say try to make your reign into something with a good narrative, but it does not have to be told from the perspective of the Emperor. He could be an "Old King Log" as was Graves' Claudius.

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Lastly, I'd like to ask about the raids against barbarians. From my understanding one is allowed to take a barbarian settlement but one cannot leave a garrison of any type in that settlement? So in theory you can send an army as deep into the frontier as you like just so long as you don't leave a garrison in any conquered territory? That seems like a good way to bring in easy revenue, even if you're not allowed to completely wipe out some of the "one-territory-non-hordeable" factions like the Alemanni or Burgundii.

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A deep raid was another one of TinCow's story ideas - he was thinking of a general searching for an Amazonian princess or something. So if it is done for a story-based reason, fine. Personally, I would not do it to amass a war chest in the first few turns but even that could be a legitimate motive if the whole thing falls apart and we desperately need money to survive a calamity (not that I expect it with our present list of players).

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Anywho, as the hoplites used to say, "You can sign me up for the back."

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Good stuff. I'll add you to the list and produce a shortened list of the houserules in the morning.

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Absolutely. The aim of the game is to re-unify the Empire as a whole - if WRE starter provinces are lost, they should be targeted just as ERE starter ones.

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Well that brings up another question. The point of this PBM is not just to finish the Western Roman Empire's campaign but to unite the starting Western and Eastern Roman Empires?

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Originally Posted by Zomby_Woof

Well that brings up another question. The point of this PBM is not just to finish the Western Roman Empire's campaign but to unite the starting Western and Eastern Roman Empires?

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Yup, to win the WRE campaign you have to hold some key provinces plus a certain number in total. In our campaign, that number should be from the WRE and ERE starting provinces. I'll make a list of those and check whether they are enough (or too much) to be recognised as a win.

I've just fired up BI as the WRE to see what I'm up against and....Aye Carumba!!!

With the above house rules I'm thinking "how on Earth am I meant to sort this mess out?"

Across the empire have low loyalty provinces on the verge of revolt, mainly pagan with a Christian Emperor, no money, army wage bill is greater than my income, my Caeser has a slew of income vices, my christian governors think earning money is a sin....now, my response to this would be to disband a load of troops, burn down and abandon outlying unproductive provinces and go raid and exterminate some neighbouring settlements for a quick cash injection.

All of which I'm not allowed to do! ~:)

Seriously, with the Empire in this state, I don't know how I could turn it around, let alone start conquering the ERE and there's a very good chance that #2 on the list is going to inherit an even bigger mess than at the start of the game.

So Simon, may I suggest that you go first? The first in a PBEM game often sets the tone of the whole game, and you can imbue the whole thing with the spirit that you are trying to achieve. The Emperor is 62, so it shouldn't be too long a reign. If you could play it over the weekend and get it to me next week that would be ideal.

OTOH, you might want a leader who hasn't a clue how to turn things around (me) as Emperor of Rome. Kinda realistic eh?

Either way I have no probs with what you decide.

I wouldn't worry about the empire erupting into chaos. We know that's going to happen and that's one of the reasons for the rules. This is meant to be hard and I fully expect more than one emperor to lose territories or simply hold the line.

A few more questions/comments from me though:

1) Is elimination of a non-horde faction allowed if they only hold former Roman provinces? Say the Alemanni conquer some WRE territories but lose their starting city to a horde, can we take back our provinces and eliminate them? Would it be better to take their starting province for them and then donate it to them before taking back ours?

2) We should ignore the game winning message and continue playing. I haven't counted, but I'm sure we will easily win the game just by conquering the Balkans with Constantinople and maybe a few more here and there. At this point the emperor will get the win message. Just ignore it and keep playing with our own goals until the entire empire is reunited. The only way to avoid the win message would be to leave Constantinople for last, but that won't fly from a story perspective.

Ok, I'll take the first reign and get it done by Monday. The second turn as WRE is a bit of a shock if you have not encountered it before, even without any houserules. I think it's a bit unfair to have to struggle with that and have to keep in mind the many houserules. Age 62 means I hopefully won't hog too much of the campaign.

The houserules are a bit of a challenge - I don't think I will make a start on the ERE. Rather the other way, I fear. :embarassed:

OK, I've updated my initial post at the start of this thread to give the short version of the rules.

TinCow, I think if the "protected" factions are reduced to a single one of "our" provinces, they are out of luck. You are right on the second point - we must play on after being awarded victory. I've adjusted the houserules to reflect these clarifications.

I'll be starting the first reign soon.

*rubs hands in anticipation*

Good to hear we're on our way. ~:)

:balloon2:

/me plots to murder Mount Suribachi's Emperor and sieze the throne.

TinCow, I think your plot got my Emperor instead! :oops:

The Emperor is dead after a mere 3 seasons. The WRE is in tact, in the black (but only making 5000 gold per year), there are no red faces and we have about 4 half-decent armies to play with. The new Emperor is 46.

I think you might want to take over now, Mount? You'll have a good long innings and I don't think it should be too problematic. Don't feel you have to start conquering ERE. At this stage of the WRE campaign, with the hordes about to burst upon us, I rather like to follow Dakkon's advice from PST: "Endure. In enduring, grow strong."

I'll load the savegame up as WRE_364W.zip.

I'll do a write-up soon, but it won't be the Shakespeare obviously. I'd rather like to plagiarise Demon of Light's classic:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...&postcount=270

Ah yes, I remember DoLs classic ~:D

I don't know if every game starts the same in BI, but the one I looked at the other day, the ERE Emperor had a historian in his retinue. Perhaps an ode to his patron....

Anyway, yes I am ready to go for this. I'm on the late shift the next 3 days so I'll not be able to do much other than inspect my new Empire and formulate grand strategies at work ~:) But come Tuesday I'm all over that sucker like a rash ~:)

A great write-up, as usual, Simon. And the old emperor's end really made me laugh :laugh:. Good find!

OK, d'loaded and installed Simons save. Liked the story using my "exotic slave" ~:) Now to try and figure out in which way I should role-play Augustus Leontius Flavius...