The Will of the Senate - out of character thread III

The mass enslavements Julius Caeser did in Gaul was only after Vercingetorix's rebellion - both as a punishment and to remove the rebellious population. But prior to that he had tried to Romanise Gaul relatively peacefully.

But you are right about Generals having the right to the profits from enslavements. IIRC Caeser gave the profits from the Gallic slaves to his legions as a reward (and to keep them loyal to him ~;) )

In game terms, I'm really wary of enslavement, ever since my first RTW game (as the Scipii) when I enslaved Syracause, and it led to uncontrollable, game-breakingly-out-of-control sqaulor in Carthage. Although I was in favour of it during the Gaulish expedition as the settlements in Cisalpine Gaul needed the population boost.

I've written up the infamous defeat at Massilia ford:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...9&postcount=22

What I did was let the AI fight the battle against itself - I only commanded Publius and I kept him out of the fight; Manius and the army came up as reinforcements (allowing the Gauls to get across the ford unmolested). Watching the AI fight was quite interesting - despite all the negative comment, it did not seem that "dumb". It was particularly striking how decisive the general's cavalry were: the AI uses them as the hammer to the flank or rear just like we do. I think those 2 hit points/trooper may be a little overpowering, given the advantages of heavy cavalry anyway.

BTW, where do we stand regarding the mid-term, DDW and Mount Suribachi? Do we just go on as normal, no election? That would be my preference. Politically, not much has changed from before - indeed, with the most credible challenger Pansa being co-opted, I think Lucius Aemilius's position is stronger than ever.

If DDW can continue playing after this session, I too would prefer that it continues without an election. However, if he wants to hand it off to Mount Suribachi, I believe we should have an election, if only to properly elect his new avatar to the position... unless no other Lower House senator has any wish to run.

I'd rather not slow the game up with an election if we can avoid it. Seems the easiest way to go.

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Originally Posted by Death the destroyer of worlds

I see things differrently. I've just finished reading Ceasar's Gaul campaigns (De Bello Gallico) and enslavement was the order of the day, regularly enslaving tens of thousands of people, or even entire tribes. An estimate of the number of slaves taken during this ten year campaign numbers around one million. Rome numbered around ten slaves for each citizen/freeman. There actually was ecessive slave taking in the Greece campaigns, as the civilized slaves were very valuable. The generals financed their careers and campaigns by enslaving the people they conquered.
Extermination is very extreme and rare in Roman history (no profit in it, see). I think it only happened on or two times, most notably of course Carthage.
Finally, I prefer it in game terms, as it is hard to subdue a conquered city numbering over 5000. Enslaving half the population will give us time to build stuff and generally reduce unrest.

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That must make me a bad ruler...I have a terrible habit of exterminating everything, destroying all their faction specific infrastructure, and rebuilding it from the ground up in the name of (whatever faction I happen to be playing at the time). I guess you could call it ethnic cleansing. :skull:

econ, I really liked that battle report of Massilia. Was this already done when the trial testimonies were made? I would have to assume so, considering everything was as described. Otherwise, it would be one hell of a weird coincidence...

Me and DDW have agreed that after the mid-term, he will play until I have a battle, then I will take over and play till he has a battle, then he will play till etc etc.

Excellent work on the battle, econ21 !
I agree that the AI is not so dumb at all, human players just never give it a chance to show its worth. Just play a battle lazily, especially on VH, and you will soon change your opinion.

As Mount Suribachi said, we have reached an agreement and I will send him an outline of my strategic plans, which are of course liable to change at any moment. We will agree or reach a compromise quickly. In play, I will back any decisions he makes during his control, and he will back mine (not formally agreed, but I can't imagine he'll refuse).

On the Gaul campaigns, Ceaser's work is of course a brilliant work of propaganda for the folks back in Rome. Many of his verbal tricks you can still see daily on CNN :laugh4: If you read between the lines you can see that he regularly enslaves thousands of people during his entire ten year campaign, culminating in the enslavement of over 50.000 people when Alesia falls. He cleverly conceals the slavetaking by talking around it or being vague, as the people of Rome would be annoyed that they weren't getting any of the take.

However, my standing order is withdrawn and I will give it explicitly in my battle order to the senators (unless I forget :laugh4:). Mount Suribachi can order them to occupy instead if he so desires.

DDW, you don't think the Carthage AI will accept a ceasefire at all unless we give back all of their territories? My in-game suggestions certainly aren't in-line with my character's nature, but I felt they had to take a back seat to coming up with something that could realistically have a chance of success. There's no way that the AI will accept a ceasefire for 5,000 and trade rights so I don't see much point in trying. I've seen command lines that can force peace treaties between nations, but I've never been able to get them to work. If we could, perhaps we could agree on an amount to be given to them, then gift it to them and force the ceasefire via console.

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Originally Posted by Mount Suribachi

Me and DDW have agreed that after the mid-term, he will play until I have a battle, then I will take over and play till he has a battle, then he will play till etc etc.

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Sounds fine. We don't need an election.

BTW, in the FAQ, I've marked shifty157 aka Publius Laevinus and Destroyer of Hope aka Manius the Mad as "retired". Given what we have done to their characters, I doubt they'd want them back. :oops: I am also marking x-dANGEr as "retired" so that, like the other two, he has the option of returning and being given new characters as required.

We can be relaxed about other inactive Upper House members, as the Upper House by nature is a fairly informal arrangement, so people can pop by occaisionally.

BTW, with Mount taking over Publius Pansa, there's a very nice general available, Cornelius Saturninus, if anyone wants him - especially someone with eyes on the Lower House.

https://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b...rninus_260.jpg

Tincow, that is a possibility. I don't like to mess with the game, but the AI diplomacy is hopeless on VH. Personally, I feel we should conquer them (eventually) and not 'force' a ceasefire. I will however back your motion if it does not exceed 5000 gold pieces, as it will be a very long time before we are ready to take on Carthage. I have never tried that cheat code and not all of them work, so perhaps we'd better test that first.

I'd like the co-consul way of playing to be made legal, i.e. in the rules.

I tried the console codes I found for diplomacy and they did not work for me. I read that you had to write a script to enable them and that was way out of my league.

I just had an idea though... we could use RomeSage to reduce the difficulty level to medium (or easy?) for just a moment, negotiate a ceasefire, then return it to VH. Wouldn't that work? They would almost certainly accept it then, even with only 5,000 offered.

I can't say I'm a big fan of trying to force the AI to accept a particular agreement, particularly from an in-game RP sort of perspective. If we reduce the difficulty for a deal with Carthage, then it makes it as if only Carthage is willing to negotiate while everyone else is out to kill us at all cost. If you apply equal standards for all nations, and reduce difficulty for every diplomatic deal proposed by us, then you'll get nations accepting ceasefires, and then, when we get back to VH, almost certainly attacking us with little delay. So, as silly as the AI is when it comes to diplomacy, I'd rather not mess with it.

Well, the very lack of AI diplomacy is incredibly silly from a RP standpoint. There's only so much we can do when it's war 24/7 against everyone. Perhaps we could make a rule that would work with this. If we have not fought a single battle with a particular enemy in 10 game years, we can make peace with them for a reasonable sum.

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Originally Posted by TinCow

Well, the very lack of AI diplomacy is incredibly silly from a RP standpoint. There's only so much we can do when it's war 24/7 against everyone. Perhaps we could make a rule that would work with this. If we have not fought a single battle with a particular enemy in 10 game years, we can make peace with them for a reasonable sum.

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Creative thinking. I am in FLYdude's camp, but this I can live with. Let's say ten years. War might not break out immediately again, as our lands are not adjacent at the moment.

Or there's always the potential of just changing the difficulty to H/H. Making up for the campaign difficulty change by upping the enemies morale a little with the battle difficulty.

Just a thought. At least on H Campaign difficulty the computer will accept proposals in their favor without having completely ridiculous demands.

"x number of peaceful years" would be an ok rule. I take it you mean only land battles? The last hostilities with Carthage were in 263. They blockaded a few ports and there was a small naval battle. I doubt they could last 10 years without doing silly things like that. Perhaps the rule could count the number of years since "a settlement changed hands by force".

That said, I doubt the peace would last anyway. We might not have a land border, but if one of their boats happened to pass near any attackable object, they'd probably attack. So, I don't quite see the point. Also, I think a raid on the African coast could be interesting. (Also, I don't like Carthage :laugh4: ).

(Psst, got a secret for you, we can tell. :laugh4: :2thumbsup: )

I'm for playing the game on H/H as I think that allows for the closest to realistic as we can get kind of game. Battles usually are more competative and the strat map will have the benefits already mentioned. However, I don't think H campaign diplomacy would be much better than what it already is. In my current campaign, on M they won't accept ceasefies under ridiculous conditions so H will only be worse. But still, at least the AI won't get ridiculous amounts of cash.

I wouldn't push for it though, as a lot of people might not want to change the game mid-way. But it's something to think about as it does have some good advantages.

The change wouldn't be an enormous alteration when you really think about it. The majority of the people would only see the increase in the enemy morale on the battlefield, which could be justified in rp by one of two things. The strength of our very large neighbors being shown in battle by their troops being hardier than those of the factions we've fought before, or the desperation of our smaller neighbors (which we really don't have any of now that Gaul is being taken out as a bordering faction) to not fall to the same fate as the Greeks, Illyrians and Macedonians.

The battlemap change would affect our consuls, and could work in rp terms to represent Rome's growth as a nation into a significant power in the world, what with it's neighbors no longer having ridiculous amounts of money in their coffers compared to its own, monetary flow would be more stable, and H diplomacy, while still on the sketchy side, is more partial to acceptance than VH and could be workable if we play it the right way.

But again, like I said, it's all just food for thought.

It's a wonder how the Aemilii and Galerius can just turn that hatred switch on/off at the switch of a thread. :laugh4: Shows true rp spirit.

As most people are aware, I have been railing for a change in difficulty levels for quite some time, so I'm all for it. I'd even go so far as to say M/VH. With this level of unexpected support, I suggest we put it to the (2/3 majority) vote the coming session. If a lower house senator absolutely does not want to change the difficulty levels, I hereby give him veto power. I will withdraw my proposal if any lower house senator desires so.

I also will add a rules change proposal (2/3 majority) that whenever a upper house senator gets involved in a battle, the first consul will NOT autoresolve, but give the battle to a lower house senator of his choice (preferable someone who has not had battles for some time). This has become a necessity in my view as I am forced to put legions on the frontline commanded by a upper house general. This problem will get worse as time progresses. This will also allow a competitive spirit among upper house members who want their avatar to gain military experience.

Having been on holiday for a week, I won't even attempt to try and catch up on the OOC happenings here but….

….I normally play on M/VH settings but I don’t know what the effect of these settings will have on the RTR mod we’re using.

…..My task for this week is to try and download ALL the mods (have two so far). This is a major task as we all know. After this, I’ll install them and have a go at the game itself (may limit myself to playing some custom battles) so I’m farmilar with it.

THEN….I can join the lower house!! Yay!

(now to get caught up with all the IC discussions)

I'm inclined to be conservative and stick with the current difficulty settings and rules. It seems that right now - as the Republic becomes stretched - we are getting to the point where things are looking competitive. The defeat at the ford was a result of the autoresolve rule and was characterful. We have about 6-7 Lower House generals - surely that's enough to cover the major bases? We even lost a full Consular army on medium difficulty, so I am not sure we need to go harder on the battles (just keep the armies lean like they are now). In terms of power, I think we are already way ahead of our rivals (e.g. Thrace had a lot of territory but was a bit of a damp squib) so they need the VH campaign to keep them pumped up. I've resigned myself to the lack of diplomacy - we are Rome, not the UN, and Carthage is going down sooner or later. :evil:

However, we can decide these things by 2/3 majority votes in the mid-term. I'd prefer to keep the out of character discussion on them in this thread rather than the Senate though.

One idea I had was to make the general's bodyguards have only 1 hit point each. I think we are becoming over-reliant on our regenerating uber-praetoria (at least I am!). It's very tempting to over-use them when there is an emphasis on minimising our casualties.

Edit: Braden, your joining the Lower House sounds good. I'll reserve Cornelius Saturninus for you.

Naughty Econ21! No biscuit!

….fancy relying on General units to win battles, and there you are with something in the rules stating that they shouldn’t be endangered (I think)….

…tisk, tisk. :laugh4:

I swear that that was part of someone-from-the-RTR-forum's guide of being a true Roman?

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Originally Posted by Braden

Naughty Econ21! No biscuit!

….fancy relying on General units to win battles, and there you are with something in the rules stating that they shouldn’t be endangered (I think)….

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Oh come on, it's not just me - look at the screenshots in the battle reports, they're full of Praetoria hacking away! The 1HP idea really came home, though, when I watched the AI play out the battle of Massilia. The AI was using its generals just as aggressively and effectively as us[1].

Actually, I think the "true roman" idea of keeping your general safe idea may be over-done. My cursory reading of ancient history shows Roman generals as taking great pride in their hand-to-hand engagement and personal prowess in battles.

[1]On second thoughts, scrub the 1 HP idea. I'm worried it will make the AI generals even more suicidal. I'll try it out on one of my own games first.

This may be one for DDW, but could we play this mod with the BI exe?

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...t=58291&page=1

I am not sure I follow the instructions, but so far as I can tell, they seem to involve just altering your BI shortcut.

I'm assuming the savegames are still usable by those without BI and that we would not have to alter any other files, but those are just assumptions.

The main benefit mentioned is that the AI is more aggressive in terms of naval invasions (Carthage trying to get its Iberian provinces back), which would be timely given our situation.

Maybe DDW can look into it?

If the savegames aren't compatible then we won't be using it right (I don't have BI)? I don't mind keeping the difficulty as it is considering the points econ made. I'm kind of torn though to be honest, as H battles might be pretty interesting... but a lot more dangerous considering our situation... I don't know. Oh and I definately don't think 1HP generals is a good idea in any case.

Guys,

Any idea when the RTR main forums will be back up? Seem to have been down for a VERY long time (or am I looking in the wrong place)?

Nope, right place Braden, they're just down.