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...

It's a shame he passed away so quickly. In a test run I did with these rules, he got up to at least 68 and was still kicking when I stopped playing. Perhaps we can slot you in again somewhere if someone winds up with a really old heir.

Simon, how do you get the full map revealed for your screenshots?

I know .matteosartori. from MTW, but RTW...?

Type "toggle_fow off" in RomeShell.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zomby_Woof

Type "toggle_fow off" in RomeShell.

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Yup, IIRC, you get RomeShell by hitting the ` key (the one to the left of the 1 key, above tab).

You dont even need the "off" bit. Just "toggle_fow" with flip it back and forth. I always do that on the first and last turns of PBMs for kind of a 'state of the world' shot.

Just a quick update. Currently played up to 373 AD and things are...interesting. This is certainly the most challenging TW game I have ever played, even without our self-imposed restrictions playing as the WRE would be hard (oh how I long to go and take the Alemni capital and burn it to the ground).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mount Suribachi

This is certainly the most challenging TW game I have ever played, even without our self-imposed restrictions playing as the WRE would be hard (oh how I long to go and take the Alemni capital and burn it to the ground).

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Well, if they are giving you a hard time, you could do that. The rules are against occupying a rebel province and against wiping out a faction. If the Alemanni have another province, you could raid their capital. I suspect it's the kind of thing the Romans would do to a tribe that caused them a lot of grief. I may have discouraged nobbling the neighbours in that way because I did not want the campaign to be too easy, but it does not sound like that is an issue here. ~;)

Errmmm, guys, I think it's best if you could remove me from the list for this PBM. It looks like I'm going to be quite busy due to some real-life stuff and I know already for sure that I won't play RTW much the next few weeks. I prefer to tell this now than completely neglecting the campaign during my turn. Perhaps I can step in again later on, if the campaign lasts longer than normal. I hope you don't mind too much. :shame:

No problem, Tricky_Lady - I'll take you out of the playing order but PM you when the other players are all done just to check your availability.

If we are ever short of players, we'll probably recycle through the playing order again but I doubt that will be necessary with a BI campaign where everyone plays a reign.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simon Appleton

Well, if they are giving you a hard time, you could do that. The rules are against occupying a rebel province and against wiping out a faction. If the Alemanni have another province, you could raid their capital. I suspect it's the kind of thing the Romans would do to a tribe that caused them a lot of grief. I may have discouraged nobbling the neighbours in that way because I did not want the campaign to be too easy, but it does not sound like that is an issue here. ~;)

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lol NOW you tell me :laugh4:

Seriously though, its, um, a bit late now. Between keeping my own cities under control, fighting the Saxons, WRE Rebels, Berbers, Celts and ERE, and bracing myself for the Huns and the Vandals who are milling around my border provinces, I am no longer in a position to raid the Alemni. :help: My troops there have been worn down by their constant raiding and with no retraining I'm getting very weak in Germania....

Well, good luck with it, Mount Suribachi. :sweatdrop: One hint - if you are worried about the Vandals and Huns, they are typically cavalry-heavy with weak infantry. So if your border towns have stone walls, you can often easily hold them off if you have enough good infantry to man the walls. Each stack only tends to build one siege tower, so you don't need that many infantry[1]. Be careful of the towers themselves though as they mount ballistas and if you have large stone walls, can decimate your wall defenders before contact. It's often best to deploy your wall defenders out of range of the towers and then rush to the breach at the last minute (the towers stop shooting when they reach the walls). It's all a little cheap - stalling vast hordes with a few good men in a walled city - but it may help free up some men to replace losses in Germany.

[1]On the other hand, a seemingly weak border garrison will encourage neighbouring hordes to target you rather than the ERE or someone else, so it's swings and roundabouts.

BTW: you did bring over that chuirgeon I had put on a boat in Carthage? They are a godsend in dealing with attrition.

I like how this campaign sounds! It seems like our rules are working well.

Yes, the Chirugeon is in the care of Nero Flavius, who is turning into something of a Roman military hero. This afternoon I fought my first ever RTW "epic" battle, of the kind so beloved of MTW. 1200 Romans against 2700 Vandals...

Augustus Leontius Flavius is now 60, so might not be long to go - but I'm getting the "are you sitting with me tonight?" speech from Mrs Suribachi...

I've played a little ways in a campaign with these same rules, except with battles on VH. Keeping a massive revolt from occurring still isn't much of a problem, but it's nearly impossible to keep the settlements happy, build economic improvements and create field armies to hold the borders and fight the hordes. I've played a good 15 turns so far and the very idea of actually attacking the ERE is something approaching a black comedy. So I'm definitely looking forward to watching the PBM unfold.

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So I'm definitely looking forward to watching the PBM unfold.

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seconded.

From what I've read while scanning this thread and the write-ups the rule of take an emperor's reign is working out great, really adds some flavor to the write ups.

EDIT : TinCow, I see you have been promoted to senior member, well at least I only noticed it just now !

Congratulations none the less !

:balloon2:

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Originally Posted by Dutch_guy

EDIT : TinCow, I see you have been promoted to senior member, well at least I only noticed it just now !

Congratulations none the less !

:balloon2:

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LOL, thanks. I didn't even notice until you pointed it out. I wonder how long it has been like that.

Hey, congrats Tin Cow :2thumbsup:


Holy Schnikey!!! I've been promoted as well! Wow, never expected that.

*wipes tear away*

I'd like to thank the members of the academy etc etc.

Anyway, back to the PBEM. Was hoping to get stuck into the game on Sunday, but then I was struck down by the stomach bug that both the wife and the little un have suffered with the last week, so I spent all day either in bed or in the bathroom.... :no:

Anyway, enough yakking, I'm off to play BI :2thumbsup:

...and Dutch_guy too :smiley:

Between all the promotion celebrations, I just wanted to let you guys know that other people (at least I am) are reading this PBEM as well.
It certainly looks to become an epic campaign, the WRE is no walk in the park, especially with the added houserules.
Great start, excellent usage of the ancillaries and keep up the good work!

I've enjoyed Mount's two write-ups so far - shame about Gratianus, although it could not have happened to a more characterful general. I'll be very interested to read how things develop.

I've never encountered WRE rebels before - how many troops do they tend to spawn with? Do any of your generals join them like in a MTW civil war or do they just appear out of the blue like respawning MTW factions?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simon Appleton

I've never encountered WRE rebels before - how many troops do they tend to spawn with? Do any of your generals join them like in a MTW civil war or do they just appear out of the blue like respawning MTW factions?

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What they spawn with depends on what cities revolt. They tend to get a smattering of the various things that their settlements can make, along with anything of yours that was with a general that also revolts. I don't know what the formula is, but the lower the loyalty, the higher the probability of them turning. Pretty much anything that is 0 to 2 loyalty seems to be in serious danger. Also, it seems to me to have a snowball effect... the more generals that revolt, the more likely that higher loyalty generals will revolt; that could just be my imagnation though.

Regardless, if the computer doesn't 'revolt' enough generals to create a large family for the WRE Rebels, they seem to get more just like any other faction. If they're low, the AI will adopt in many from the ether. The faction leader of the rebels always seems to be the oldest family member that revolts.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simon Appleton

I've enjoyed Mount's two write-ups so far - shame about Gratianus, although it could not have happened to a more characterful general. I'll be very interested to read how things develop.

I've never encountered WRE rebels before - how many troops do they tend to spawn with? Do any of your generals join them like in a MTW civil war or do they just appear out of the blue like respawning MTW factions?

---

Echoing what Tin Cow said, it appears that they get whatever your settlement can build - I've only seen Peasants, Limitanei and Foederati Spearmen & Cavalry + Generals bodyguards. Thankfully my big troop producing cities (Rome and Ravenna) have stayed loyal. As for generals joining - yep, Carthage went over to the WRE Rebels and took my governor with them :wall: Thessalonica has changed hands several times, and I only ever got the above.

This is turning into a very challenging, yet very fun game. Although if I didn't have Nero Flavius, it wouldn't be quite so fun as I would be getting a serious spanking from the barbarian hordes (but you'll have to wait for the write-ups to find out all about him ~;) ). As it is I am grinding them down - though at the expense of the rest of the Empire.

Interestingly the game's starting Emperor had 4 sons, who all had 4 more sons (and a more wretched hive of scum and villainy I have yet to meet). But those 16 men have produced barely a boy between them - nowt but girls! But I am getting some nice solid, christians marrying into the imperial family now :2thumbsup:

Anyway, its 379 AD and Leontius is now 62. Takes a while when you have to fight 2-4 battles every turn against 1000+ Barbarians with those damned Horse Archers! :wall:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mount Suribachi

Interestingly the game's starting Emperor had 4 sons, who all had 4 more sons (and a more wretched hive of scum and villainy I have yet to meet). But those 16 men have produced barely a boy between them - nowt but girls!

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Apparently 4 is the maximum number of sons a general can have. There's also a cap on how many generals you can have based on provinces which you have probably hit. I'd be curious to know what the cap is precisely - maybe players can keep an eye on the number of generals plus boys they have (and whether that equals their number of provinces).

Quote:

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Anyway, its 379 AD and Leontius is now 62. Takes a while when you have to fight 2-4 battles every turn against 1000+ Barbarians with those damned Horse Archers!

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I know, that's one of the downsides of playing out full reigns. But you should have a good tale to tell. Try to leave some barbarians for your successors. :2thumbsup:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Simon Appleton

Try to leave some barbarians for your successors. :2thumbsup:

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No probs there. The Huns are milling around the Eastern borders, and the Saxons are sweeping across northern Gaul.... :skull:

I've got this whole week off, but I'm going out of town this coming weekend and after that I will have less available time for a significant period. If it would be possible for me to start my turn sometime before this weekend, I should be able to turn it back around pretty quickly. Otherwise it may take me a week or two.

I won't mind TinCow, I've got exams this week anyhow so I would not have been able to play this week, next week however will most definitely not be a problem considering I've got a week off starting this friday.

:balloon2:

Hi guys, sorry for the delay, but for the last week I've hardly had any time to get to the PC. Played a few hours today, its winter 382 and the old boy is 65 and hanging on... ~:D

Oh, and I recommend the next player reads up on Nestorian theology ~;)

Aargh!! Got in a good 4 hours play today - wanted to get my turn done as I'm going away for the weekend but Leontius just won't don't die!!

Its now 386 and he's 69.

I think when I play my turn I might use my Emperor as the head general; that way when I get sick of playing and just send him charging to a fray and let him die.

No point in rushing. I'm off skiing in the morning and won't be back until Monday, so you can take all weekend and it won't slow things down.

I. Am. A. Muppet.

:help:


went away to the in-laws this weekend. Thought it would be a good opportunity to get stuck into my write up in the evenings when everybody was sitting around chillin'

Took Mrs Suribachi's laptop. Took my references - A History of Byzantium, The Early Centuries, Handbook of Medieval Warfare Volume 1 (Western Europe), The History of Christianity. Even took a thesaurus.

Only problem was I forgot to take my games notes!!!

:wall: :wall: :wall: :wall: :wall:


Hope to get stuck into the game a bit more on Tuesday :book:

Augustus Leontius Flavius the Harsh finally kicked the bucket in summer 387 AD. Save game has been uploaded as WRE_PBM_387S.zip

Just so Tin Cow and others know were we are whilst I do the write up

The Bad News

We've lost Brittania Inferior, Brittania Superior, Sicilia, Africa and Tripolatania to the WRE Rebels. Belgica currently belongs to the Saxons.

We have no navy (if the AI knew to blockade ports we'd be screwed)

We conquered Macedonia, but then lost it again.

The Huns are still in horde mode, taking on the Franks to the north atm.

The Good News

The Goths have been eliminated

The Vandals have been eliminated

We lost, but then regained Narbonesis and Ilyricum et Dalmatia.

The economy is (just about) keeping its head above water. The loss of Narbonesis was crippling for the few turns we were without it.

We've conquered Moesia from the ERE

All the empire is now Christian and stable with the exception of Iberia and bits of Gaul. Spurius Flavius the Evangelist with his splinters of the One True Cross has been a Godsend if you'll pardon the pun.

Nero Flavius, saviour of the empire is 1 year younger than his brother, Augustus Marcus the Gambler, and is very disloyal (-4 loyalty!)


So there you have it. This has been tremendous fun to play - so much so that I will carry on this game by myself once I've done the write-up. I think the worst is over for the WRE, and the Empire is about to relive its glory days ~;)

Well done, Mount. Having just finished an exhausting 10 year stint in the Seleucid campaign, I started to remember why we moved away from whole reigns in RTW PBMs. But you perserved and it sounds good like the empire is now in a decent position. :2thumbsup: I look forward to the rest of the write-ups.

I've downloaded the save and will probably start playing tomorrow. A brief peek at the save shows an interesting position with possibilities and threats scattered about with equal regularity. The old guard of corrupt starting family members is getting long in the tooth and hopefully the large new crop of young 'uns will not follow in their fathers' footsteps. The new Augustus is a Liar, Politician, and morally Flexible... namely the perfect Roman. This should be an interesting turn.

Update: My emperor is 60 and this game is HARD. As bad as the restrictions are, it's really the no-extermination/enslavement and no peasents that makes it bad. It's extremely difficult to keep many cities from rebelling when they are pagan due to the population size and the lack of a large and cheap garrison. The retraining isn't really a big deal since I don't have the income to retrain anyway. I haven't been able to improve on Suribachi's 5k per turn and even that dips lower on a regular basis. I've made some gains in the east, but the Huns have taken one of the Gallic cities and settled it and my attempts to regain Sicily/North Africa have been totally frustrated so far. The good news is that I have managed to dispose of most of the useless family members and Spurius Flavius has continued his ridiculously important work in Gaul and Iberia. Nearly all territories should be Christian by the time I'm done, which will at least be something.

The goal of taking all WRE and ERE starting provinces + Berber coast will be VERY difficult. I haven't counted, but I'm pretty sure we don't control as many provinces as we started with and I think it unlikely that I will be able to improve on this much during my turn.

It's damn fun though. :)

Tin Cow, I'm sat here with a smile on my face ~:) 5k only happened a few times in my games, and then only after I'd lost Britain and its large garrison.

Like you said, good fun though.

Ok, I am done with my reign. Marcus the Gambler passed away at the age of 65. Unfortunately there's a major age gap in our family. All of the starting family members are very old now, but the new people have not reached an age that qualifies them for inheritence by our rules. As such, the new faction leader is Spurius Flavius, the fanatical Christian and he's 59. The next youngest family member was in his early 40s and was a great nephew who was adopted into the family and has no traits whatsoever. Most people below him are 20-30. Sorry Dutch_guy, your reign might be a bit short. I would have switched the inheritence to the 40ish guy, but Spurius still qualified first under our rules. Too bad Marcus didn't live just one more year.

That said, even if Spurius dies quickly, you'll still have an exciting reign. I've managed to convert every province to Christianity except for Augusta Treverorum. Spurius was on his way there when he inherited, so please note that the faction leader is alone out in the field. You might want to protect him. I've also managed to retake Syracuse and Carthage, which will be beneficial financially in the long run. A dockyard is being built in Carthage that should be a significant boost to income. I also managed to take the entire Balkan region, though that was VERY difficult at times. Athens revolted against me no less than three times and I only got it to stop rioting one turn before Marcus died. Please note that Constantinople was actaully taken during the AI's turn when he died, so it is in disorder and nothing has been done to deal with that.

Unfortunately, on my last turn the newly horded Sarmatians declared war and besieged Salona, which will not be able to hold out unless you're some kind of tactical god. The Huns have also been attacking Augusta Treverorum every year and it's currently under siege by their largest force yet. I'm glad I don't have to deal with that!

Three final notes. First, there is a very large army of extremely good troops in Carthage. It is currently maintaining order there after taking the city, but it is far and away the best force we have. Second, the last two pagan family members are standing alone in southern Britain. I was planning on 'Death by Saxon' with them to go along with a plotline that I've been toying with for my write-up. Obviously I didn't have time to do this, so just be aware that these guys are out there if you want to use them, since the plots obviously died with Emperor Marcus. Third, there are a few extra young family members with next to no traits in both Ravenna and Rome. I put them there recently to try and farm good retinues for them, but it hasn't produced much yet.

Good luck... you'll need it!

The game is saved as WRE_PBM_398W; direct link:

http://www.totalwar.org/patrons/pbm/WRE_PBM_398W.zip

I'm half done with my write-up and will probably finish the rest by this weekend. However, I'm reluctant to post it without Suribachi's in case some of the event assumtions I made about what occurred in his reign were wrong. What's the ETA?

Just posting this to keep you updated :

Going to start playing soon, in about a day or 2.

Couldn't start earlier since my PC needed to be removed from my room, due to some needed refurbishing of my room.

Anyway, I'll keep you posted !

:balloon2:

Sorry about not updating you guys, but I'm on the 3 week half of my shift pattern where I don't get much free time to do my own thing. My write up is about 40% complete, though thats only a first draft.

Tin Cow, you really should be more careful with members of your family ~;)

Amazing stuff Tin Cow!

Now someone has really got to start a campaign in Africa.

By the way, was the WRER faction leader a former Flavian, former legionary or former merchant?

Think I'll be able to finish my reign tomorrow since my emperor is 66 years old and is about to be attacked by a couple of sarmation horde stacks.... which are Really wreaking havoc in Northern Italy !

Keep you posted

:balloon2:

Only just read the write-ups, TinCow - epic stuff! I thought we were in trouble when I saw the opening position and read the story of our generals seemingly dropping like flies, but you staged a great come back. Excellent writing too! :2thumbsup:

I'm sure you figured out that the deaths were all intentional. Nero simply had to go, the guy would have turned eventually. Oppius was also pretty disloyal and I liked the sstoryline idea of killing off all of Marcus' brothers. The riverboat trio were just horribly corrupt and very strongly pagan. I couldn't have converted Iberia with them around. Of the other deaths, the one to the Huns was unfortunate, but there was nothing I could do about it. I simply had no forces to spare to relieve the siege. The only death that was really bad was the guy in Syracuse. He was a decent general, decent governor and had a bonus to christian conversion. I was highly annoyed when he bought it along with 4 turns worth of expensive troop production.

As for the WRER leader... I must not have made it clear who I was referring to. The centurian and merchant were just backgrounds I made up for the leaders of the two Athens rebellions... not the leader of the whole WRER. I think that was either the Eutropius guy who died in Syracuse or the Titus guy who died in Carthage. I extinguished so many WRER generals, it was hard to keep track of. For the story I pretty much just assumed it was the family member with the earliest defection date (Eutropius I think). If Suribachi's write-up turns out to be inconsistent with my assumptions, I will edit mine to make them fit.

TC, the only "continuity errors" I can forsee are Spurius Flavius - I didn't quite imagine him burning pagans, he's more a man of the Word (but more in the write up). And Nero gets a few extra names for all his victories - but that can only contribute to his decreasing loyalty as his ego swells with each victory.

Ok I'm done.

Uploaded as WRE_406 be sure to DL the .rar file, I uploaded a non packed file too, ignore that.

The new emperor is aobut 55 years old, so the next one in line might have a relatively short reign although that doesn't mean it won't be challenging !

Hope I haven't left to much of a mess, had some very very misfortunate events take place during my campaign and managed to lose 2 provinces and take 1.

I did however manage to fill out state money bag, when the emperor died we had about 9 K in out war chest.

Needless to say it was the most challenging campaign up to date.



:balloon2:

Simon,

I have done some surfing on the net to see the largest extent of the Roman empire. This is the largest it has been:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...man_empire.png

So you would have to conquer all the starting Sassanid provinces and the starting Goth province (the Goths are the orange faction right?)

Just a way of lengthening your campaign if you feel like continuing.

Yay! I'm quite excited for this...

I think I'll re-read the rules to make sure I know what I'm doing and then get cracking.

Thanks for the quick turn around, Dutch_guy :2thumbsup:

Good hunting, Zomby_Woof!

BTW: interesting idea, Tiberius. I'm not quite sure how we are doing in terms of time, but it seems like we may have some room for maneouvre. Depending on how it goes and what other people think, I'd be happy for this campaign to be extended to rebuild the Roman Empire at its height.