The Will of the Senate - Out of character thread V

This is the current out of character thread for the Will of the Senate. Please use this thread for all out of character discussion and keep the others free for role-play and stories.

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The Civil War - overview

Civil war has broken out in the Republic, between the Senate and and the Consul. I will be playing out the war on the campaign map, according to orders received from players about what they want their avatars to do. I will try to delay battle on the campaign map for a while to allow forces to be amassed.

I will be working from the latest savegame in the uploader:
http://www.totalwar.org/patrons/pbm/250-spr-Tib3.zip

Urgent - if you have not already done so, please give me any orders you have for the first two turns and any general directions for your character (e.g. they want to march on Rome or kill Numerius or whatever).

Try to check the Throne room for updates every day just in case there is something that requires your attention.

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Battle mechanics

When rival avatars meet, a battle will be fought in a manner to be mutually agreed by the participants. It could be multiplayer; it could be via orders to an umpire (I volunteer); it could be by setting up a matching AI vs AI battle; or it could be by "mirrored" battles against the AI (whoever does better, wins). Different methods could be used for different battles, according to the preferences of those directly involved.

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Campaign mechanics

I don't want to get bogged down in rules and mechanics, but a few pointers to guide your orders:

1) Only Italy has significant troop building facilities. Whoever controls it, should ultimately win.

2) Loyalty of armies not under avatars will be determined by some random mechanic modified by the influence and proximity of rival generals. Blood ties will also come into play.

3) Control of fleets will be important, especially for those in Afrika. Loyalty of fleets will be determined similarly to loyalty of armies but I will try to make sure no one is stranded and unable to have at least a chance of getting to Italy.

4) The war will be over when all generals on one side are dead or surrender.

5) This PBM may live on after the war, so if you want to build bridges for a future life for your character (especially if they seem to be on the losing side) feel free to do so.

6) Obviously, strength of armies on the campaign map will be reflected in however battles are decided - they won't necessarily be fair fights. However, I will try to keep things at least initially balanced, so we get a "good war".

7) If I do not receive directions or orders, I will generally leave your avatar inactive unless there is some extremely obvious move he should make (e.g. flee a stronger enemy or get more men). Make sure you tell me if you want your character to be inactive (e.g. he's staying neutral for a while).

8) To keep things simple, and focussed on the players, only player generals (and admirals) can be ordered to move. I will move loyal non-player generals to join with player generals if they are within a turn's reach. The exception to this is Quintus Naevius, who Lucjan persuaded me to let him control. At the time, it looked like he might be hopelessly outnumbered after the impeachment, so I agreed. It does seem to balance things up pretty well.

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Story-telling and role-playing

Feel free to contribute in-character write-ups to the Civil war stories thread. To make sure things match up with what I am doing on the campaign map, you could PM me with a sketch of what you plan.

I will play along with any juicy plot twists you would like your character to be involved with.

But make sure you do not put words into another player's character's mouth or kill them out of battle without their consent!


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EDIT: I'm going to keep editing this post with additional information, additions being marked in italics. I've made an initial assignment of non-player generals (NPG) to factions in the Civil War Stories thread. The spoiler gives the gory details, but as I said, I don't want to get into mechanics too much.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

If any NPG was in a turn's reach of a player general, they took a test of allegiance. Rolled a six sided dice. 1 = Consular, 6 = Senate.

Modified by (Senate influence - Consular influence +/- Blood tie)/2
where influence is that of any player general within one turn's reach or 1/2 influence if within two turns reach.
Blood tie is a 10 point modifier for if the NPG has a father or son in one faction.

A roll of "1" or "6" stands, regardless of modifiers.

This is going to be interesting. The division of players with legions is pretty good.

New Republicans (6)- Servius Aemilius, Manius Coruncanius, Quintus Libo, Quintus Naevius, Oppius Aemilius, Flavius Pacuvius

The Old Senate (5)- Numerious Aureolus, Appius Barbetus, Tiberius Coruncanius, Lucius Aemilius, Marcellus Aemilius

Hmm, seems as if look of the Old Senate fighters is a mixed blessing. On one hand, we have the two Old Farts of the Republic, Lucius and Tiberius, who have massive command/influence. On the other hand, they could both decide to keel over and die of natural causes at the wrong time.

Best of luck to everybody. :bow:

The Library has been updated with all important information. I haven't bothered with the general family tree or the multi-shot Roman territorial bit, since they seem irrelevant at this point.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GeneralHankerchief

Hmm, seems as if look of the Old Senate fighters is a mixed blessing. On one hand, we have the two Old Farts of the Republic, Lucius and Tiberius, who have massive command/influence. On the other hand, they could both decide to keel over and die of natural causes at the wrong time.
Best of luck to everybody. :bow:

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I'm also worried about death due to age, but on the other hand I and Tiberius have some serious command skill.

EDIT :

Bummer about the pirates, Wonderland.
Econ21, it would be nice if the senate would command some ships. All the fleets seem to be assigned to Servius.

Actually...fleets seem to have swung like this.

New Republic
Servius (fleet at Narbo)
Oppius (fleet at Tingi)

Senate
Marcellus (Fleet south of Sicily)


Fleet near Asia Minor is most likely still up in the air. They're a new fleet, but also the smallest and with no relations with any of the generals yet, probably waiting to see the initial victor in Asia Minor before making any decisions. That's just my take on the situation though, Econ is the one in charge of determining actual AI loyalties.

Simon, just a thought about recruitment of troops, in that, do we really want to do it? It just makes things more messy and complicated. I would be much more in favour of a fight were everyone has their own legions, and thats it. Last one standing wins!

I think recruitment adds something - it means that who controls Rome really matters, as it should historically. Plus the starting armies - detailed in the jpg - were somewhat arbitrary. Recruitment should allow generals to get close to a full stack, if there are mercs available or they break into Italy.

On the fleets, I did the loyalty test thing I put in the spoiler and as you might expect, it turned out the fleets were loyal to the nearest influential general - basically west went Consular and east went Senate.

I'm going to play more tonight - still have not finished the first turn. I may not answer every PM, as I was finding I spent more time answering than playing, but I will read them.

@ TinCow,

Is that some veiled suggestion in the Library? (i.e. updating "my" Manius's picture with Manius the Mad's)

:dizzy2:

Funny though....

Sorry, I didn't notice I had posted the wrong one. Fixed now.

Well, GeneralH, that's one heck of story you wrote !

Good job, really.

:bow:

:balloon2:

A quick out of character update on the situation at the end of the first turn of the civil war. This is mainly for story writing purposes - I don't feel I need orders for turn 2 as nothing too dramatic has happened yet. The main potential action in turn 2 would be Numerius vs Manius, and I suspect Numerius may wimp out on that (I don't want to stop the flow of the war by arranging a battle so quickly).

I am going to focus on the player generals (Qunitus Naevius is an honorary one), as other generals generally do not move independently (except to join a player's army) - with a couple of exceptions (*).


In Iberia and Gaul

Servius and *Quintus Naevius started with no movement points left.

Nor did Quintus Libo who was attacked on a ford by a rock hard Iberian army, which he trounced with significant losses (killed 758, lost 162 but due to churigeons has 916 men left from 1005). I fought this manually as again, I want the war to gather some pace before we stop.


Italy

Luca Mamillus gathered a bunch of Gauls and marched towards Bononia.


Thrace and Greece

Tiberius extracted himself from besieging the Thracian town but had to withdraw south.

The best elements of Lucius's force had no movement points left so he stayed put, feuding with his tribune.

Galerius Vatinius has marched a little distance south.

Cnaeus Caprius has mustered an army near modern day Albania.

Decius Laevinus is preparing to board a ship at Apollonia.


Anatolia

Numerius and Appius Barbatus gathered mercenaries and started to approach each other.

Manius has met up with his son at Ancrya. His *son has an army of Gauls and I am going to allow him to move adjacent to Manius to simulate a supra-Consular sized army.

Secundus Salvius is heading for the straits alone.


Afrika

Marcellus left a couple of Numidian skirmishers to take Lepcis Magna and smashed a rebel force blocking the coastal road to Thapsus. Admiral Appius has met up with him.

Flavius Pacuvius is heading north-east to Carthage.

Oppius has borded a nearby fleet.

OK, I got through another turn - almost - but could not avoid a battle between us. The civil war stories thread explains why.

The battle is a four way - Numerius + Appius vs Manius + his son. I make it 2457 vs 2488, with no clear advantage in quality to either side that I can make out.

So, Braden, Tamur and I have to figure out how we are going to resolve this:

Option 1: Some variant of multiplayer. We could even hack the EDU file to get units that exactly match those in the battle. Or, given that it seems a "fair" fight, we could just have some equal abstract army (my preference would be 4 identical "historical" Consular armies as laid down in the FAQ) - or One Consular + one Praetorian a side.
Pros: most exciting option; could be a laugh; player MP skill will have some role.
Cons: might be tricky to pull off in practical tems; player MP skill will be paramount (could be horribly embarassing for some of us)


Option 2: Custom battle, AI vs AI. This is my preferred option. Again, I could hack the EDU to exactly replicate the armies. Then, I could set up a 5 way battle (2 vs 2 + me controlling only 1 unit and acting as an observer). I could take screenshots of the battle and write it up in character. This is close to what I did to get the write-up of Publius at the Masilia ford:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...9&postcount=22
Pros: Fairly quick and easy; should produce a good battle report; would be interesting to see how the fates deal with our characters.
Cons:: Non-interactive; and our skill as players has no impact on the outcome.


Option 3: A mirrored custom battle, each of us vs the AI. The outcome could be the average result.
Pros: Fairly quick and easy; our skill as SP players will have an impact.
Cons: Harder to produce a coherent story (as we are averaging too stories)


Option 4: A refereed "tabletop" style battle. We give orders to a third party, they resolve the battle based on the orders and some rules or judgements about combat resolution.
Pros: Interactive; not as scarey as MP
Cons: trusting our fate in a referee; could take a lot of time to resolve; with the number of units involved, both giving orders and refereeing is going to be a problem (and, as a participant, I can't help out here).


Braden and Tamur - what's your order of preference among the four options above?

econ, would you mind posting the latest savegame? I think we all want to see how the positions have changed.

EDIT: Thanks, Dutch_guy. If it sways certain Senators then even better. :wink:

Oo, I'm liking option 2. That sounds fun, which may sound weird given we don't actually do anything, but I think it's the most practical and fair one out of anything else. If votes count, mine goes for that one :2thumbsup: .

OK, the latest savegame is here:

http://www.totalwar.org/patrons/pbm/250-sum-end.zip

Things may start to get more tactical now, as armies get withing striking range of each other. But given that we will be fighting some battles, which will take time to work out logistically, there should be more time to give your orders.

I think I have the basic orders I need from everyone to move them into action, but PM me if you have any changes or want to add any nuances based on the savegame.

But bear in mind you can only give orders for your avatar and his army (and any fleets). If you have more than 20 units, you can drag a second stack behind you to simulate a massive combined force. But you cannot give orders to other generals or unled units. I am playing it that unled units can be "picked up" by passing player generals and that other generals act in simple ways (usually marching to the sound of the guns) if they pass a loyalty test.

We may have sucked the map dry of mercenaries for now, so they could be less of an issue. I am keeping track of the loyalty of the Italian troop-producing towns. Appius Egnatius is recruiting for the Consul. The settlements Luca and Decius take are recruiting for the Senate. With the approach of Luca, Rome has declared for the Senate.

Mmm.. I get my own mini-fleet! Is Luca Mamilius in the same faction as me?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tiberius

Mmm.. I get my own mini-fleet!

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Yes, of one ship! (You could ask me to build you more, though - might be an idea if you need to flee Italy.)

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Is Luca Mamilius in the same faction as me?

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Yes, you are best mates. IIRC, he's in Arretium and you in Capua - you were both racing for Rome. He has collected a mob of Gallic mercenaries (our Gallic campaigns have rather prejudiced me against these guys). You picked up a few Italian mercs. You are now desperately scrambling to rally true Romans to the flag before Servius lands with a Consular-sized Consular army.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wonderland

Oo, I'm liking option 2. That sounds fun, which may sound weird given we don't actually do anything, but I think it's the most practical and fair one out of anything else. If votes count, mine goes for that one.

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I agree completely. I guess it's basically an autoresolve but with screenshots.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GeneralHankerchief

EDIT: Thanks, Dutch_guy. If it sways certain Senators then even better. :wink:

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You gotta be kidding me, I have elephants you know :wink:

:balloon2:

Mwhahaa! Rome is ours!

Let's keep the Civil War stories thread clear of out of character stuff.

I am deleting the out of character stuff and putting it here:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lucjan

(OOC - Umm..excuse me swordmaster? Accusing Servius of ordering poisoning assassinations and burning down other senators estates? I can't agree with this at all, it's not in Servius's nature and such an order would never be given. I have to ask that these things be changed. You can't speak or make actions for another player's character no matter how you or your character may feel about the situation. Servius may now be at war with the senate, but he has never and would never order assassinations like this. On the contrary he's taken steps to protect families of his friends who requested it, fearing they might be targeted this way. I have to ask that you not presume to make actions for my character and change your story to remove these acts.)

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by econ21

Swordsmaster may be you can change your wording to refer to the Consul's faction rather than the Consul personally? I think there will be rogue (or rougher - e.g. Cnaeus) elements on both sides (ask Vladimir Putin, or may be better not :sweatdrop: ). The Senate faction players did not cry foul when Decius Curtius planned to butcher Manius's family on their behalf. ~:grouphug:

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Swordsmaster

I didn't mean it offensively, and I didn't make your character order the assassination, I just said that the slave said you did. Anyway, I have a nice little plot in mind that I will (hopefully) develop if i have the time.

As of the Consul's faction.... I just couldn't think of a better sounding sinonymous. Consul's faction sounds very artificial, but if someone makes up some other name, like nationalists, or imperialists, or something along the lines, I'll be happy to change it. Consulists just sounds wrong.:laugh4:

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Ok, Econ21,

Personally, I hate leaving anything to the AI so "to me" option one is my least preferred.

I'm ok with using a full-on MP battle (with you as observer), although having ZERO experience and the fact we havent tested RTR on this.

I'm ok with this option as it means most hands on control from me - some of my single player results are due to some "unusual" moves I sometimes employ which an AI just would not replicate.

Option three I feel is the worse option - would it be a matter of who tallies up the most AI casualties?

Option Four - at this time, and not knowing how to conduct a MP battle, is my favoured and I do trust you Econ as a Ref for this. However, if it was to be truly interactive, we'd have to agree a time space just like a normal MP wouldn't we so both players had the chance to issue and change orders on the fly?

OK, so Braden, I take it your preference ordering is:

4>2>3>1

Is that right?

I guess mine is:

1>4>3>2

I recall Tamur expressed interest in the umpired game, so let's work on that assumption.

After giving it some thought, I think we should follow the KISS approach - keep it simple stupid. So, I propose the following:


To resolve the battle

1. I will umpire the battle but not participate. Tamur will act as both Numerius and Appius, controlling all the Senate forces. Braden will control all the Consular ones. (No other players should advise them or communicate with them during the battle.)

2. I have cut and paste all the icons of the units onto a word document.http://www.totalwar.org/patrons/pbm/ancrya.zip
Each player should copy the icons of their units into Microsoft Paint and arrange them in his order of battle. They will then save the file, zip it and upload it. I will put the two together to show the intial battle deployment and upload it.

3. We will abstract from terrain - it's a level playing field. Fine viisibility and weather. Fatigue will be a factor though - best keep a fresh reserve for late day.

4. There will then be 6 turns:
- advance to contact (1) - Wed
- mid-morning (2) - Th
- late morning (3) - Fri
- early afternoon (4) - Sat
- late afternoon (5) - Sun
- evening (6) - Mon
At the start of each turn, each player will use Paint to mark his planned maneouvres and send me any accompanying notes.

5. Players should act like historical armies and not try to micro-manage too much. Orders may get lost and things may slip up. The position of the 4 generals will be particularly important in determining the outcome of any fine maneouvring - if he is far away or locked in combat, he may not be able to control events. (Best avoid the RTW bad habit of using your general as a spearhead.)

6. I will put the orders together. Execution of movement will be simultaneous, so I will work out the result of any clashes arising based on my judgement - informed by common sense, unit stats, history and experience of RTRPE. I will upload an end-turn file showing the state of play together with a brief narrative courtesy of my grad student Jack.

7. We will play out one turn per day of real life. We will have Monday to discuss these proposals and agree procedures. Send me your deployments by Tuesday night and then we will try to get through a turn a day, finishing a week on Monday. I know weekends can be a problem, but we can deal with that if you give me notice.

8. The battle will be decisive. The losers will all be killed or surrender. The winners will take casualties on the campaign map (losing whole units) I deem reasonable given the battle.


Meanwhile on the campaign map, the show goes on

In order not to hold up the entire Civil War, I propose that Manius, Numerius, Appius and Manius's son be moved on the campaign map as a "blob" toward Rome. When we do finally resolve the battle, I will remove the defeated two stacks and the victor's casualties so that only one half of the blob (Senate or Consular) reaches Rome. Is this ok, Braden? Certainly Numerius would have dashed for Rome after beating Manius and I assume vice-versa. Given the distances, I suspect the Civil War will be resolved before the Easterners get to Rome.

When we get to a more central battle, the blob mechanic would not be sensible. But with such a battle, the participants might prefer a quicker way of resolving the battle or we might be happy to wait a week for the result.

Personally, I think MP battles or AI vs AI custom battles would be best if we end up having a lot of them. But given Braden and Tamur favoured the umpired mechanic, and this is the one and only civil war battle that at least one of them will fight, I am happy to give it a try.

Just a end-of-weekend note to say I've read through the rules you outlined.

I agree that this should not become the standard way to resolve the battles, since it will take a week or so. Then again, if someone gets "knocked out" they could act as judge and so we would run multiple battles simultaneously if it's something people are interested in.

At any rate, what you've outlined sounds good. I will take apart that zip file and get deployment to you sometime tomorrow (Monday).

Tamur *shaking in his boots at having to fight a seasoned table-top gamer!* ~:)

Info on how to go about MP with RTR

http://forums.totalrealism.net/index...howtopic=23940

That post does not sound too promising, Mount - not least because they are talking about RTR Gold rather than Platinum. I think we should not consider MP battles as an option unless two of us have tried it out successfully in a test. (I don't want to hold up the campaign for nothing.)

If we have a really climactic battle, like that going on at Ancrya, then the umpired game is probably worth the trouble.

For smaller or one-sided affairs, I am inclined to go for AI vs AI. At least, it will be quick and fair.

I am open to MP battles but only if the participants can quickly test them first.

Tamur and Braden - if you both can get me deployment orders by tonight, we can advance the schedule by a day.

GAH! I've got a horrible feeling I need to reinstall RTR......

I just can't get the game to start. No matter how I try - shortcut, start menu, insert CD - it won't boot up. CD just spins round for a bit, but no game. Occasionally, maybe 1 in 10, it will go. But right now, no game.

I do wonder if this is related to using the BI exe, as it seems to have happened since I put that in, but not straight away....

Argh...and at such an inoppertune time. I believe I have links for all the necessary downloads if you do need to reinstall it.

I'm getting an alarming black screen of death crash after exiting RTRPE. I thought it was a problem with RTW, but then loaded the Thracian vanilla PBM save and coul exit fine. Maybe this campaign is trying to tell us something?!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lucjan

Argh...and at such an inoppertune time. I believe I have links for all the necessary downloads if you do need to reinstall it.

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Thanks, but I have most of the files saved my hard drive. Its the several hour install process I can't face..... :embarassed:

Quote:

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Wisdom rallied in a protected glade. Stupidity assailed the lines again, but was repulsed

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:laugh4: :laugh4:

Quote:

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Wisdom rallied in a protected glade. Stupidity assailed the lines again, but was repulsed

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Ha, I laughed at this too. There are some great writers in this group, thanks all for the excellent reading!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by econ21

I'm getting an alarming black screen of death crash after exiting RTRPE. I thought it was a problem with RTW, but then loaded the Thracian vanilla PBM save and coul exit fine. Maybe this campaign is trying to tell us something?!

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Memory leak perhaps ? How much RAM are you running currently ?

It that's it, try turning of un necessary programms like Quicktime, or a Virus scan, when playing Rome.

All I can come up with at the moment....

:balloon2:

Simon,

Quick Note – been off line all weekend and was back very late from University last night so haven’t got this info until today, however, orders will be sent out today to you on email

OK - no problem; I only need your deployment - ie just arrange those icons in a battle line.

We will then have a "move to contact" turn, where both you and Tamur will give your opening moves which will be executed simultaneously until either of you gets into missile or charge range.

After that, we will have 6 regular turns, where you will be able to give incremental orders. I am going to try to simulate a real ancient battle, so it may take more than a turn for a melee between two lines of heavy infantry to be resolved. A cavalry charge will be resolved more quickly though (and if successful may overrun into other enemy units during the same turn).

I will also impose fatigue penalties, so units that come into the action later in the day will have an edge. A typical unit will only be able to fight for two turns and then be exhausted. Units will not be able to withdraw easily from a melee, except Roman infantry which was apparently practiced that.

Units may be able to change their facing autonomously so if you want a flank attack, make sure you pin the enemy first. Units next to a general may be able to do even more in reaction to an enemy move so make sure you place your general where he needs to be to control things.

This post is primarily for Braden and Tamur, but I thought I would make it public in case others are curious about how we are going to do this umpired battle.

It would be good if I could have your initial move to contact orders asap - they will likely be only minor tweaks of what you have already given me.

Army "divisions" and how they will work

To simplify this, please give orders only to groups (“division”) of your army. You may have a maximum of 8 “divisions” in your army.

You currently have 6 each and so may create another 2 during the course of the battle by detaching units from existing divisions. It would be foolish to try to re-arrange units locked in melee, though. Your main reserves are probably the best formations to try to break down in new divisions – e.g. if you only want to commit some at a particular time.

However, each general may be given individual orders and need not be in a division. The generals are Numerius, Appius, Manius and son. The Senate Tribune is not a general per se, although his presence in a division may give that division more autonomous capability.

The initial deployment looks like this:

https://img224.imageshack.us/img224/...ployzj8.th.jpg

Current divisions

Consular – these are the six formations that Braden ringed & labelled in his deployment diagram to me.

I. Battle division - main battle line
II. Light infantry division – slingers and skirmish detachment
III. Command division - generals and equites
IV. Light cavalry division
V. Cavalry reserve division
VI. Reserve division

Senate – I have created these after consolidating some of Tamur’s labelled formations on his diagram.

I. Battle division - main battle line inc. Manius & flanking swords
II. Light infantry division - frontal skirmisher and slinger detachment
III. Second battle division - Numerius + hastati
IV. Cavalry division (to the left)
V. Horse archer detachment
VI. Reserve division


How to draft orders

Please draft your orders in character, as if given by a real general. They should be clear and simple. The more confused or complicated, the more likely the divisional commander will mess up. Ideally, I would like to publish these orders in a battle report (after the battle is concluded – so they will be confidential until then). You may allow for contingencies, but if the orders are too complex, the divisional commander may become confused or feel constrained from acting on his own initiative. You can trust your divisional commanders to execute their orders in a competent way (you don’t need to micromanage them and tell them how to fight – I may let the AI control them to see how a division vs division fight would play out). But they will have limited initiative to respond to new developments.

What orders should cover:
- where to move, inc. facing
- which formation to engage or screen (this will help me determine facing)
- for missiles (inc. pila and javelin armed heavily infantry): whether to fire at will or who to target
- for melee units: whether to charge or prepare to receive a charge
- whether to pursue or hold ground once in place

You should also edit the jpg in Paint to indicate where you would like your units to move (both of you provided much better graphs than my pitiful attempts, so in the edit I just stuck each of yours on top of the other). Remember - movement in the advance to contact turn stops once you are within range.

OK, orders for turn 2 (mid-morning), please. The situation upon advancing to contact is:

https://img170.imageshack.us/img170/...urn1of0.th.jpg

To simulate the fog of war, from this point on, I will only provide partial information on the situation to each general as it is appears to them. This will be done in private to Braden and Tamur separately. I will create diagrams for the record, but will not show (bits of) them to the generals unless it is needed to illustrate a tricky point.

Tamur and Braden can of course, send me diagrams to clarify their orders but in reality, I doubt generals would scribble down maps mid-battle so any centurions receiving them may be suitably bemused.

Maps I'm sending you are for OOC assistance only - a picture tells a thousand words.

FoW - would that now be realistic? both commanders are on the field and as its level ground, they'd have a pretty good idea what's going on.

I think the main thing to consider is the limited scope open to the commanders to relay any adjustments to any orders they gave at the initial advance (or before).

Certainly after melee has begun, anything more complex than "Break contact" or "Withdraw" or "charge" can really only be given to unengaged units that have visual on the commander.

***********On the campaign ******************

I hope to get in turn 3 (autumn) of the campaign tonight. Any last minute orders, please let me know.

********** On the battle of Ancrya **********************

Just to say I am having e-mail problems today, so if Tamur could use a PM to give his orders, that would be good. I am hoping I can move on to turn 3 of the battle swiftly.

On the realism of fog of war - a general can only see through line of sight. He does not have a helicopter or interactive total war style map laid out. Once the lines have met in combat, I doubt he could see much - particularly on level ground. He would have to use riders to keep in touch with his divisons, but riders can be lost, reports garbled and orders can be misunderstood (think Balaclava).

As I said above:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by econ21

Players should act like historical armies and not try to micro-manage too much. Orders may get lost and things may slip up. The position of the 4 generals will be particularly important in determining the outcome of any fine maneouvring - if he is far away or locked in combat, he may not be able to control events. (Best avoid the RTW bad habit of using your general as a spearhead.)

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(I guess the first sentence should have said "generals" not "armies".)

Ok Simon,

BTW – I guess now would be a good time to send you some more order then (should cover nearly to the end of the battle, with very minor adjustment by Manius “on the field”).

OK, I've got both Braden and Tamur's orders - I will get back to you both with the end of turn situation asap. E-mail seems fine now btw. :bow:

Braden requested a rough depiction of the situation at the end of turn 2. Given that units have not got into melee yet, fog of war is not a serious problem. So both sides can see that the situation looks roughly like this:

https://img146.imageshack.us/img146/...n2rvbu1.th.jpg

Please don't ask me to align unit x to fight unit y - I don't think a real Roman general would get into such a level of micromanagement (unless he was adjacent to unit x).

NB: slightly revised diagram from original post.

WOO! KICK HIS ASS SEABASS! Er... Numerius.

Unfortunately, Numerius has gone down with a bad case of stomach cramps so it is all up to his former Tribune, Appius Barbatus to win the day! (It seemed unfair to get Tamur to do all the work and not (potentially at least) get the glory.)

I am hoping Glaucus uploads the savegame tonight as I am keen to play out turn 3 on the campaign map. With Servius making landfall, it's going to get very tactical on turn 4.

Unless the participants can assure me that they have successfully played a multiplayer RTRPE battle, I propose that in future, all "non-critical" battles be resolved in an AI vs AI custom battle. A critical battle will be defined as one where Servius could lose - ie where he does not clearly outmatch his opponent.

If the Ancrya battle works out, the umpired game mechanism could be used for critical battles. But I think we will work on the "reinforcing armies" principle - ie only one stack initially deployed; each other stack comes on - somewhat randomly (1/6 chance first turn, 2/6 chance second turn etc.) This may make the battles a little simpler at first and also add a fun element (when's backup arriving?!?).

If there is a really important battle not involving Servius, I may be persuaded to call it critical but the default position is let the AI call it.

Well, I wouldn't like to give up on MP without actually trying it, mainly because I'm pretty sure it'll work just fine. Does anyone wish to conduct any tests?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FLYdude

Well, I wouldn't like to give up on MP without actually trying it, mainly because I'm pretty sure it'll work just fine. Does anyone wish to conduct any tests?

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Not to preempt anything, but it looks at least plausible that Tiberius Coruncanius may soon get into a scrap with Quintus Naevius. Does Lucjan want to try out a MP battle with FLYdude? Or some other player on the Consular side?

I am not on the Consular side, but I am willing to test out a MP game if needed.

FLYdude vs TinCow - I think you are both in the US, so maybe you can work something out?

You should be able to fight Roman vs Roman using the first two factions on the custom faction list. (If we do it for real, we'll want to change the EDU to enable recruitment of some of those fun mercs we've been hiring. But for a test, it's unnecessary)

I am on EST and am off work Friday through Sunday. Any time you want is good with me FLYdude. Are we using RTRPE 1.6 with the BI.exe?

Scheduling won't be a problem, I'm off everything for several weeks, except for a few finals next week. So, I'm good to go 24 hours a day, more or less, although I would appreciate it if it wasn't in the early hours of the morning. :laugh4: I'm on MST, which is +2 to EST, and +7 to GMT.

I don't have BI, so I suppose we should stick to 1.5? They might be compatible anyway.

If you can't get MP to work with RTRPE, can't we just fight the battles online using RTW vanilla? The differences on the battle map between the 2 versions for Roman armies shouldn't be that huge........should they?

BTW, great job everyone in the Civil War stories thread, outstanding writing. Guess you got your wish after all Lucjan? ~:)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mount Suribachi

If you can't get MP to work with RTRPE, can't we just fight the battles online using RTW vanilla? The differences on the battle map between the 2 versions for Roman armies shouldn't be that huge........should they?

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Good idea. I could fairly easily tweak the unit stats of the key Roman units in RTW so that they handle like their RTRPE counterparts. We could also slow down the movement speeds.

But on reflection I am not sure there should be a problem with doing MP on a mod. Aren't some mods - Napoleonic TW - mainly for multiplayer only?

But let's try this: TinCow and FLYdude try to play a multiplayer battle with the mod we are using. If there is a technical problem, they try with just vanilla RTW 1.5. Given we are all new to MP, it would be useful to get their feedback on the practicalities and feel of MP, regardless of whether we can use this mod.

No problems with 1.5, I have an install with that version as well. Want to plan on something around noon MST on Saturday? I also run a BF2/BF2142/ETF community and we host a Teamspeak server as well. If you want to use Teamspeak to make setup easier, I can create a private channel for us. That would probably be easier from a troubleshooting aspect.

Noon saturday is good, teamspeak is fine if you want it.

I suppose I should, at this stage, mention that I'm not entirely new to MP, in that I've played it in vanilla, the first release of RTR 6.0, as well as EB, having no technical issues in any of them. This is why I suspect there won't be an issue.

I'd be willing to practice against anybody Friday Saturday or Sunday, we just need to work out a time.

And Mount, what was my wish? *lost*

The situation at the end of turn 3 (late morning) of the battle of Ancrya:

https://img178.imageshack.us/img178/...urn3jy2.th.jpg

Note to Braden and Tamur: there may be some light cavalry off to the right of the map, but they are out of command and out of sight.

Another note to the participants - sending me a map of where you would like the units you can control to be at the end of turn 4 would be very useful. However, don't move the Battle Divisions or the Senate Reserve Division - they are committed and after the antics your generals got up to in turn 3, I really can't see them being able to effect any kind of tactical control over them in this turn. The scrummage will be resolved by the end of this turn, however, and then the victors be free to control the survivors.

To the non-participants: apologies for not making progress with the campaign. Resolving this battle is surprisingly time consuming. I hope to play turn 3 of the war on the campaign map this weekend and ideally finish off this battle, so I can move the victor as well and then press "end turn".

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lucjan

And Mount, what was my wish? *lost*

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That thing about writing a story with different authors for the differenct characters.

Oh yeah, it happened, just not quite in the manner I had expected it to. Though I am very, very pleased with the incredible story unraveling in the civil war stories thread.

This is really touch-and-go at the moment!

I can't call who's going to win but what I do know is...

....I really don't believe they'll be much of a victorious army left, whoever leads that army.

(though, potentially not Appius and definately not Manius's adoptive son - RiP)

Quote:

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I really don't believe they'll be much of a victorious army left, whoever leads that army.

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Oj, it's tense! And with the cause at hand I don't think there will be an easy victory for either side. Whoever wins will have to do a lot of recruiting on the way to Rome.

Yeah...good job there's Greece to go through (Phalanx Merc's....yummy!)

Guys, is it really necessay to name each and every side character Flavius ?! It's really quite confusing :beam:

:balloon2:

Is a "Whoops!" in order??

I have a very large list of Romano names.....darn-it am I using to many Flavius's's (or is that Flaviuii??)

...hang on....I can only see one person called Flavius in our Econ/Braden/Lucjan joint story, part of Sextus's retune. He is mentioned quite a bit but he's only the one guy.

Lucjan, you are welcome to join FLYdude and I on saturday. We can test just as easily with a three way battle as with a two way.

My suggestion is to meet up on Teamspeak first. I will make a RTW channel and we can use that until we are done.

TS IP: ts.railbait.com

Be there at 12:00 pm MST (2:00pm EST, 7:00pm GMT)

I'd like to help, but 2pm EST wouldn't work for me, I have to pick up my girlfriend from work at that time. Maybe shortly after that? 2:30 or 3?

I am sure we will still be on at 2:30 or 3:00pm EST. If you've got teamspeak, just join the channel when you get home.

Ok, will do.

Just to say, I've played out what I think is the decisive phase of the battle of Ancrya and posted the results in a new thread.

I am a little alarmed that my computer keeps crashing - and sometimes not rebooting - when I exit RTW. It's a big worry and almost as if this PBM is telling me to wind it down. I will move things on in the campaign map - the way I see it, we will have a series of decisive battles in or around Italy; the war ending with either Servius in chains or victorious against all comers.

If we can get MP battles working, that might take some of the pressure of me - although I think the umpired model is viable (as is a one big custom battle AI vs AI). It's easy to edit the EDU to be able to use our mercs in custom or MP battles; we can also mod the file to reflect significantly below strength units. We should add experience and upgrades to reflect the units involved. Also, we should adjust unit experience by the difference in the two generals' command stars and traits - I did not do this at Ancrya, as it would have been unfair to spring it on Braden. But it would have meant a +2 experience (+3 to infantry) for the Senate forces.

Excellent work on umpiring the battle, econ21. I am massively impressed that you were able to make it fair and realistic given the circumstances.

As an aside, one further advantage of using multiplayer is that we can record the battles for everyone else to see.

Bad news from the MP testing front. FLYdude, Lucjan, and I were not able to get a game to work. We all received incompatible version errors when we tried to join each other, no matter who was hosting or what version of the game we tried. FLYdude seems to think it is the Platinum version that is causing the problems and suggests that Gold might work. Another option would be to do the battles in a Vanilla version and fudge the armies as best as we were able to.

That's disappointing. You could explore RTR Gold, as it's basically got the same units etc. But it could be a hassle installing it for some.

I think going with vanilla RTW would be easiest, especially if we could mod the unit stats and movement speeds (they are just two text files and it would be very easy to tweak the relevant units to have RTRPE stats). Luckily in the case of the Romans, I think there's a decent match between RTR units and RTW ones. We'd only have problems with a few exotic mercenaries.

I am not sure whether there is a problem doing MP with a modded EDU file. I don't think there should be, but I've asked in the RTW MP forum to check:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...09&postcount=1

Even if we can't mod the stats or movement speeds, I think RTW would give a decent approximation.

I don't see why anybody would have an issue with accepting approximated units due to platinums failure to somehow be compatible with itself.

I've asked a friend for his cd key from a disc that no longer works and he's going to look for it for me tomorrow, I'll try some more things to see if I can't get platinum to work for us when I have the second key, I'll let you guys know what's up after that.

Yeah, I think playing with all Roman armies with vanilla should be OK. Other than the increased movement speeds I would imagine its pretty similar.

Myrddraal reckons it would not be a problem to mod the stats and movement speeds in MP, so we should be fine.

Now that Ancrya has been resolved, I've played turn 3 of the civil war (autumn 250). I now need orders for turn 4. The savegame is:

http://www.totalwar.org/patrons/pbm/250-win.zip

Most important are Lucjan's orders for Servius and Quintus Naevius; Swordsmaster's and Tiberius's for Luca and Decius; and GeneralHankerchief's. The others will not reach Italy for another season or more.

If people could get me orders by Monday night or Tuesday at the latest, that would be good.

Just a brief note that I found the battle and the reports utterly fascinating.
Muchos kudos for econ21 !
Of course I am also enjoying the civil war stories.
Senate - Consul
1 - 0 :2thumbsup:

And I have to add that, even though I was in the "general" chair for the Senate, I found the reports equally fascinating. It made me wish in a big way that there were a way to do that more often -- though of course I would not wish it on econ to have to referee another battle spending hours and hours of his time to do it.

He gave both Braden and I obscured and incomplete battle reports based on where our generals were, made us order by division rather than unit, and generally turned it into a much more real experience. At times it was frustrating, at times rather shocking, but both in a good way.

I've often wished that, in TW battles, I didn't even have the option to micromanage each unit -- that I could instead turn things over to a division commander and say "get this job done" without worrying that said commander will simply charge any enemy in sight range.

So, having econ give us exactly that possibility was jarring at first. Now I'm having a lot of trouble going back to the normal fashion of TW battles.

A big thanks to econ for the way he handled this.

I really enjoyed doing the umpired battle, although I was surprised by the amount of work it involved. I always wanted a game which simulated the real decisions of a general, rather than getting you to micromanage each individual unit. If we did it again, what I would change would be starting out with two stacks only on the field and then bring on any other stacks a random time during the battle (say probability = [turn #]/6). I think that would add a little more drama and also space out of the combats a little, so everything was not resolved by turn 4 as here.

I think the mechanisms of splitting up fights into mirrored mini-custom battles is a reasonable way of weighing the forces involved, but still allowing some role for battle strategy. After the battle, Lucjan wondered if each that each general should have the chance to fight the AI in these mirrored contests, but on reflection I think it is better that an umpire do it trying to follow the orders given and reflect the lines of deployment. The AI is so awful, there are lots of gamey things you can do to win with virtually no casualties (and our campaign tallies of kill ratios have encouraged the development of these!) but these don't accurately simulate what would happen. Trying to follow the orders of each general and averaging the result seems preferable.

Just a note on translating battlefield losses to the campaign map: I don't have an easy means of changing the strength of units on the campaign map, so I either disbanded them or kept them whole strength. I took the estimated unit survivors, then added 35% of the casualties back (as recovered wounded, prisoners, stragglers, whatever). The final % of the unit remaining was the chance that the unit stayed on the campaign map - I used a random generator to test against that. We could use the same method for translating MP battles onto the campaign map - although we would have to think about whether there should be a further penalty for the loser (the possibility of army dissolution). It struck me after the battle that it would be a shame to dissolve Legio II, so Numerius did a deal with Manius that his survivors would guard the east rather than just be disbanded en masse.

To keep things on track, I'm going to set a deadline of 6pm UK time tomorrow (Tuesday) for any orders for the campaign map. If I don't receive orders, I'll use my judgement to make the moves but won't get anyone into any trouble if I can avoid it.

Econ21,

I think the current options we have are just two for MP battles in the Civil War now.

1) A slightly modded Vanilla based MP game
2) Ref (GM) led MP battle similar to the one we’ve just had

Now, currently I think that option one is our best bet, mainly as it cuts down on time. I do have one suggestion if we have to run another GM’d game though, perhaps using a historical based War-Game system to roll the results will be quicker?

From my experience of these type of War-Game they don’t produce a result much different from the results we had in the Ancyra battle, potentially, we could use that as a basis (and a sprinkling of Total War based common sense)?

I don't mind spending the time to work out combat resolution for a potentially decisive battle - as I suspect the next ones in Italy will be. To be honest, MP may not be that much quicker than a refereed game due to logistical issues (getting everyone on line at the same time and getting things working - we are probably looking at weekends only). I was thinking of using a war-game system originally, but then I realised the custom battles would probably be easier than trying to adapt a system to TW and decide the results (the nice thing about computer games is that the computer does all the maths).

I'm going to try to bring the campaign to a head by the weekend, so that if people want MP battles, they can do them this weekend. The likely participants are Lucjan, FLYdude, Swordsmaster and GeneralHankerchief.

From what's been posted previously, Lucjan and FLYdude prefer MP battles so if Quintus Naevius and Tiberius Coruncanius clash, we can use that method.

Swordsmaster can't do a MP battle. GeneralHankerchief was the one who originally proposed umpired battles, so I suspect he has a preference for that. If Lucjan, GeneralHankerchief and Swordsmaster meet for a big battle, one possibility is to mix the MP and umpired battles as Lucjan proposed a while back. We would proceed as with Ancrya, but when we got to resolving specific combats (like the four in turn 3/4), we could set them up as MP mini-battles that people with good internet connections etc could play out. It would be the most time consuming of all methods, but also potentially the most dramatic. Given that the battle might well be the decisive one of the war, I think that would be ok.