The Will of the Senate - out of character thread II

[econ21]

On the issue of spies dying - what causes it? I guess it is mainly entering enemy settlements (and enemy armies? can they do that?). I'm just wondering what is the point of entering an enemy settlement. I know there's a chance you can open the gates and so take the town in one turn, but I typically avoid that. One turn is not a big deal and with stone walls, the boiling oil etc means its often suicide to enter that way.

I tend to use spies as scouts and to detect assassins - am I missing other tricks?

(I'm just asking out of general curiosity, not specifically about this campaign.)

[TinCow]

On the issue of spies dying - what causes it? I guess it is mainly entering enemy settlements (and enemy armies? can they do that?). I'm just wondering what is the point of entering an enemy settlement. I know there's a chance you can open the gates and so take the town in one turn, but I typically avoid that. One turn is not a big deal and with stone walls, the boiling oil etc means its often suicide to enter that way.

I tend to use spies as scouts and to detect assassins - am I missing other tricks?

(I'm just asking out of general curiosity, not specifically about this campaign.)

Well, any time the spy has less than a 100% chance of success on his mission, he can fail. Unlike for an assassin, failure always means death for a spy. As you may have noticed, I used spies to open gates twice so far in my campaign and I considered them to be particularly important. I admit, it's not often that someone is trying to storm through enemy territories quite as fast as I am (I wanted to rush through and get my army back out safely) however in this case it proved very useful, since Gauls do not have stone walls.

In addition, I always like know the exact composition of enemy armies. Sometimes even having the spy close by won't give you all the info and it will never give you the general's traits/ancillaries. I like knowing before I fight if the guy has a +5 or a -3 morale, it will sometimes effect how I fight.

[Silver Rusher]

Decius Laevinius (Tiberius) has also seconded proposal 6.10. econ21, please edit this into the original post of Senate Deliberations II.

[econ21]

Decius Laevinius (Tiberius) has also seconded proposal 6.10. econ21, please edit this into the original post of Senate Deliberations II.

thanks - I'm grateful if people point out where I've missed stuff like that. It does not really matter as long as motions already have two seconders but this one was important. The deadline for motions is 6pm tomorrow (Tuesday).

[Silver Rusher]

No problem. I think you may have missed out 6.6 as well which was also proposed by Tiberius.

EDIT: Wait, it's alright. That is in, I must be seeing things.

[Mount Suribachi]

Just a quick note to say "I'm back". I'll catch up on everything when I've got a spare 6 hours

[Silver Rusher]

I have just made a discovery. This may have been discovered a long time ago, but I have just found out that it is possible to change preferences.txt so that you can edit settlement names in-game on RTW patch 1.5. The advantages of this are:

-If Motion 6.10 gets passed, Bononia can be renamed Verginia in-game
-It works on savegames that were saved before the preferences file was changed
-The savegame will still work if the recipient of it has not changed the preferences file AND the settlement will still be renamed.

TinCow, all you need to do is:
1. Go to Activision/Rome - Total War/Preferences/Preferences.txt
2. Use Ctrl+F to find this line: EDIT_SETTLEMENT_NAMES
3. Change it from FALSE to TRUE
4. Save
5. Open up the campaign, double click on Bononia and then double click on the settlement name. You will now be able to edit the name, click the tick when done

econ21, sorry to keep bothering you, but please remove the note from motion 6.10. Plus, I seconded motions 6.6 and 6.7 in my first in-character post, it seems to be important as both these motions have 1 seconder each.

[Craterus]

By the way, don't worry about giving my assassin cushy jobs. He's there to be used, but I'm not around much for the next two weeks. Sorry!

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

Excellent work Silver Rusher !

[x-dANGEr]

Silver Rusher also seconded Motion 6.7.

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

Some tips, after I have been struggling with a CTD in my Egyptian campaign :

If you change you startup command to

RomeTW.exe -show_err -nm

It will 'try' to show an error message if RTR crashes. This usually fails, but it might be handy for people struggling with install problems. The -nm option skips the intro movie.

Also, for those who get a CTD in their campaign. Reboot, load the game and turn fog of war off.
1. ~ => console
2. toggle_fow off
3. ~ => remove console
You can turn it of fog of war on after passing the critical moment where the CTD occurs with 'toggle_fow on'
Save the game and try again.

If it still fails and it fails during the AI's turn, set the speed of movement of units on the campaign map to slow ('spacebar') and save the game the moment the faction under which the crash occurs gets its turn. After the crash, reload, and try the new save. Chances are good the CTD will not occur.

It might be handy to add this to the FAQ.

[TinCow]

I confess I'm not wildly keen about the current in-fighting at the Senate; I always enjoyed the cooperative aspect of PBMs. I certainly won't be fighting any duels in multi-player - I've never done it and probably would be dead before I'd formed up a line of attack.

For someone who isn't keen, you've taken to it with impressive gusto. I definitely think this is the best Senate session we've had to date.

On another note, why is this interim session so long? Don't we usually have one day of proposals and one day of voting? Now we have 3.5 days of proposals and 1 day of voting. Unfortunately I will now be away from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon. I was hoping to finish up my turn before then, but that won't be possible if I have to shuffle the save game file around more than once or twice. So, sorry in advance for any delay.

[econ21]

For someone who isn't keen, you've taken to it with impressive gusto.

Um, sorry about that - I may have gone a little over the top. I was stung by your PMs ("TinCow won't let me play!" ).

Memo to self: never post after midnight.

In character, Quintus has tried to play it straight with other people, but Verginius seems a little bit of sharp operator and the old man got riled.

I was reading the EB forums the other day and they were saying how they wished they could make it so that Roman generals would try to assassinate each other. At first, I thought it was strange and then I started thinking about the TV Series Rome and the way this PBEM is going ...

[econ21]

On another note, why is this interim session so long? Don't we usually have one day of proposals and one day of voting?

We normally have two days of proposals and one day of voting. Last time Swordsmaster requested an extra day for proposals; DDW agreed and no one dissented. Given that you finished so quickly in the weekend, I thought it would be ok but I was figuring on people wanting to play in the weekends. If there is room on the ballot paper, I might sneak in an out of character vote on whether people want 3 or 4 day interim sessions of senate.

But if can keep to roughly two weeks/First Consul we'll be keeping to a good pace. If you are out of town this weekend and we wait a few more days, it won't be a problem. I know you are reliable and play fast; and anyway this PBM seems to have retained people's attention so far.

[TinCow]

Ideally I would like to see voting blocs start to form... certain Senators supporting each other over the long-term and gaining votes by providing 'benefits' to independants. We can all beat this game on VH/VH while at war with everybody, so the challenge isn't in expanding Rome. I think the reason this is going so well is that we're pretending to be the Senate itself. There's only limited potential in a discussion that is designed only to figure out who will play next and which territories to conquer. There's unlimited potential if people treat their characters as Roman patricians whose actions are highly centered in their own personal motives and best interests. Personally, I would love to get a 'hooting' avatar next time. I would write some very interesting stuff and trust me, you'd love the motions I would propose!

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

This is what a real Ceasar should have as a trait :


For myself only one trait would do :


I'm in the 'Peace/Balance of Power' Bloc myself, at least with this character. A better name would be 'The Conservative Bloc'.

By the way, in my M/VH campaign I have an alliance with almost everyone and diplomacy 'works' a lot better. Perhaps just a bit too easy. Perhaps H/VH (or H/M or whatever) would be a better choice for tWotS II : Revenge of the Republic. Then alliance proposals would have some meaning.
Then again, in my VH/VH campaign, at the end when I was the only remaining superpower other nations gave in out of sheer awe (and 20-50K dinari).

EDIT : If we really want to we could lower the campaign difficulty by editing the savegame using a tool like RomeSage.

[Mount Suribachi]

Hehe, we are the Boni DDW

As for campaign difficulty, the settings I find majorly sucky. At Medium you can actually get alliances, trade maps etc and Naval Battles are reasonably balanced (still with a slight favour to the AI IMO). On H & VH diplomacy just becomes ridiculous, with the AI demanding outrageous compensation for the slightest favour - even if it benefits them. And don't even get me started on Naval battles.....

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

Hehe, we are the Boni DDW

Good thinking, shall we call ourselves the Optimates or the Boni ?

[TinCow]

This is what a real Ceasar should have as a trait :

LOL, that would certainly make Senate speeches more... colorful.

[Glaucus]

haha, does anyone know any latin swears?

[TinCow]

haha, does anyone know any latin swears?

Would this do?



On a semi-related topic, I'm at around 250BC in a SP game I'm playing with the same mods. My current new crop of family members has massive trait bug problems with people coming of age with stuff like Former General and Military Service - 16 Years in addition to tons of random traits. We are definitely going to start encountering this, particularly with the current slew of underage males. I would like to propose that we keep track of the most unrealistic traits and remove their impact on character influence for voting purposes. If we agree to this, I'll make a note on the Bio of all members with clearly buggy traits that indicates what their influence adjustment should be.

[Avicenna]

I know one insult:

stultissimus es!

Means 'you are the stupidest!'

Note: there aren't meant to be capitals, which is what lots and lots and lots of people get wrong with latin. Only proper nouns are capitalised.

[Mount Suribachi]

haha, does anyone know any latin swears?

Hehe, you need to read The Masters Of Rome Series

Some of them are so obvious & strong that I'll probably get in trouble. But an obvious one that might not would be fellator for a man, or fellatrix for a woman.

[Mount Suribachi]

On a semi-related topic, I'm at around 250BC in a SP game I'm playing with the same mods. My current new crop of family members has massive trait bug problems with people coming of age with stuff like Former General and Military Service - 16 Years in addition to tons of random traits. We are definitely going to start encountering this, particularly with the current slew of underage males. I would like to propose that we keep track of the most unrealistic traits and remove their impact on character influence for voting purposes. If we agree to this, I'll make a note on the Bio of all members with clearly buggy traits that indicates what their influence adjustment should be.

Can you not just edit stuff somewhere to remove unwanted traits?

(I have no idea about these things btw, but it seems like the kind of thing you could edit)

Good thinking, shall we call ourselves the Optimates or the Boni ?

Thing is, I think Cato the Younger was a complete &(^%$^^&$ who was almost single-handedly responsible for the civil war that led to the downfall of the Republic, yet here I am advocating much of his policy....

[econ21]

Can you not just edit stuff somewhere to remove unwanted traits?

TinCow, I wonder if you could post your latest solo game save? Then I could download it and look at the buggy traits. I'm not a modder, but if we can identify triggers, there might be something we can do - e.g. disabling "like his father" trait or something. Marcus Camillus seems preoccupied with the next version of Platinum and may not provide a solution in time.

[Braden]

Latin expletives (rather ones I use on a regular basis):

ecki mama! (means: “What a tit!”)

testiculos! (…erm….I’m sure you can work this one out)

N.B. Not sure I have spellings correct, no time to check them.

[Ignoramus]

That table on page 2 lists that I have 3 influence. How is that?

[TinCow]

TinCow, I wonder if you could post your latest solo game save? Then I could download it and look at the buggy traits. I'm not a modder, but if we can identify triggers, there might be something we can do - e.g. disabling "like his father" trait or something. Marcus Camillus seems preoccupied with the next version of Platinum and may not provide a solution in time.

Marcus has already concluded that the problem is both the "like his father" and "not like his father" traits. Is there a way to alter the traits of an existing character? If so, we could manually edit out the problems when the character comes of age.

That table on page 2 lists that I have 3 influence. How is that?

Your failed negotiations with Germany, Iberia, Illyria, Greece and Macedon removed your + influence traits. You currently get +3 from two ancilleries and have no traits at all.

[econ21]

Marcus has already concluded that the problem is both the "like his father" and "not like his father" traits. Is there a way to alter the traits of an existing character? If so, we could manually edit out the problems when the character comes of age.

And does Marcus's conclusion match your observations from your solo game? ie is it only characters with those two traits that are problematic?

I am not sure we can edit the traits of an existing character, although DDW did mention a programme for editing savegames.

However, I am pretty sure we could be able to edit the traits file to the benefit of future generals. I'll investigate commenting out or deleting those two traits you mention. If anyone has ever played around with the traits file and wants to do that for us, that would be appreciated. If it looks too tricky for me, I may e-mail Marcus to see if he can be persuaded to do the work for us.

[TinCow]

And does Marcus's conclusion match your observations from your solo game? ie is it only characters with those two traits that are problematic?

I am not sure we can edit the traits of an existing character, although DDW did mention a programme for editing savegames.

However, I am pretty sure we could be able to edit the traits file to the benefit of future generals. I'll investigate commenting out or deleting those two traits you mention. If anyone has ever played around with the traits file and wants to do that for us, that would be appreciated. If it looks too tricky for me, I may e-mail Marcus to see if he can be persuaded to do the work for us.

Yes, it completely matches my observations for one main reason: only "Coming of Age" characters are bugged. Since characters created by marriages and adoptions do not have 'fathers' from which to inherit anything, they are always 100% normal, yet every single Coming of Age character demonstrates some degree of buginess. All of my CoA guys now are born with at least a Former ________ and military service. Deleting those two (Like His Father & Not Like His Father) might work and we would lose far less than we would gain, since they are currently so buggy. We have plenty of time to work on this though, since no males will come of age during the remainder of my term. We can test out changes in the meantime.

Shots of some of my screwy guys. Manius has been around for a while, but compare his rank and his military service. The other two should be obvious.