RII succession game

[Myth]

We've had plenty of these games in the past for Rome 1 and Medieval 2. We usually host them at the Throne Room, along with the hotseat games. However, I thnk we should have one right here in the Rome 2 subforum.

What is a sucession game you ask?

It's something like a collective AAR. We pick a faction and we play untill the faction leader dies. When that happens, we pass it over to the next player. Each "term" or reign is handled by a diffeerent player and so policies and prioriteis will vary. Some will make reforms, other will start or end wars and so on. When accompanied by a detailed report on what happened (not necessarily on a micro level like "built temple to Athena in Pella) and a few screenshots, the thread and game soon turn into something resembling historical annals of a kingdom. You see how the different rulers hanlded their subjects and who achieved what in terms of border growth, development, stability, ending threats and so on.

So you could be a warmonger who wipes out your next door neighbors and doubles the size of the kingdom. Or you could have a "pax Romana" peaceful 30 year reign in which you trade and build infrastructure, and leave a treasury bursting with coin and a stable kingdom for the next ruler.

The lack of family tree will set us back but I will make our own family tree here. I just need a screenshot of the faction ruler (the topmost character in the internal politics screen) and I will photoshop a family tree for us.

Now, which faction should we choose? I vote for Epirus, Athens or Carthage as they seem to be pretty hard and unpopular.

[Sp4]

You just pass on the save file all the time?

[Bramborough]

Sounds pretty cool. Especially since there's no turn limit, no collective "time pressure". Each player/ruler would be a bit in "sandbox mode", so to speak.

How is the succession of players normally determined? And same question as Sp4; we just share the save file? Seems that would affect folks' mods...I assume we'd need a common "baseline" configuration.

In any case, I'm in, sounds like fun. As long as I don't have to install a mod that I don't want.

As far as faction(s), open to any. I know it's a relatively small forum community we have here...but each game would only have one player at a time. Plus it's not as if there necessarily has to be a time-limit...a particular game might languish for a few days, but would then pick right back up when a guy finishes his ruler's reign and posts the AAR installment. Given all that, I don't see any reason why we couldn't have multiple campaigns going at once.

[AntiDamascus]

I don't think I could do it for fear I would run the faction into the ground.

[Myth]

1. We just exchange the save file, yes. CA have made a change to how Legendary saves work in the most recent patch, now it's not just a single file per faction so it's possible to run mulptile legendary campaigns with some trouble. But for the sake of manual saving and renaming the file I'd say go for VH.

2. I will strongly suggest no mods installed for this. I don't want any mods for Rome II, i'm quite happy with CA content and support and mods tend to get dated when new stuff is released. The Greek States DLC is another issue though and probably the saves will not be compatible between players who have it and those who don't. Same with the new DLC as well, since those change the map (the latest DLC adds a settlement on the map where we usually see Byzantium/Constantinople for example, and several new provinces are added too). If more players want to do this with a particular mod however, you are free to do so

3. Fear of running the faction into the ground is needless. First, that's perfectly OK from a gaming perspective, we're all here to have fun. Second, historically not all kings were equally successful. Any mistakes passed on will make the next guy's job harder but he will also write how he remedied this, reformed that, restructured another thing...

[easytarget]

Sounds like a pretty cool idea to me. Not sure I necessarily have the time to participate, but I most certainly look forward to the discussion on it here as it progresses, especially the opportunity to see the various commanders back seat drive on each other, haha.