RTW and PBMs

[Ashen]

Real romans kill barbarians, it matters not what colour you are :p

But I would rather have a shot at Scipii or Brutii ro have a smack at some phalanx type armies and especially the spartans and parthians.

[Amon_Zeth]

Can I play on the Julii PBM?

[afrit]

Welcome aboard Amon Zeth and Ashen.
YOu're very welcome to play.
We need to wait a bit so that everyone here gets the game (many (most?) regular PBMers are in Europe). So keep checking this board for the next 2 weeks. In the meantime, those who get the game should let us know on possibilities of playing by mail.

I am still trying to find a copy (EB Games sold out, best buy hasn;t gotten it yet).

Afrit

[Tricky Lady]

In the meantime, those who get the game should let us know on possibilities of playing by mail.

And? Is Rome PBEM-able? I'm sure it will be, but I'd like to get a confirmation from one of you guys who played the game already...

[Amon_Zeth]

I think it's PBEM-able.

[Amon_Zeth]

So are we going to have an RTW PBM or not?

[afrit]

Hello again.

I have had the good fortune of playing with RTW since last Saturday. Total time played is about 16-20 hours so far.I can give a prelim report on RTW and PBM play. Compared to MTW, there are pluses and minuses to PBM with Rome (mostly pluses).

#1: Save file length is about 1.2 MB. Smaller than MTW. No obstacle to PBM there.

#2: "Reign" length.
I played through part of the prologue and then started a Julii imperial campaign. I am now on about turn 40 in 249BC (270 BC- 249 BC=21 years X 2 turns per year). I have had the first faction leader die in a battle, so I am on the second "reign". However, if it were not for foolishly throwing the general in the melee, I would still be on first reign. TUrns are about the same "play time" compared to MTW, so a reign is effectively doubled. Hence, you propably can finish it in 4 reigns or so. (a plus or a minus depending on your point of view).

#2b: Choice of heir in the family tree. This may open up the possibility of the next PBM player getting a voice into who they get to play as faction leader.

#2c. Province loyalty is now linked to distance to capital city (which you can move to newly conquered province if you like), and not distance to faction leader. Presumably, this means you can risk faction leader in battles on the frontier [I have not tested this however]. Makes "character oriented " PBMs more viable.


#3. No replay for campaign battles. No built in screenshot system. Big minus. You have to hit print-screen, then alt-tab to a graphics program and save.


#4. More character building. Generals develop retinues which include all kinds of people. FOr those of you who like to write up in a conversational style (Simon, are you reading this ?), this is a boon. Unfortunately the retinue characters have no names. Also V&V's are more numerous (almost too numerous). Also the game assigns titles to your generals if they excel in some aspect or other (I had Manius the Mighty, a 10 star general and Lucius the Honest, a 5 acumen governor. Both titles were bestowed by game engine!). Oh, BTW, you can now easily get high star generals since the same general can fight and win several battles in one turn.

#5. Less characters to track. The family tree limits the number of interesting people to follow. Which makes you attached to certain governors. Again this can add to the story.

#6. Fewer starting positions. There is only one "era" starting 270BC. There is a long and short campaign, but nothing like GA's. So I bet we will see PBMs with similar start conditions. Minor minus.

#7. Senate missions act like GA's in the middle of the conquest campaign. A good plus for PBM.

#8. More "competitive" campaign. It is not necessarily harder or easier than MTW, but you definitely stay interested longer (I am basing this on reviews, since my own campaign has not lasted that long yet). Early game is similar to MTW. The other roman factions grow quickly, and the middle game becomes a "race" for power and territory (you cannot attack them early on). So you can't elect to just sit back and while away your reign. And the last reign is of course interesting as you take on the other roman factions in a last huge war. All in all, a good plus.

#9. Diplomacy is a lot better. Negotiations can lead to interesting replies and therefore good story lines.

#10 Speeches!!. Before we had to make them up for the writeup, now they are there for us to report!!. I found many of them quite entertaining although they tend to become repetitive after a while , so I often skip them for small battles.


OK. That's all I can think of for now. I hope you all get the game soon. It's wonderful.

Afrit

[econ21]

This is very encouraging, Afrit. [The retinues did catch my eye! The assassin with the pet monkey in one screenshot seemed worthy of a story in his own right.]

The only downside so far seems to be the length of reigns - I suspect this will make PBMs even more demanding on active players than before, but also potentially increase the frustration of players waiting in the wings. 40 turns for a PBM go sounds quite long enough(esp. in the later game when there is a lot of micromanagement and big battles). If the heir is very young, it might make sense to divide their life between two or more players. I quite liked devoting a MTW PBM reign to a particular project (e.g. conquering faction X), so people could hand over after completing such a task (or a set number of Senate tasks).

Amon_Zeth, earlier on in this thread, I suggested that we start 3 campaigns. So far as I can make out, we have:

Brutii list:

Afrit
Ashen (put here as presumably Ashen would prefer 2nd on Brutii list to 3rd on Scipii?)

Scipii list:

Tricky Lady
Yakobu

Julii list:

The Emperor
Simon_Appleton
Amon_Zeth
Chimpyang (?I think he wanted to be last - would the 4th reign be about last?)

Various other folk have expressed interest, but would need to specify a faction. If I have missed anything out, let me know.

I guess the Emperor and I will get our copies of RTW on Friday; TrickyLady may be a little later; Afrit sounds like he is in a position to start thinking about starting his PBM soon.

There's no reason why people have to join these PBMs as opposed to ones on their own initiative. I just suggested these PBMs to kick us off as the people responsible for starting off each faction are reliable PBMers.

[Tricky Lady]

Well yes, there's a rather busy (non RTW ) weekend waiting for me, so even though I might get to put my hands on a copy tomorrow or Saturday morning, I doubt I will have a lot of free time to play the game yet.
But next week will be full of sleepless nights I suppose.
And I'll take a few days off too... My god I'm so pathetic.

PS. Thanks for the "report", afrit!

[Chimpyang]

Yes I will be getting it too on Firday. 4th sounds fine to me! Givews me a bit of time for practice first!

[Tricky Lady]

OK, I can confirm that I got the game. It's not installed yet, but I'm going to squeeze in a few hours of gameplay this weekend. Must be possible (first thing first, right? )
I'll keep an eye on this thread, but will probably kick off a Scipii PBM campaign on Monday or Tuesday.

[Tricky Lady]

Hi everyone,
I suppose most of us will be already RTW battle-hardened veterans after this weekend, so I'd propose to think of launching the 3 PBM campaigns.
What do you think?

Perhaps we should also agree first on a set of "rules" if any, and also look how we'll switch reigns.
Can anyone who finished a campaign yet give an idea how long reigns are?

My proposal is too play on

• Hard/hard settings (I loath the AI boosts on Expert and don't feel seasoned enough to play on Expert, and I doubt I'll ever will, lol).
• Large unit size (80 hastati etc)
• Always follow senate missions (except suicide of faction leader of course )
• .... other suggestions?

[Chimpyang]

I suggest Medium/Hard because it's only been a few days since I got the game and i've been mostly playing on easy and medium to get myself familiar with the game. I haven't yet fiddled with the unit sizes and I don't really know if it'll affect my comp. Some senate missions are just plain stupid........eg The senate asked me to get rade agreement with Britannia, who I was just about to crush. The short campaigns are just waaaaaay too short to allow any kind of interesting reigns (or many ppl to play for that matter - i finished the julli short one in 2 reigns)

[econ21]

Yes, I agree with Chimpyang about the difficulty level: medium battles, hard campaign might be best. I've changed my mind about this after seeing the rests of hastati vs hastati in experiments reported in the Colosseum - the AI seems to get a very big bonus on hard (seems to be more than one level of valour); medium seems "fair". I'm playing a medium/medium Julii campaign right now and while it is rather easy, it is still great fun. I like match-ups to be historical and it might give us more to do if we leave hard battles for the next round of PBM campaigns.

One rule I would propose for PBMs is to choose a faction heir in the "next generation" on the family tree from the faction leader - e.g. a son not a brother. This way reigns will not be too short.

TrickyLady, I would guess reigns are twice the length of MTW ones. However, against this, it may be that you accomplish less in a turn in RTW than in MTW (it is hard to traverse an entire province in a turn).

[Amon_Zeth]

I'm thinking it should be hard/hard, but I think the unit sizes should be medium, for those of us whose comps are lower-end or want other graphical effects.

[ChaosLord]

I'd like to throw my hat in for the Brutii PBM, i'm working on a Scipii campign right now so it'll be a nice change of pace. As for the difficulty level after my first test game I upped difficulty from medium/medium to hard battles/very hard campaign. I'd be willing to do medium/hard if thats what everyone else wants. I think tough games make for better accounts though, even if we get killed off. :P

[afrit]

Hi gang,
I was away on a conference for a few days, so I missed the last few posts. However, I managed to squeeze plenty of RTW playtime by skipping all the formal dinners and living on junk food in my hotel room! How about that for addiction to a game.

On a more serious note, I had already started a Brutii campaign after I abandoned my first Julii campaign when I got overpopulation problems and it became a nightmare. I was hoping to use the Brutii game for the PBM (i.e I kept good notes for the writeup). I saved the game after my first faction leader died (9 years or 18 turns) and I saved it also after 10 years. The faction heir is a brother, but I know he will live long because I continued the campaign out of curiosity (but did not keep notes for a writeup). The game was started on hard/hard. Large unit size (the default size. i.e Hastati are 80 men).

Should I go ahead and write it up and post the savegame? Is anyone interested in continuing it?

Afrit

[econ21]

Sounds good, Afrit. How manageable are the battles on hard? Hoof's experiments regarding difficulty levels in the colosseum were a little scarey.

The lists so far are:

Brutii list:

Afrit
Ashen
ChaosLord

Scipii list:

Tricky Lady
Yakobu

Julii list:

The Emperor
Simon_Appleton
Amon_Zeth
Chimpyang

I suggest Afrit sends a PM to Ashen to see if he wants the next reign and one to ChaosLord as a wake up call. It would be good to have a separate thread for Brutii write-ups only. Whether you want to have an additional thread for Brutii logistics or just keep it here is up to you, Afrit.

[afrit]

One rule I would propose for PBMs is to choose a faction heir in the "next generation" on the family tree from the faction leader - e.g. a son not a brother. This way reigns will not be too short.
TrickyLady, I would guess reigns are twice the length of MTW ones. However, against this, it may be that you accomplish less in a turn in RTW than in MTW (it is hard to traverse an entire province in a turn).

Simon, I really feel we should seriously reconsider the time frame of "reigns" with Rome. I think we should go for a decade (20 turns) or 2 decades (40 turns) per player as opposed to a faction leader reign. Compared to MTW, the faction leader is less important. He does not father all the princes. So his command ranking has not much to do with new generals. The distance to provinces is related to the capital, not the king. And if you get a reign of 30+ years you would be playing for so long, people will forget about the PBM .

I found that although you accomplish less per turn in RTW than MTW (like you said), it still takes just as long to play a turn, if not longer. I took me a LOT of time to get the Brutii to 20 provinces. Usually that much play time finishes an MTW campaign for me. In fact, I am starting to have doubts I will ever finish an imperial campaign ..Which means it is time to get back to conquering those haughty Greeks
Just my humbe opinion.

Afrit

[afrit]

The lists so far are:

Brutii list:

Afrit
Ashen
ChaosLord

Scipii list:

Tricky Lady
Yakobu

Julii list:

The Emperor
Simon_Appleton
Amon_Zeth
Chimpyang

I suggest Afrit sends a PM to Ashen to see if he wants the next reign and one to ChaosLord as a wake up call. It would be good to have a separate thread for Brutii write-ups only. Whether you want to have an additional thread for Brutii logistics or just keep it here is up to you, Afrit.

THanks Simon. I did not realize you had already replied before I posted my other reply to your other post. I'll go ahead and PM Ashen and ChaosLord.

Afrit

[afrit]

Simon,
I just realized that I will NOT have internet access on the 5-day vacation that I start tomorrow. (and no I can;t take my PC with me, so no RTW for 5 days )

Do you mind "shepherding" the PBM while I'm gone if issues come up? I'll go ahead now and write it up, then start a new thread "Rise of the Brutii" for writeups and PM the pother players.

Thank you.
Afrit

PS: For this PBM, I guess we will play it by "reign" in the traditional sense of faction leader death ends the turn.

[econ21]

Yes, no problem, Afrit. I will keep an eye on the Brutii PBM.

I agree with you we need to think about length. I am also finding the turns to be rather long to play - the battles are quicker, but there seem to be more of them and, as Romans, you tend to be more active in campaigning each turn than you often were in MTW.

10 years seems a reasonable length. 20 turns is more than enough to accomplish something of note. The lack of a natural break would make story writing a little harder, but it may be fun in a "one word story" kind of way.

If the Emperor and TrickyLady want to experiment with a different length, that would be fine too.

[YAKOBU]

Hi

I've not managed to get much playtime in so far in the week I've had RTW but should manage more this weekend. I have found the game to be quite slow moving and my slow cursor on the strategy map isn't helping. A 10 year reign sounds fair on the Scipii campaign if Tricky Lady is happy with that?

Tricky Lady - Do you want to start it off this weekend while I get some overdue practice in? I'll leave the difficulty level choice in your capable hands!

[Tricky Lady]

well, after playing this game for about a week now, and gradually experiencing the same bugs as many others already posted in the threads dedicated to this subject, I have a feeling not to launch a PBM until there's a patch yet? I suppose the first patch will be released in two or three weeks so perhaps we can put these PBMs a bit on hold until the most fatal bugs are removed or patched?
I don't want to start a PBM now and have to abruptly leave it in only a few weeks time due to a bug or due to the fact that the patch has been released an no-one who's right in his/her mind wants to play the unpatched game anymore...

Any opinions?

If enough people don't agree, and sign up for the Scipii PBM, I'll be most happy to kick this PBM off this weekend

[econ21]

What bugs are you experiencing, TrickyLady? I'm finding it remarkably polished and certainly nothing that threatens to be show stopping.

There is an MP patch out now, but I would not wait for a substantive SP one. CA's record on this is rather poor, IMO. Based on STW and MTW, we will probably wait months for one and one alone, maybe getting a second with an expansion.

[Tricky Lady]

Well, I've had a few bugged savegames already (one of which forced me to give up on a well-running Julii campaign ), and in my opinion sending good savegames around is an essential part of the PBM gameplay.

But this may well be related to some specific PC issues (it is not said that this is a true RTW bug).

I'll see. I'll try to play my "new" Julii campaign a few generations further and check how well this savegame is doing. If all is OK I might as well kick off the PBM then.

[Tamur]

Errr... what's a PBM? *dodges tomatos* Whatever it is, it looks like fun.

[afrit]

@Tamur
just kidding!
Welcome to PBMs, Tamur

PBM stands for play by mail . It is a campaign played by several players taking turns . Generally a player starts it, then after playing a defined period, posts a save game to the .org and writes some form of summary of the "reign". The next player downloads the save game and resumes it. Again posting some form of write up.

In MTW, each player typically played the duration of the reign of a single King. (see my thread List of Active PBMs). In RTW, there is a movement towards playing a decade (20 turns), because a single faction leader reign can be rather long.

I hope you would join one of the three Roman PBMs currently active. Your comprehensive post on diplomacy indicates you would like to author some interesting writeups :-)

welcome again

Afrit

[Tamur]

Thanks for the explanation, afrit! So, err, where do I sign up to give this a go? From this thread it looks like a matter of raising my hand and saying, "here, here"...? Anyway, I'd be happy to be in on one of the Roman PBMs.

I've had great fun reading all the writeups. There are some great writers and exciting campaign histories in here!

[econ21]

Tamur, welcome onboard. You just have to indicate which PBM you want to join - there are the 3 Roman factions and a Parthian one all starting. Probably best to post in one of the four threads dedicated to them.