Investigation of Senate missions

[therother]

This thread, opened at katank's request, is for investigating all facets of Senate missions, which are detailed in descr_senate.txt. CA seems to believe that this is, "simple enough", so hopefully this'll be a straightforward topic. I'll believe it when I see it!

[katank]

Thanks for opening the topic.

The types of Senate missions seem well spelled out.

I'm just wondering if we know definitive patterns about them etc?

I think the first missions are all hard coded and generate 5,000 denariii for Apollonia, Segesta, and Syracuse respectively.

Later on, it's harder to say it seems.

Also, what units are rewarded and with what probabilities?

Best unit you can build rewards often generates tons of triremes that are useless to me since I rarely try to outdo the insane naval AI anyhow. I might also get wardogs which I appreciate but just due to my playing style. What other units are generated by those?

Similarly, for minor and major exotic units, which are minor and which are major. Barbarian cav are minor but Sarmatians are major. Does this depend upon stats? Also, merc war elephants are probably my most sought after ones along with first cohorts but how often do they occur?

Do rewards tend to occur with mission types? Major exotic with blockade or sacking city, money for establishing diplomatic ties, etc.?

I think all missions are at least possible within the time allotment. Blockade missions not reachable by nearest ship can often be accomplished by an army blocking the port etc.

Have anyone ran across truly impossible missions? Does difficult relate to relative standing with people and senate? Does accomplishing them faster get you more favor? I think I managed 10 popularity with Senate and people at the same in my Scipii campaign by completing every mission ASAP but what are other people's experience?

Thank you all in advance and I look forward to your responses.

[RollingWave]

The units i have gotten from mission are most often barbarian mercenaries
:(, perhapes it's because of lower difficult setting, i can't recall ever gettting anything decent from senate missions.

Also the difficulty seem to raise more if you keep succeeding while it drops back if you fail one or two, for example the first one i failed big time was when the senate want me to take that city west of Alexendria ... which is basically in the middle of nowhere and requires a army to be transported from Greece, I did have Alexandria at that time but it was not possible to sent a expedition from ther without losing the city instantly.... then they ask me to take memphis... again same problem.. except now that alexandria is devastated by plague making it even more impossible. Afterward the difficulty dropped quiet a bit back to blockades missions again.

[Oaty]

Well my very first game playing as the Julii I quite often got simple missions. I held over half to all of the offices throughout most of the game. With my high popularity and completing missions succesfully quite often the mission was to take the city I have under siege. I do'nt know if the first game is triggered to be in your favour or not(normal normal).

The worst missions for Julii are of course blockading Numatia and Londinum. When first starting the war it seems the senate likes to start off with blockading then take some territory and them bleed them into submission by blockading them again and assigns you to make them a protectorate. That seems to be the basis.

Although the protectorate missions are bit ugly and should only be assigned if you are directly involved at war with them. Because it does not seem the A.I. associates the Roman faction as one big faction. So when Brutii beat up Dacia and you are Scipii or Julii because you were of no threat to them or can be of very little threat to them it is impossible to get them to accept terms.

Julii, Senates priotity (segesta and Caralis are givens). Own the coastal ring in the Northwest of the med starting with Narbo Martius, Massilla Osca then Carthago Nova. That seems to be the most common order after that it seems to be Random for the Julii.

So basically the Senate almost gives priority to a coastal town before a landlocked town.

[katank]

I've just had a pretty fun Brutii campaign. In 262, my popularity with the Senate hit 10 and I got a merc war elephant.

It appears that you also get 5000 denarii for "efforts in expanding the empire" and then no more Senate missions when your popularity is maxed out.

Anyone else can confirm this?

[Oaty]

It appears that you also get 5000 denarii for "efforts in expanding the empire" and then no more Senate missions when your popularity is maxed out.

I believe it has more to do with your treasury on cash rewards. If I can remember correctly I got a cash reward for Thermyska but I had an ugly treasury. And if you can take thermyska your pretty well off.

Also campaign difficulty plays a huge role on senate missions. Patavium is a hard city to take early on and apparently on very hard difficulty Patavium will be your first Gaul mission as Julii. Plus those stinkin gauls sucked up the mercanaries.

[The Stranger]

I've just had a pretty fun Brutii campaign. In 262, my popularity with the Senate hit 10 and I got a merc war elephant.

It appears that you also get 5000 denarii for "efforts in expanding the empire" and then no more Senate missions when your popularity is maxed out.

Anyone else can confirm this?

yeah had it too, looks like the 1000 fl you get from the pope. though i don't always get 5000, somethimes also just 100 denari

[Caius]

I've just had a pretty fun Brutii campaign. In 262, my popularity with the Senate hit 10 and I got a merc war elephant.

How you can do it?

Can anyone explain me why i never have a leader suicide?

[Avicenna]

Have anyone ran across truly impossible missions? Does difficult relate to relative standing with people and senate? Does accomplishing them faster get you more favor?

My first impossible mission I think was blockading Londonium: my nearest fleet was at the south of Spain, and I had four turns only: 3 for moving and I have to blockade it for one turn.

I think a higher standing should have no difference in mission difficulty. The only difficult thing is that once your Empire gets larger, the senate can order you to take a settlement which is near any of your fronts, making them more difficult to accomplish.

Accomplishing them faster can gain or lose favour: you get more missions in the same length of time, so potentially you could lose more or gain more favour, depending on whether you bother to do all the missions.

[Severous]

Ive just had two missions at the same time.

RTW V1.5 H/H Brutii campaign. No mods.

1) Capture Mallissa - from Gaul
2) Recapture Mediolanum - Rebeled from Brutii back to Gaul

The first mission reward was a couple of minor exotic units (Nubidian Cavalry) and the second was 10,000. When I completed the second mission first I did not get another mission. The turn I completed the first mission also became the turn I lost Mediolanum again. The next mission was recapture Mediolanum...again.

Only other time Ive had two concurrent missions was when the senate demaded I remove my troops from trespass on an allies territory. Didnt get any reward for achieving that mission..wouldnt that be a nice little earner if it did.

[Vacuity]

I read the entire thread and no-one seems to have noticed this info previously, so my apologies if I am teaching to the enlightened. Also it's a very long time since I played a Roman faction in the Imperial Campaign, so my memories of senate mission descriptions in-game are very fuzzy.

It seems to me that a lot of the info needed is contained in the file [game install]\Data\descr_senate.txt, the problem is making sense of it and filling in the gaps.


From the comments it appears there is a difference between the senate generating a "random mission" and "other missions".
This would indicate to me that the Senate generates some missions according to specific events in-game (my suspicions on this would be events like being ordered to re-capture cities, remove forces from allies' territory, et cetera, but quite possibly there are other, more subtle things here). While any mission remains active you will not get random missions generated. When there are no current missions then there is a percentage chance of a random mission being assigned, un-modded this appears to be a 15% chance per turn. It might be interesting to mod this figure to 100% and 0% just to make sure it really works this way.


Next point of interest are the comments about Pleasure/Displeasure duration. By default these variables are both set to 10 turns (5 years). I am not too sure what effect these variables have directly on the game as they don't seem to logically be likely to impact on the "senate popularity" value you see in the Senate tab of your faction overview. If the senate liked you more for only a few turns because you completed a mission then it seems likely that instead of going up and up you would reach a threshold maximum as soon as you had completed 10 missions in 10 turns and be unlikely to go up further (and very likely go down). If it worked that way then it's be (theoretically) possible to reach maximum popularity with the senate within 10 turns of starting a new campaign. Far more likely (to me) is that these affect the odds of getting assigned senate offices after you get the specific reward (I forget the exact wording) which talks about making you more popular with the senate, or more likely to get senate offices (sorry, I really cannot remember the wording: blame prolonged play in BI, and with Eastern factions). As senate offices are held for 8 turns (see below) each this means that such mission rewards could have an effect over 2 sets of title-elections and could be modded to last longer (or shorter), though it'd be tough to test these values.


Next up are the coefficients on Senate attitude, and frankly this is where I start getting lost. The first comment on this helpfully states "The attitude coefficients are as in the algorithm documentation" which means sweet f-a to me. The 4 coefficients and their original values are
turn_coefficient 200
strength_coefficient 25
relative_strength_coefficient 25
combined_strength_coefficient 25

I'd guess that combined_strength_coefficient is likely to be affecting some measured value of (i) the overall strength of either *all* the Roman factions together, or (ii) the overall strength of all roman factions except yours, or (iii) the combined strength of your faction + the Senate.

relative_strength_coefficient seems likely to be affecting some measured value of (i) your strength relative to the other roman factions, or (ii) your strength relative to the "rest of the world", or (iii) total roman strength compared to the rest of the world.

strength_coefficient seems likely to be affecting some measured value of your own strength.

I wouldn't care to seriously postulate at this point what turn_coefficient is for.

In this way you could construct an equation to measure each Roman faction's current senate standing by measuring values for the strength of the faction, how strong it is compared to the roman empire as a whole and how strong Rome is as a whole compared to the whole world. Again, modding these numbers may provide better indications as to what's going on.
Suggestions for the turn_coefficient are also welcome, as the only obvious idea I have is that each Roman faction gets progressively more (or less) popular as the campaign progresses just by still existing.


Next up we have values for Senate attitude boundaries:

attitude_boundary_1 30000
attitude_boundary_2 60000
attitude_boundary_3 90000
attitude_boundary_4 120000
attitude_boundary_5 150000
attitude_boundary_6 180000

I'd guess that this is used for comparing the figures you get out of the equation using the attitude coefficients to tell the game how the Senate should treat each Roman faction. I'd also assume that higher is better, and this could be tested easily enough by adjusting the values and seeing the in-game effect. Note that there are *6* boundaries and so presumably *7* states of senate attitude (take a piece of string and make 6 cuts through it to see what I mean). This value is important later.


Next up are the Senatorial offices, I know that this section is not directly relevant to the subject here, but I couldn't find a topic on this subject in this forum, I'll enclose this section in ***** lines to make it easy to skip.

**************************************************
(I have slightly tidied the formatting to make it easier to read):

;Title
;Quantity ; How many hold this office at any one time
;Duration ; Duration of tenure (turns)
;Settings ; Number of times office can be held - 0 implies unlimited
;Restrictions ; What restricts office being taken
; not_consecutively ; Can not be re-elected while in office
; quaestor_tenure ; Must have held office as quaestor
; aedile_tenure ; aedile
; praetor_tenure ; praetor
; consul_tenure ; tenure
;End_restrictions
;Senate_benefits ; The crony-perks of the office
; no_censor_suicide ; Censor investigation will not result in your suicide
; censor_immunity ; You will avoid investigation by the censor
;End_senate_benefits
;End

If we look at the example of the Consul office:

Consul
Rank 40
Quantity 1
Duration 8
Sittings 0
Restrictions
not_consecutively
praetor_tenure
End_restrictions
Senate_benefits
no_censor_suicide
End_senate_benefits
End

The tenure restrictions we already know about: you need to be a Quaestor before you can be an Aedile, an Aedile before a Praetor, et cetera. The Senate_benefits also tells us what we already pretty much know from playing the game.

Interestingly it seems that it would be possible to mod:
(a) the length of time senate offices are held for
(b) the number of people who can hold each office concurrently
(c) how often an office can be held by any character
(d) what senate benefits a character receives from the position
and (e) adjust whether characters can get re-elected for their current position or not.
Remembering, of course, that we seem to be able to modify how long your faction gets bonuses for qualifying for offices from certain missions it would be possible to significantly alter the way offices get dealt with.

What I don't get here is why there is a *value* for the Rank. It goes up by 10 for each increasing rank (10 for Quaestor, 60 for Pontifex Maximus), but why is there an integer value here? Why multiples of 10, rather than just 1 through 6? Suggestions, please.

**************************************************

Then we get to the missions section, and it gets tougher to interpret the data. First we appear to have some data relating to rewards and penalties

; Fines are expressed as percentages of current annual income
major_fine 10
moderate_fine 5
minor_fine 1

; Rewards are expressed as direct denari payments
major_reward 10000
moderate_reward 5000
minor_reward 1000

Easy enough to understand what it means, but the formatting of this section confuses me. Also seems easy enough to mod these values. Notably missing here is any data regarding non-financial rewards, like gifted units which are not mentioned anywhere in this file.

Next in this section appear to be the actual missions. Rather than reproduce the file verbatim I copy across the mission titles only and my guess as to the meaning in [] (where necessary).

Help_Player [where the senate gives you a present because they like you]
Demand_Suicide
Attack_Outlaw_Faction [you have to attack a Roman faction the senate dislikes]
Assassinate
Break_Alliance
Cease_Hostilities
Declare_War
Give_Back_City
Exact_Tribute
Subjugate [probably getting a protectorate]
Broker_Peace
Make_Trade_Agreement
Get_Map_Info
Appease [Not certain what this one would be]
Make_Alliance
Give_Cash
Annex_City [not sure of the difference between this and the Take_City options below]
Blockade_Port
Capture_Rebel_City
Destroy_Rebel_City
Take_City

With a format example using the last mission:

Take_City
max_region_traversal 3
Duration 10
-3 E p3
-3 M p2
-3 D p2
-2 E p3
-2 M p2
-2 D p1
-1 E p2
-1 M p1
-1 D r1
0 E r1
0 M r1
0 D r1
1 E r1
1 M r1
1 D r2
2 E r1
2 M r2
2 D r3
3 E r2
3 M r3
3 D r3
End

take_city_lower_boundary 0.6
take_city_higher_boundary 0.8


The format appears to be:
___________________________________________________
Mission_name
Additional_info
Duration How many turns allowed for completion
A penalty/reward matrix
End

Further_info

___________________________________________________


There is all sorts of interesting stuff in here.
Each mission seems to have a preset number of turns within which the mission must be completed. For Help_Player it is 0, you get given the money and the mission ends. For most other missions it is 10 (5 years) (look through the file for the exceptions).

Certain other missions have additional values describing them which I'll describe here:

For the Assassinate mission you have the Additional_info lines
difficulty_boundaries_0 75
difficulty_boundaries_1 60
difficulty_boundaries_2 40
I have no idea what these mean, but I'd guess they help ensure you only get assassinate missions when you have a good enough assassin near a suitable target...

For the Break_Alliance, Cease_Hostilities and Declare_War missions you have an Additional_info line saying
reissue_delay_in_turns 20
which I assume means that after this mission has been issued (or after it has been completed: would need to be tested to see which is true) this specific mission cannot be issued again for 20 turns.

The Destroy_Rebel_City and Take_City missions are unique as they appear to have two additional lines associated with each *after* the End line of each mission. Again, I don't actually know what effect these lines have in-game.

Take_City has the Additional_info line saying
max_region_traversal 3
which I suspect means that you're only going to get told to take cities within 3 regions of one of your armies? I am not really too sure how this works in practice though, as I am sure I remember being told to take cities separated from my armies by sea (Carthage, for example). It is a long time since I played as a Roman faction though.

The final point of discussion in this post is the penalty/reward matrix:

E, M and D probably refer to Easy, Medium and Difficult, (the hint is in the comment at the beginning of the file saying "Penalties and rewards are marked next to the difficulty") and presumably these are pegged to certain campaign difficulty levels. This would indicate that the reward on offer might vary according to what difficulty level you're playing at. Now remember that ages ago I mentioned that there were *7* states of senate attitude? Right, well, my guess is that this translates into the matrix as the -3,-2,-1,0,1,2,3 values in the matrix. The final part of the matrix is the p3,p2,p1,r1,r2,r3,Outlaw column which seems to clearly correlate to 3 levels of Penalty and 3 levels of Reward, + a special value of Outlaw for certain missions.

For some missions there are only values for E and M, or even E only. Presumably the rewards on offer and and penalties threatened are going to be the same no matter which difficulty level you're playing at (M and H = M for the former, E, M and H = E for the latter).

There is a clear correlation in the matrixes that as the senate likes you less you are going to get more penalties offered and fewer rewards, and in some missions you might be threatened with being outlawed, rather than just an ordinary punishment.
There is also (surprisingly to me) a clear correlation that on the easier difficulty levels the Senate is harsher; offering lower rewards and harsher punishments at equivalent levels of senate attitude. I would guess that this is because as other factors in the game are made easier, the missions are easier to achieve, but it's a very interesting note.


This is about all I was able to make sense of from this file without fiddling with the values. Hope it helps someone.

Vac

[Severous]

Thats some post Vacuity.

Im playing my first Brutii campaign. On RTW V1.5 H/H. Previously I played Julii on M/M

In my Brutii campaign Ive kept detailed notes for 20 years.
I do not look at the game files, nor have I modded it. My observations as follows.

How many missions at a time
I have one mission at a time. As soon as it is complete the senate gives me a new one (at end of turn).

There have been two exceptions:
- When I trespassed on an ally region. 2 turns to get off.
- When a previously captured city rebelled. 10 turns to recapture it.

That second exception is occuring regulary. I capture Gaul cities in accordance with Senate missions then withdraw leaving no garrison and high taxes in place. It rebels and I get a recapture mission.

If I complete a regular senate mission and still have a 'recapture' mission outstanding I will not get another regular mission. As soon as the recapture is complete I will get another mission if I dont already have one.

Recapture rewards have been 'richly rewarded' 10,000 (always) or two minor exotic units (Scorpions last time)

Mission duration.
- Capture towns = 10 turns.
- Recapture towns = 10 turns.
- Blockade town = 5 turns.
- Get off Ally land = 2 turns

Senate Rating
I previously worked on the basis that you gain favour with the Senate for completing missions. But I cannot say this is for sure and now I doubt it. My Senate rating reached 10 in 259BC..10 years in. Its been dropping back to 7 despite completing missions. I suspect because my strength relative to other Romans is now getting very high.

Ive not failed any mission in the Brutii campaign and dont recall anything bad in the Julii campaign when I failed.

Senatorial Offices
I recall holding lots of offices as Julii when on M/M. But as Brutii on H/H ive not had one single office. Ive been good..doing missions. My Govenors have clocked up some good traits and plenty of things like '+10% with senate'. So im really in the dark about whats going on in the senate. Maybe I have to send leaders near Rome ?

[Ozzfest20]

The senate missions are for Rome to expand in historical fashion.

[455trt43trg]

Sometimes I seem to have very long times with out mission (years).
Is this normal?

[César Victor]

Try waiting for something big to happen. They won't ask you to take a town for the hell of it, you don't need to Senators ordering you to do that. If you lose a town to rebels or the Senate falls out of favour with another nation, they may ask you to attack them/blockade port.

[Lanemerkel1]

This thread, opened at katank's request, is for investigating all facets of Senate missions, which are detailed in descr_senate.txt. CA seems to believe that this is, "simple enough", so hopefully this'll be a straightforward topic. I'll believe it when I see it!

I already no why the senate sends you out on missions....


to spread your forces to far apart so that when the time to turn against you comes they have the smallest resistance possible.

[WarHawk1953]

While Playing the Julii on med/med mode: Blockade missions. Once you have built the other port at Airminum and have ships bulit the Senate likes to send you on blockade missions to: Sparta, Corinth and Thermon.

[Severous]

I liked to follow Senate missions in my just finished Julii campaign. The game always seemed to adjust the missions to the situation at the time.

Most annoying mission. Blockade Corinth. But couldnt get there because a Brutii allied ship accidentally blocked the narrow sea space that is the only sea access to Corinth.

[Severous]

Test of RTW V1.5 Brutii Senate Mission (H/H difficuly)

I saw an unanswered question/observation above. So did some testing to support my first ever Brutii campaign.

The first Senate mission for Brutii is capture Apollonia. With ships, General, Equites, Hastati and Velites in range this is an easy mission. Reward 5000.

Purpose of the test was confirm
- if first mission was always the same
- if reward varied in amount offered
- if reward varied due to time taken to complete the mission

6 tests. Restart campaign from the start for each test.
- Apollonia is always the mission
- 5000 always the offerred reward
- 5000 paid irrespective of how many turns I took. (Immediate and through to 2.5 years)

There is benefit in performing missions faster. You are likely to get another one. Why do 1 mission in a year when you could do 2.

[gardibolt]

The first mission for Julii is always capture Segesta, but in my testing I occasionally get 10,000d instead of 5,000d. I don't see any apparent reason for the distinction.