Playing Rome

[Marcus Maxentius]

How do the senate missions work in that? Or did they get rid of them? I see the standard game as being a unified rome with three armies under different leaders adding to the strength of Rome. That's how I roleplay it. There's a power struggle and each one secretly tries to stunt the progress of the other. One army quashes his rivals and marches into Rome to take power. The way they did it may be inaccurate, but more accurate to me than what I've heard of RTR.

Rome wasn't unified in the sense, that it thought and acted as one mind. Individual Senators used the bureacracy for their own agendas and the Senate itself tried to control the elected officers actions and the plebs. The plebs wanted to take control away from the senate and some Senators would often side with the plebs, though only to gain power over rival senators. Even a foreign king llike Jugartha, tried to bribe senators into passing laws that would keep him in power.

Then you have the generals...As the republic fell apart , the two consuls and indeed the other elected officers, often disagreed and would backstab(literal for Caesar) each other to get they're way. Examples being Cato Vs the Scipios, Gracchus vs.The Senate, Marius vs Sulla. Everything that happened in Rome, did not originate from the Senate. Marius and Gracchus were both plebs by birth and initiated the Marian Reforms. One was a consul and the other a Tribune.

The most famous being the triumverate(like the three roman factions)of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. Each had large amounts of provinces under their control. Each wanted to destroy the other, but came together, if only to buy time to take the other out. Caesar of course came out on top. Most famously, was Caesar being diplomatic and telling him he could attack the Parthians and win.

Now the armies. It makes sense to have armies separate from the senate's army. The senate army is there to protect the people of rome(those born in the city were considered true roman citizens during the age of the kings and republic). They're there also to keep out the Roman Army who was never allowed inside the gates to prevent a consul from becoming a king.(edit. This was only after Sulla. Bad idea to write about history when too emotional) Hence, in the game you see the senate's armies patrolling the capital and never doing much conqurering. The downside of not having an army inside is that it gets taken over easily. But if the AI were made more awake, taking rome would be more of a challenge.

Sorry for the rant, but I've had these ideas for awhile. For the time being, I'm not willing to fix some inaccuracies, while including new inaccuracies.