Re-unification – an epic, themed WRE PBM

**econ21** · 01-24-2006, 12:11

********************EDIT: THE SHORT VERSION *****************************

Game settings: VH campaign, M battles. Large units. Timer on. Patched to 1.6. Bugfixer 3.02.
Optional setting: brigand_spawn_value 50 pirate_spawn_value 60 [1]

House rules

1. The campaign ends when we conquer all starting WRE and ERE provinces[2], plus Tingi (43 target provinces). The game will award victory sooner (34 provinces), so choose to play on. Game ends in Summer 476 AD though.
2. Non-target provinces cannot be garrisoned at the end of a turn.
3. Target provinces cannot be enslaved or exterminated.
4. The following factions should not be eliminated: Celts, Berbers, Allemanni, Saxons. But if their last province is a target one, they are fair game.
5. Only full strength units, first cohorts or ships can be retrained.
6. The only buildings in target provinces which may be demolished are religious ones.
7. Play a full reign and try to choose a faction heir in his 50s, where possible following the hereditary principle.

The Order of Play
(Apologies for bumping people down one)
1. Simon Appleton
2. Mount Suribachi
3. TinCow
4. Dutch_guy
5. Zomby_Woof
6. Simon Appleton
Tricky_Lady (TBC)
The Emperor (TBC)

Explanatory Notes:
[1]Edit the file descr_strat.txt in:
C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War\bi\data\world\maps\campaign\barbarian_invasion
to change "brigand_spawn_value" to "50" and that for pirates to 60.
This will reduce the spawn of rebels and pirates to 20% of the original version.
If individual players don't want to do this, they don't need to. But I hate fighting smelly rebels.

[2]WRE provinces: Eburacum, Londinium, Tarraco, Salamantica, Carthago Nova, Corduba, Carthage, Lepcis Magna, Burdigala, Avaricum. Samarobriva, Arles, Massila, Colonia Agrippina, Augusta Treverorum, Augusta Vindelicorum, Mediolanium, Ravenna, Rome, Tarentum, Syracuse, Caralis, Carnuntum, Aquincum, Salona
ERE provinces: Thessalonica, Sirmium, Constantinople, Ephesus, Ancrya, Caesarea, Tarsus, Sinope, Antioch, Sidon, Philadelphaea, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Cyrene.
Tingi is the Berber capital and used to be part of the Empire; we want it back.

********************EDIT: WHAT FOLLOWS IS OLDER INFORMATION***************

Anyone want to play in an epic story-heavy WRE BI PBM? The emphasis will be on trying to produce good write-ups rather than blitz the game. Ideally, I’d like the thing to run close to the maximum length of a BI campaign (100 years?).

Anyone can sign up, but it is not necessarily first come, first served – I will oversee the campaign and may give priority to those who have produced good write-ups in the past. If people do not take up their reigns promptly, they may lose their position in the ranking in order to keep the show on the road.

Here are some suggested rules:

1) Play a full reign: To allow people to get into character, players will play for the entire reign of an Emperor. To stop this being too onerous and to allow more players to participate, I propose players ensure the faction heir is in his 50’s when the faction leader dies. To this end, players may want to save every turn so they can reload their last turn and chose a new heir if the designated one was too young or too old when the Emperor dies.
2) Have fun!: Players are encouraged to role-play the game and exploit story-telling opportunities. They need not always write from the perspective of the Emperor – they could follow a specific general who catches their eye or even an ancillary. They could get their generals to do something quixotic if it is in character for that general (or seems like fun). But they should not to leave successor players in very difficult situations (e.g. by disbanding the entire army or withdrawing entirely to Britain etc) and should work towards the general theme of the campaign, re-unification.
3) Re-unification: The overall theme of the campaign will be re-unification of the Roman Empire. To this end, players should aim to conquer all the ERE starting provinces and hold every last one of their starting WRE provinces. I am not sure if holding all WRE and ERE provinces alone is sufficient for a WRE victory, but it is close. I will check later on and produce a specific list of the provinces needed to meet WRE victory conditions.
4) Respect the frontier: As a corollary of the re-unification theme, players are not to try to hold any provinces that were not originally parts of the WRE or ERE. They may pillage them, but should not leave a garrison there. The idea here is to work within the frontiers of the Empire. Historically, there were presumably reasons for the frontiers being where they were – logistics, guerilla warfare etc. – and a WRE campaign that is won by just picking up some weak barbarian provinces would be too short to get an epic PBM going (someone won in 380AD on VH/VH).
5) Friends, Romans, countrymen!: Players should not exterminate any towns that start under Roman rule (WRE or ERE). The theme is re-unification, not fratricide. Players may exterminate barbarian towns, but may not hold them. Even these exterminations should be done sparingly, for role-playing reasons (e.g. to avenge the loss of a city or army) – not as a quick exploit to pre-empt the AI building up its armies or to get some easy money.
6) Don't kick the underdogs: Players should not wipe out the weak non-horde barbarian factions – IIRC, Celts, Berbers, Allemanni and Saxons. This is to better simulate the ever-present “frontier” and the threats posed by smaller tribes neighbouring Rome.
7) No Vandals here!: To try to keep the economy tight, players should not disband any buildings for cash. They may freely dismantle religious buildings in order to manage religious discontent or convert populations to a favoured faith.
8) No dirty peasants: No peasant units may be recruited or retained. They are too cheap as garrisons and anyway, that is what the limitanei and foederati were for.
9) Game settings: The campaign will be on VH campaign, M battles. Large units. Timer on. Patched to 1.6. I think we should probably adjust the settings to reduce the rate of spawn of rebels and pirates, as they are tedious to fight – I’ll look into this.

List of players (in no particular order):

Simon Appleton
TinCow
Mount Suribachi? (TBC)
The Emperor? (TBC)
Dutch_Guy? (TBC)
Tricky_Lady? (TBC)

Please post if you would like to play and also give a preference for your order in the list of reigns (first turn, early, mid-game, end-game).

I think TinCow is happy to go second. I am happy to go first, but someone else might enjoy that too – the first few turns of WRE are very tense and fun, especially under the above rules.

We all have real lives to attend to, but ideally I’d like people to play out their reigns within a week of coronation and to post write-ups at most a few days later. If they cannot do that, they should ask for a later reign and let someone else take their place.

Any volunteers?

**TinCow** · 01-24-2006, 16:16

As mentioned, I'm definitely in. A few comments:

1) What is our policy on enslavement? I would say forbid that in Roman settlements as well unless there is an extremely good storytelling/roleplaying reason for it. Part of the reason for the no extermination, no building destruction, no abandoning provinces and no peasant garrisons is to make the game harder in addition to more entertaining and realistic. I think heavily restricting enslavement of fellow Romans would apply here as well.

2) Would we be allowed to engineer defeats? Part of the problem with many PBMs (and pretty much any TW campaign really) is that we never lose. Frankly, we've all played this game so much that we're damn hard to beat, even when outnumbered 4 to 1 and have inferior troops. It might be exciting to intentionally fight a few major battles badly. For instance, if an emperor got too old and it fit his character, it might be fun to have him die and lose a massive army in a major blunder. This could leave the empire vulnerable, provide excitement in the story and provide a challenge for the next player who would have to deal with the immediate aftermath. Late Roman history was certainly not an unending string of victories; I think ours shouldn't be either. That said, I wouldn't want such things to be clichéd or to have every emperor die on a spear.

3) Similar to the above, can we intentionally cause religious chaos if it fits? Say most of the empire is Christian, but for whatever reason a player is given a Pagan emperor who is very fervent in his beliefs; would it be acceptible for him to try to reconvert some provinces even if we all knew it would cause internal problems and revolt? I could see an emperor like this spending his entire reign just fighting rebellions over his Pagan reconversion. I would love to read about something like that.

4) Heirs. While I agree with choosing someone who is in their 50s to make the reigns keep revolving, I think we shouldn't just pick new heirs at random. Unless the Emperor has a very good reason for doing so (or if his sons are all in their 20s), I think we should try to stick to hereditary rule. Even in those circumstances, I would say you MUST pick the closest relative to the emperor who is in the proper age catagory. This would allow people to play reigns of very bad emperors in addition to the military and economic geniuses. Since so much of the Roman drama came from the mix of good and bad emperors, I think this would be a positive move. We could use a ranking system as follows to make it easy for people to choose which person inherits. An example would be:
1 - 50 to 59 son
2 - 50 to 59 grandson
3 - 50 to 59 brother
4 - 50 to 59 nephew
5 - 45 to 50 son
6 - 45 to 50 grandson
7 - 45 to 50 brother
8 - 45 to 50 nephew

Under no circumstances would a someone be allowed to inherit if they had been adopted into the family or married into the family unless there was an extremely good storyline reason for doing so. An example would be an extremely religious Christian emperor whose legitimate heirs are all Pagan, and a major battle is won against a pagan horde by another fervent Christian who is then adopted.

I guess the majority of what I'm interested in is just making an interesting history. We need to actively struggle with this and while the rules will by no means make this easy, I think a few more realistic aspects would help. If we want to make it really hard would could even forbid retraining.

**econ21** · 01-24-2006, 16:30

All good suggestions, TinCow, I agree.

On (1) "No enslavement" is within the spirit of the "no extermination" rule, so yes, I agree with that.

On (2) and (3), I think they go under the heading of my "have fun" rule. If there is a story-based reason for doing something that has adverse consequences, then fine. The only caveat is don't leave something too horrible for the next player to sort out (we had that once in a MTW campaign - I think it was England and we had got to the steppes to face the Huns, then a player withdrew all armies to the British Isles, so we lost the Empire in wave of rebellions - it sucked the life right out of that PBM).

On (4), I was hoping for some input on how we should choose heirs and your thoughts on this are good. Are they currently chosen by the game on hereditary principles? Regardless, it does sound like the best way to go about choosing the heir, unless there is a good story-based reason to deviate as you say. Hopefully, the hereditary principle will tend give heirs of the right age but I have not paid much attention to it in the past to confirm this.

I'll give other people a chance to make further suggestions and then revise the rules to take on board these great comments.

**Dutch_guy** · 01-24-2006, 16:44

1) Play a full reign: To allow people to get into character, players will play for the entire reign of an Emperor. To stop this being too onerous and to allow more players to participate, I propose players ensure the faction heir is in his 50’s when the faction leader dies. To this end, players may want to save every turn so they can reload their last turn and chose a new heir if the designated one was too young or too old when the Emperor dies.

This sounds good and as the title says : Epic.

2) Have fun!: Players are encouraged to role-play the game and exploit story-telling opportunities. They need not always write from the perspective of the Emperor – they could follow a specific general who catches their eye or even an ancillary. They could get their generals to do something quixotic if it is in character for that general (or seems like fun). But they should not to leave successor players in very difficult situations (e.g. by disbanding the entire army or withdrawing entirely to Britain etc) and should work towards the general theme of the campaign, re-unification.

agreed.

3) Re-unification: The overall theme of the campaign will be re-unification of the Roman Empire. To this end, players should aim to conquer all the ERE starting provinces and hold every last one of their starting WRE provinces. I am not sure if holding all WRE and ERE provinces alone is sufficient for a WRE victory, but it is close. I will check later on and produce a specific list of the provinces needed to meet WRE victory conditions.

Again, this sounds epic. I can imagine it to be great fun reading - or perhaps writing - about the great final battle before the gates of Antioch...

4) Respect the frontier: As a corollary of the re-unification theme, players are not to try to hold any provinces that were not originally parts of the WRE or ERE. They may pillage them, but should not leave a garrison there. The idea here is to work within the frontiers of the Empire. Historically, there were presumably reasons for the frontiers being where they were – logistics, guerilla warfare etc. – and a WRE campaign that is won by just picking up some weak barbarian provinces would be too short to get an epic PBM going (someone won in 380AD on VH/VH).
5) Friends, Romans, countrymen!: Players should not exterminate any towns that start under Roman rule (WRE or ERE). The theme is re-unification, not fratricide. Players may exterminate barbarian towns, but may not hold them. Even these exterminations should be done sparingly, for role-playing reasons (e.g. to avenge the loss of a city or army) – not as a quick exploit to pre-empt the AI building up its armies or to get some easy money.

I can see this producing some good ingame moments, especially if that frontier tribe eventually becomes a superpower, we'd be hard put.

as for the last 4 points:

6) Don't kick the underdogs: Players should not wipe out the weak non-horde barbarian factions – IIRC, Celts, Berbers, Allemanni and Saxons. This is to better simulate the ever-present “frontier” and the threats posed by smaller tribes neighbouring Rome.
7) No Vandals here!: To try to keep the economy tight, players should not disband any buildings for cash. They may freely dismantle religious buildings in order to manage religious discontent or convert populations to a favoured faith.
8) No dirty peasants: No peasant units may be recruited or retained. They are too cheap as garrisons and anyway, that is what the limitanei and foederati were for.
9) Game settings: The campaign will be on VH campaign, M battles. Large units. Timer on. Patched to 1.6. I think we should probably adjust the settings to reduce the rate of spawn of rebels and pirates, as they are tedious to fight – I’ll look into this.

Well exept for point 8, I usually play this way anyway, so no big deal to make these above quoted rules official -

So I'm in, though preferably as ...say player number 4.

Do want to play, but spare time is getting harder to come by now a days so I don't want to disturb the earlier fase of the campaign.

That's all for now, If I get any flashes of inspiration I'd let you guys know.

**Mount Suribachi** · 01-24-2006, 18:14

Yep, I'm definately in. Been a while (too long) since I did this.

Simon, if I may make a request about my position in the order. After this Monday (30th Jan), the way my shift pattern falls I will be off work for 5 of the next 7 days, giving me plenty of time to play BI

So, depending on when you start, could I go first or second?

A word of warning though, I've only been playing RTW since Christmas and I've not played a BI campaign yet...then again, I'm not like to tear up the map so maybe thats a good thing

**Tricky Lady** · 01-24-2006, 19:57

I would be interested to play, as you've so kindly added me in the To Be Confirmed category.

I must add that I've hardly played RTW, leave alone BI, recently so you shouldn't expect too epic wins from me. But as TinCow mentioned, losing some battles every now and then might bring some life into the PBM again, as everyone usually steamrolls over all opponents quite easily.

Due to (or should I say: thanks to) real-life issues I haven't been playing any PC games recently, so I might not really fulfill the request to play within one week and post a write-up and pictures at most two days later, I suggest that you complete the list first, determine the order (I'd prefer not to play the first or second turn), and then I'll try to make sure that game life gets priority over real life again (just for once

).

I do agree with all of the suggestions made by both Simon and TinCow. I should make a short memo when I start playing as I do tend to play many rules that you're now explicitely ruling out (peasants for instance).

And also one thing: I am a very (very!) cautious and slow player (no blitzing for TL) so perhaps my 'reign' would become a bit boring. Perhaps I can engineer a smashing defeat at one of the Western borders...

So, yes, count me in. I'll try to do my best to play and write within the 'requested' time-frame.

EDIT:
Oh, I just realise that my current RTW-BI installation might not be up-to-date... I play ....errrr... what do I play? Hmmm, better check, but I can't remember having installed patch 1.6. I have installed player1's bugfixer and professorspatula's Unlock All Factions and Horde mod. Are these two no-gos? Just RTW-BI, patch 1.6, no mod, modlets or bugfixers?
Perhaps I should reinstall RTW completely anyway, as I'd like to try EB too....

**Avicenna** · 03-07-2006, 21:15

Simon,

I have done some surfing on the net to see the largest extent of the Roman empire. This is the largest it has been:

So you would have to conquer all the starting Sassanid provinces and the starting Goth province (the Goths are the orange faction right?)

Just a way of lengthening your campaign if you feel like continuing.

**Zomby_Woof** · 03-07-2006, 22:55

Yay! I'm quite excited for this...

I think I'll re-read the rules to make sure I know what I'm doing and then get cracking.

**econ21** · 03-07-2006, 23:05

Thanks for the quick turn around, Dutch_guy

Good hunting, Zomby_Woof!

BTW: interesting idea, Tiberius. I'm not quite sure how we are doing in terms of time, but it seems like we may have some room for maneouvre. Depending on how it goes and what other people think, I'd be happy for this campaign to be extended to rebuild the Roman Empire at its height.

**TinCow** · 03-07-2006, 23:52

What is the end date on the BI campaign? If my counting is right then after Dutch Guy's reign, we are actually still two provinces short of our starting number... we haven't even maintained parity yet. I would be more concerned with actually achieving our original goal than with finishing too early. This game is HARD. Perhaps it will ease up when the hordes are all dead, but I doubt it. God help the man who has to deal with a horded Frankish faction.