The Will of the Senate - out of character thread

[Glaucus]

I have a query

since were using the 4 turn patch thing, would the consul still have 20 turns, 5 years? or do we want him to have 10 years as was the original plan?

[econ21]

That's a fine pace, although I'm not certain we can always do 10 turns over 2 days. While certainly possible to do normally, battles by lower house members other than the consul would slow things down.

Yes, it's going to be a challenge. We've never tried anything like this before. It could make the experience really fun for those directly involved. Or it could really bog things down. Fingers crossed.

Oh, and by the way, there are 18 senators. There is an error in the senator list on the first page of the senate thread, where item 7 is missing.

OK, I'll send the Senate Speaker to shout at the scribes.

[shifty157]

Just a request. Could we change all the maps in the library to thumbnail links? They are large and a pain to have to continually scroll through and at this point the majority are not entirely necessary.

Also something ive jsut noticed. It is entirely possible that motions 6, 7, and 8 are all voted no. I assume that if this happened then the ruling would stand and the consul could deal as he pleases with the provinces in question. But it may be pertinent to decide whether or not if this were to happen there will be a runoff vote between the two motions with the highest approval (or the lowest disapproval). I believe there would be time if we decided to.

[econ21]

BTW, does anyone know anything about Quintus? Tiberius said he was just "some randomer". So is he fictitious? DDW wondered about role-playing him as the father of the faction, but the ages look wrong. I'd prefer it if he were just leader of the Senate and we let the 4 houses[1] grow up organically and independently.

[1] ie the parts of the family tree headed by the 3 other adult faction members + I guess the house TrickyLady's character will soon start.

[econ21]

I have a query

since were using the 4 turn patch thing, would the consul still have 20 turns, 5 years? or do we want him to have 10 years as was the original plan?

No, it's 5 years - 20 turns. 20 turns is usually long enough for anyone to handle - especially mid to end game, when you might have 3-4 battles a turn.

[shifty157]

BTW, does anyone know anything about Quintus? Tiberius said he was just "some randomer". So is he fictitious? DDW wondered about role-playing him as the father of the faction, but the ages look wrong. I'd prefer it if he were just leader of the Senate and we let the 4 houses[1] grow up organically and independently.

[1] ie the parts of the family tree headed by the 3 other adult faction members + I guess the house TrickyLady's character will soon start.

Id say this is the best bet. I think itd be rather odd otherwise.

[TinCow]

Just a request. Could we change all the maps in the library to thumbnail links? They are large and a pain to have to continually scroll through and at this point the majority are not entirely necessary.

Done. I would actually like to arrange the thumbnails in a table somewhat in accordance to their positions on a map. This would spread them out horizontally as well and further decrease the scrolling, but I don't know how to do tables in here.

[shifty157]

Thank you very much. Its much better.

No i dont think tables are possible in the forums. How you have them now is fine though.

[econ21]

Thanks to therother, I just found out how to do tables here. There's a tag for them, just like for quotes etc.

For the gory details, look at the end of the FAQ in the entrance hall. It is all explained in a link to a post by Tosa.

For example to create:

I typed:
{table=1 2 2}3^A|B|C
7^econ21|TinCow|shifty157
7^4|5|6
{/table}

but using [ and ] instead of { and }

[TinCow]

Holy crap that works well. Check it out; it's not perfect due to screenshot alignment, but I think it looks decent and takes up almost no room.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...93&postcount=2

[shifty157]

thats really impressive. thanks econ and good work tincow. i tip my hat to you both. everyhting looks a hell of alot better now.

[econ21]

Sweet! Excellent work, TinCow!

[Avicenna]

Historically, Coruncanius and Laevinius were the Consuls of the time. Lucius Aemilius was a consul, but much later, at around 218 and 216 BCE. His daughter married Scipio Africanus Majorus, and his grandson was adopted by him.

Seeing how Quintus has no surname (cognomen I think) he should be fictional.

[Mount Suribachi]

Holy crap that works well. Check it out; it's not perfect due to screenshot alignment, but I think it looks decent and takes up almost no room.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...93&postcount=2

3 cheers for Simon and Tincow!

[econ21]

I am not sure I can do it but I am thinking of modding the start files so that our four existing family members start with some of Marcus Camillus's new Roman leadership traits. It seems strange that when a new mature member is spawned - e.g. a husband - they come with some traits (military experience, studentship) and yet we have old generals in command of armies with a blank slate.

If anyone has tried out this mod and played on for a few years (TinCow? DDW?) , I wonder if you could upload a savegame I could look at? I'd like to see what traits the new members have.

I'm inclined to make all 4 existing members have had studentships, military experience and be ex-tribunes. The two with field armies I would make legates; the other two I would make ex-legates. If players with those avatars would rather not have those traits - e.g. they want to have to really work for them - let me know. But AFAIK, there's no downside.

[TinCow]

I can't currently access my save games and won't be able to till next Monday, sorry. However, I can confirm that the starting 4 never advance down the student->military->governorship path. I suspect this is because they don't start with the Student trait, so it never advances. However, I've noticed that family members who marry in or are adopted ARE spawned with a variety of the traits. They're not perfect (I had a 16 year old who was a legate with 4 years of military service!) but at least they work.

[econ21]

However, I can confirm that the starting 4 never advance down the student->military->governorship path.

That's very useful to know, thanks - it makes modding them in pretty essential, unless we are to roleplay a bunch of old duffers!

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

Hi,

It seems Marcus Camillus is planning to release RTRPE 1.5 later today. Not sure if he'll get it done before he leaves for his vacation however. I'm undecided if we want to use this, coming at the last moment and all that. More details follow should he make his release.

Also, there is a new update of metronaval mode (Update2), which includes
1. BI's torches from adonys
2. Stuie's AI Command Bonus (Gives the AI a command bonus, Reduces morale by 25% for all units).
3. changed descr_mercenaries.txt (cheaper mercenaries)

I suspect (1) will not work for those like us who only have RTW and not BI, but it should not cause a problem also, you just won't have torches on night battles, but I will have to check into that. I thought (2) was already included in the fixes I listed, but it seems I was wrong. Some mercenaries are ridiculously expensive, hence (3).

I dumped all my savegames because of all the testing with different configs, but I distinctly remember a starting character getting the governmentship of Latium. As far as I understand, the military and goverment traits should work for the starting characters. This was with 4TPY mod 1.8 however, so I might be wrong.

Off topic: The AI WILL leave the city during a siege if it sees an oppurtunity. Yesterday he made a cavalry sortie from a side gate and laid waste to three units of velites before I noticed what was going on. You have been warned.

[econ21]

It seems Marcus Camillus is planning to release RTRPE 1.5 later today. ...Also, there is a new update of metronaval mode (Update2),

Wow, looks like this will be going up to the wire. Let's see how things stand when we've elected the First Consul tomorrow. Needless to say, they should hold off starting their reign until we've agreed on versions etc.

PS: We seem to have a lot of undecideds or wait n sees in the First Consul election. Lots of votes on the motions, not many on the candidates. Poll closes 6pm UK time Friday.

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

BTW, does anyone know anything about Quintus? Tiberius said he was just "some randomer". So is he fictitious? DDW wondered about role-playing him as the father of the faction, but the ages look wrong. I'd prefer it if he were just leader of the Senate and we let the 4 houses[1] grow up organically and independently.

[1] ie the parts of the family tree headed by the 3 other adult faction members + I guess the house TrickyLady's character will soon start.

According to the family tree, we three are sons-in law of Quintus, but I agree to treat them as four distint families. I rather worry that Quintus will nor produce any more offspring however, thus rendering his family extinct eventually.

[shifty157]

I didnt realise that we coudl vote for consul. I was under the impression the voting started today. Oh well.

I think giving the existing characters some traits would be a good idea. Even you just picked a handful at random. Just to make things more interesting. I mean my character is in his thirties and has only 4 traits and a single ancilliary to show for his 20 or so years of service.

[Mount Suribachi]

Simon, I definately think you should look into adding some career traits to our 4 starting avatars.

[econ21]

According to the family tree, we three are sons-in law of Quintus, but I agree to treat them as four distint families. I rather worry that Quintus will nor produce any more offspring however, thus rendering his family extinct eventually.

Well, TinCow in the Senate Library has put Tricky_Lady's character as being Quintus's daughter. I don't know what she thinks, but I rather like that. So we will still have four distinct families, but Quintus's bloodline need not die out, even if his family name does (not a big problem, really,as he does not have a family name!).

[Avicenna]

Four fictional Roman gentes maiores eh? That could work quite well. At least we have one actual gentes maiores, Aemilius.

Tricky_Lady: Could you state what kind of husband you're looking for? Someone strong in command, management or influence? Or do you want a weakling who can be manipulated easily?

[econ21]

OK, I've had a look at one of DDWs savegames - its 8 turns on from the start and as TinCow reported, none of the four original faction members have any of the new Roman leadership traits. The two new generals do.

The good news is that in the descr_strat.txt in the zipped version of Marcus_Camillus's mod, the gang of four do have some of these traits - at least the military experience ones - whereas in the descr_strat.txt that results from my installing these metro&naval mod, they don't. So it should be straightforward to cut and paste from the relevant bits so the four at least start with some military experience.

Only the First Consul will have to worry about this at the first instance, so we can wait another day to see if anything new emerges and then take stock, doing a little minor modding of our own if the problem is still there. The First Consul can then be the guinea pig.

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

Just a little warning to the future first consul. I've been testing the engine some more. If you get as far as Messana, Carthage will come a'knocking, and the naval invasions work just fine, thank you very much. I must say that landing a full stack of hoplites to intercept just one of my units was a tad overkill by the AI, but effective. Gawds. I've been stuck in Messana for 15 seasons already, getting nowhere, just building up my strength. The fact that you only have three unit-producing cities is a severe limitation on what you can actually accomplish in 20 seasons.

[Ignoramus]

Why worry about Carthage yet, true, we will need to be careful about her increasing power, but the priority is the defeat of Pyrrhus, in which I fully support Senator Quintus.

[Lord Winter]

There's an error in the motions poll, It says under motion 5 that DDW proposed it, where i was the one in the thread to propose it.

[Avicenna]

Will we actually be able to support a whole system of forts manned by at least Praetorian armies?

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

I think we will be hardpressed to station a decent garrison (say 4 units) in all out cities and supporting our troops. We will need decent garrisons, otherwise a local rebel uprising might attack one of our unwalled cities before we can do anything about it. We will only be able to recruit 3 maniples every season. Saying we take Corfinium, Paestum, Rhegium, Armenium, Arretium, Tarentum and Croton, we will need to recruit 7 * 4 = 28 units / 3 = 9.33. So it will take us 2 1/2 years just to recruit decent garrisons for our conquests. Then of course there are war losses, and the recruiting of 2 new legions, each of which consists of 11 unit-building time. So, if we do not suffer any major defeats, we just might be able to recruit the necessary troops in 5 years.