The Will of the Senate - out of character thread

[Mount Suribachi]

By the way, we should put priority to capturing Greece or Carthage, for their units

Thats not a very realistic role-playing target though is it?

[econ21]

I have done what I hope is my "final" install of all the mods we need for this PBM. I have explained the procedures in grisly detail in post #2.

But in principle, the sequence I followed is simple. First install RTR Platinum Edition (PE) 1.5. Then install Metropolis and Naval (MN) mod. Finally there's a little add-on to put some landblocks in.

The complications stem from the fact that the MN mod is older than the PE one, so I think it is over-writing some important files. This causes the problem that we noted about starting Roman generals not having the military experience they need to get all those cool new Roman leadership traits. I hope that this will get sorted out by the RTR people in due course.

However, as a work around, I have given instructions to download the latest EDU file (the one that determines unit stats) and a DESCR_STRAT file (the one that determines the starting characters and units) that I have modded to put in the lost military experience.

Candidates for First Consul may like to know that these are the additional traits that Marcus Camillus assigned to them:

Quintus - 25 years military experience, former consul (+4 influence)
Publius Laevinus - 10 years military experience, former tribune (+1 influence)
Tiberius Coruncanius - 8 years military experience, former tribune (+1 influence)
Lucius Amelius - 7 years military experience, former tribune (+1 infuence)

Note that experience is basically a function of age (although when the game starts, you will have to avoid staying in settlements for more than one turn to gain experience). The former tribune trait is a precondition for being a legate.

I am going to upload my 280 BC savegame, senate280v.zip, for DDW to try out. If it works and he approves my installation procedure as explained in post#2, then we are ready to go once we have the election result 6pm today.

I must confess I am apprehensive that we are going to encounter technical problems as we play this mod. That's the price of choosing a beta mod to play. But hopefully we will find work arounds. We have some plusses on our side:
(1) Marcus Camillus, the man responsible for the leadership traits, will be joining us after 6 June.
(2) Most updates to the mods we are using seem to be savegame compatible (that's a biggie)
(3) If the worst comes to the worst, we may have to reload and replay some years - we'll just have to be flexible.

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

I have done what I hope is my "final" install of all the mods we need for this PBM. I have explained the procedures in grisly detail in post #2.
...

I must confess I am apprehensive that we are going to encounter technical problems as we play this mod. .

I've read your modifications and they seem fine. Why would you have a problem with rapidshare ?

I won't be home till 7 or 8 pm, but I'll reinstall and try it out then. I must express some confidence here. I do not really expect any problems or CTDs. The stability so far has been examplary.

Upcoming interesting (save-compatible) bugfix :
Fix for cathapract archers that are acting wierd.

[econ21]

I've read your modifications and they seem fine. Why would you have a problem with rapidshare ?

I think it is something to do with my using a router so I don't have a fixed ISP address (I have a dynamic one, whatever that means). Consequently, Rapidshare stops me downloading because they think I've downloaded too much when in fact it is other people. I had to pay some Euros to get a premium account in order to download the Metro&Naval mod. I wish Macedonn would find another way of uploading his mod.

I've saved a game - am about to upload it now. Don't worry about testing it quickly. BTW, I was going to go into a rant on the RTR boards about negative population growth, then I realised I had not deleted the *.rwm files! (easy to do when you are incrementally testing installs).

[econ21]

Quick query: how do people feel about the length of this Senate session?

Here's the schedule we followed:

Monday 6pm: session opens
Wednesday 6pm: deadline for motions and First Consul nominations; voting starts
Friday 6pm: voting ends

I think this timetable was long enough - was it too long? I'm thinking ahead to the next full session of Senate and election of next First Consul. We've agreed the mid-term will be shorter (2 days debate/proposing motions/1 day voting).

I think it was probably ok, but I feel that the last day or so has dragged. How about a 24 hour voting period? On reflection, I guess I'm really proposing extending the mid-term model for all sessions - 2 days debate; 1 day voting.

It's not a big issue, but maintaining momentum is key in PBMs and so if people feel we could hurry things up a little, I'm all for it.

[TinCow]

I think this timetable was long enough - was it too long? I'm thinking ahead to the next full session of Senate and election of next First Consul. We've agreed the mid-term will be shorter (2 days debate/proposing motions/1 day voting).

I think a 5 day week is entirely appropriate. It allowed us to have a rather nice, in-depth debate on the issues yet was long enough to bring it to a close eventually. We have to embrace the fact that this is a PBM (is it even right to call it that anymore?) that will span many months. I easily forsee this going 6 months, perhaps longer. That's assuming people hang around for it and it doesn't die off like a lot of normal PBMs do. That's the aspect econ21 was cautioning Braden about as well: this looks nice now, but we can't call it a success until we're a month or two in and everything is still working properly.