The Will of the Senate PBM - out of character thread IV

[Braden]

Quick question:

Which is the newest Save file and is Decius Curtius (my old avatar) still alive?

[econ21]

Which is the newest Save file and is Decius Curtius (my old avatar) still alive?

http://www.totalwar.org/patrons/pbm/251-win-naevius.zip

Yes, he's still alive - a sprightly 61 year old, hiding in the desert, checking out the Carthaginian defences of Tingi for Oppius Aemilius. (When he's not addressing the Senate.)


A quick word about the results of the out of character poll about when to end the PBM: it seems that opinions were very evenly divided on this. On reflection, we've probably missed a trick in not ending it around now, as we had such a good causus belli. (Kudos to Lucjan and TinCow for providing that opportunity. ) But I think the votes - impeachment and out of character - show that we were not quite ready for that, either out of character or in-character. I know I was not. Now if only Cnaius had stabbed Servius, now THAT would have been a causus belli. (Now I know why Servius tends to speak through an intermediary.)

What I think we should do is play on, heading for another full term. But if another "Servius impeachment" type issue comes up, we should be flexible and end it sooner if appropriate.

[Lucjan]

I would honestly be interested in seeing this continue for another full term, but my involvement would be limited due to the test run with the M2 pbem.

EDIT - And yes, Servius might be brazen and at times outright defiant, but he's not stupid.

[Braden]

Econ21 – thanks for those details. See, I can make use of my old Avatar…..Decius is not dead! Yay!

(who’d have thought he’d live this long??)

As for the ending :

We need a true megalomaniac as a Consul, one that starts of really well and seemingly tempered but then gradually chips away at the constitution as well as giving false reports to the Senate and such.

I ought to take the opportunity to run for Consul next session myself, though the task appears quite daunting for someone with lots of real-life work to do.

I’ll see about commitments before putting my manifesto together. Pretty sure I can do a “Nero” on you all.

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

That's a pretty good description of Servius's rule

[econ21]

That's a pretty good description of Servius's rule.

Yes, I think if people want this PBM to go out with a literal bang - a civil war - now is the time to do it. I was planning to concoct something along those lines in 10-20 turns but now I fear anything we could come up with would just look forced and feeble compared to the opportunity for conflict that Servius has provided.

If things get sorted out peacefully, we may end this PBM after the next Consul in a more sedate fashion. Leave the Republic in good shape and sign off on a job well done.

I suggest we collectively play this crisis out in character and see what happens without worrying about the out of character ramifications. If it explodes, fine; if it passes over, fine.

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

I agree. If Manius sticks with Servius we will not be able to impeach him and our only recourse would necessarily be civil war. Let's do it now, Lucjan has created a perfect moment.

[TinCow]

I agree about playing it out and seeing what happens. Role-playing has really developed this situation in a very interesting manner. Many thanks to Lucjan for keeping it interesting.

I'm still in favor of using a multiplayer battle to determine the results of a civil war, if one begins. Victors always write the history books in reality, so they should here too.

[Braden]

Manius voted FOR impeachment last time! It didn't pass.

He'll vote for it again....redemption for his friend.....but don't let this steer the way you "think" Manius will fall when the crunch comes.

Even if the Consul refuses to resign, even if he ignores the Impeachment....would Manius desert his friend to death against the rest of the Senate?

- not telling -

What I will say is that this extra "push" by the Consul could mean a better civil war as before he still had too much support.

Oh and I certainly like the idea of a Multiplayer battle to decide the outcome.

[econ21]

On the mechanics of a Civil War, if it comes to that, I propose this: I will takeover the savegame (yes, I confess, I've been dying to my paws on that baby again).

Generals (Upper and Lower House) will declare for one side or the other (or play an ambiguous role like the Stanley brothers at Bosworth Field ) And I will move the Lower House general's armies (with suitable local reinforcements), towards each other or Rome as directed.

When armies meet, we will either fight out multiplayer battles or, if that is a problem for some participants, I will find some way of representing the outcomes in custom battles against the AI. (e.g. higher command general gets to fight against the AI; or I set up an AI vs AI battle like I did with Publius and the ford).

All the while, the real enemies of Rome - the Iberians, successors, Carthies etc will not be dormant.

The Civil War will end when all enemies are dead or have surrendered. But whoever controls Italy will have a big edge, as it is pretty much the only place where troops can be built. I will treat it as a demilitarised zone initially, in accordance with FLYdude's motion. Until they occupy the troop building settlements, the only troops generals will be able to get will be mercenaries and men from neighbouring garrisons (I will test their allegiance based on the proximity and relative influence of Senators).

The more I think about this, the more I think this is the way to end the PBM.

Anyone seen Kingdom of Heaven?

Guy de Lusignan: - - Give me a war.
Reynald: - - - - - - - That is what I do.

[Tamur]

I don't have much to add, just thought I would say that econ's suggestions sound good, and I agree that Servius has done a remarkable job keeping things unstable! It would seem a bit odd to have the issue come up again in some other form when the moment is ripe now.

[Braden]

Civil War mechanics – generally agree with your idea’s there Econ21. I assume you’ll be taking instruction about who want’s their forces moved where from either the avatars’ owner or a designated leader of the “faction”.

Personally I’m thinking that the Senate (loyalists) would elect a new Consul who would direct the Senate forces, whilst there would be Servius’s (new Republicans) being directed by Lucjan.

I would think that we should steer away from any battles that are not fully player controlled.

That leads me to the next point – Multiplayer. As I’ve stated before I’ve never played a multiplayer game with the Total War series but I’m happy to go through whatever needs to be done to enable this BUT…..

………..is our RTR version Multiplayer combatable and stable as that?

As for Italy – perhaps realism will have to take a back place in this as you suggest, would be good to have Lucjan’s forces perhaps up against it with limited Roman armies and relying on local forces more than the Republican forces but I can see that the Republican forces could swiftly overwhelm Lucjan’s forces.

However, the Republican forces would be still charged with the general security of Italy so would have to keep pumping forces out against Thrace and Iberia whilst Nu-Republican forces wouldn’t have to worry about that so it’s possible that, that factor could even up the opposing sides naturally.

Of course, not only this but IF Servius does not release his status he gets a few turns to re-enforce before it all blows up in his face anyway.

Considering that the casualty figures will be very high indeed for the battles (we’re not talking AI here), the whole thing could be swung pretty soon.

Edit – Oh, just a shame this isn’t Medieval and you can send out assassins against your own Avatars……I can see Manius, army broken, his few remaining men traipsing through North Africa and one night the assassin comes….. (would be the perfect “Roman” tool to use against individuals who survive once their armies have died)

[Lucjan]

You guys wanted a bang, so there you have it. An accidental civil war. Now where will all the chips really fall?

This is going to get really interesting.

[Braden]

Gonna stir things up more myself now!

[Braden]

Edit - wrong thread!

[econ21]

On the mechanics of the civil war - due to work commitments, my big chance to do something are weekends (hence the proposed accelerated pace with the vote). It would be good if Lower House senators could have a look at the latest save and see what they would like their generals to do, then PM me on Friday night with some general directions (e.g. "march on Rome" or "kill Servius") and any queries on mechanics.

For the purposes of the Civil War, I am going to work from the last savegame in the uploader - after Tiberius's victory over the Thracians:

http://www.totalwar.org/patrons/pbm/250-spr-Tib2.zip

I think this starting point is quite suitable, as it was news of Tiberius's victory that started the latest wave of activity in the Deliberations thread.

I don't really want to open it up to micromanagement ("go to (x,y), recruit z mercenaries" etc) as that will take us past Christmas to play out. Loading up the savegame, you realise how vast this PBM has become and just playing out a full turn will take a long time. And it will take many turns for generals in Afrika or Asia Minor to reach Rome. I may autoresolve some tangential battles with the AI, even if they involve Lower House Generals.

My preference is to keep the mechanics (and indeed, players' orders) hidden under the hood of PMs rather than out in the open in this thread, so as to increase the immersion. My preference is to play out the war as a sort of "simulation", based on the players' allegiances, strengths and decisions, rather than as an artificially balanced multiplayer contest. But I will be fair to both sides and make sure it is not too easy a contest for whichever side wins.

Ideally, I'd like to play enough over the weekend so that I can stop with a decent sized multiplayer battle set up for Monday. If it is very decisive, then that might just end the war. If it is only a small affair - with multiple rival armies still on the go - the war might last for a week or longer.

EDIT: It strikes me that the "Deliberations thread" may be a little redundant when war breaks out, but people may like to give their characters a voice in the war and perhaps a nice exit story line. So I have set up an in-character "Civil War stories" thread that people can use for that.

For example, I am sure a lot of people would like to know what is going on in Servius's mind. And the Manius/Decius Curtius story begs out for a continuation. Numerius and Manius also have some squaring off to do in Asia Minor etc. If people have some really good in character PM exchanges they want to share in due course, they could also go in the thread.

[Braden]

Must…..resist……urge….to….send….orders….now….

(really ought to wait until Lucjan contacts me on PM)

PS – the additional story thread is an excellent idea……I did plan to do several pieces about the Decius/Manius relationship & Servius/Manius relationship (from Manius’s point of view only).

As for the whole “regret” thing about Manius vs Numerius…..wow!

[GeneralHankerchief]

Just a thought about battles:

A way that battles are resolved on another RP forum that I used to freqent worked pretty well. I think it would transfer well here.

An impartial player moderates the battle. It is his job to draw/upload a map of the battle site (doesn't have to be in-depth). Based on the forces present, the two opposing sides "deploy" by drawing their forces on the map, and PMing the moderator with the battle plans. The moderator, after receiving both plans, then determines the outcome based on the strategies he was sent.

What do you guys think of this?

[Mount Suribachi]

I think your moderator would probly have got the Battle of Pharsalus wrong

Hmmm, MP battles. I guess we better start testing out our ability to play custom MP battles. Anyone here actually play MP? Perhaps we could have a MP thread here just so we can have a bit of a bash, play a few games against each other so we know what we're doing before we get to the Ouch Time proper?

As for your ideas Simon, I would be in favour of simplifying it based upon where the various generals are and the forces at their disposal. So for example you and Manius are the 2 rivals in Asia Minor, so you fight a MP battle to determine who controls that territory and start heading for Rome. That way we may get several minor battles before a final, decisive battle.

OR, just gather up the major characters and their armies and fight a 2v3 or 3v4 or whatever battle, winner takes all. Much more decisive, and perhaps more importantly, a nice hollywood epic ending Can you save replays of MP battles in RTW?

[econ21]

Ok, confession time. I have never played multiplayer Total War. And personally, I would not be sad if I never play multiplayer in my life. The idea of living without my pause key and getting the heck beaten out of me by another player is too mortifying for me to contemplate. Yes, I am a wimp. I like PBMs because they are all the things MP are not - slow, relaxing, cerebral, literary, historical, cooperative, role-playing, with economic, strategic and other campaign elements etc. So I would be loathe to throw all the uniquely PBMish stuff away at the end and just make this a simple MP contest.

But I recognise that MP battles are the most exciting way of resolving conflicts between players in the coming civil war, and I can't immediately think of another way of resolving clashes that is as transparent.

So what I've proposed is to play this civil war out in the manner of conventional PBM. It will be like I am taking a reign and writing up the progress in the usual (non-WoS) PBM way. The only difference will be that I will be fighting "myself" and moving the different armies against each other. That should give people the chance to make in character interventions, have some input in strategy and maybe spin off some interesting vignettes.

To make progress on the campaign map, I will try to hold off big battles for a while. That will give each side a chance to reach Rome, where they can hire more troops, and also make sure the battles are relatively fair fights between near full stacks (the idea of 3 or 4 way battles is a very nice one though, Mount ).

When I come to such a big battle, I will report back (ETA Monday) and the two (or more) participants can agree a way of resolving it. MP would be the obvious way, but GeneralHankerchief's moderated battles would be another. A third possibility might be mirrored custom battles against the AI, where the general with the better victory over the AI was declared the winner. A fourth might be that I find a way for the AI to fight itself, so the balance of forces decided the matter (as with Publius at the ford).

Let's improvise and not worry too much about the mechanics - my focus is on creating a role-playing denouement that will be fun to participate in, rather than starting a whole new "multiplayer campaign" type genre of PBM.

[Braden]

Simon,

Personally I like your basic idea of running a PBM game in the background whilst players move their forces about by PM input to you.

When battles are fought is something that both players decide.

For example:

Player 1 with his full stack sends a PM to you stating that he is specifically heading to get Player 2’s army.

You move the armies appropriately to the orders received from both Player 1 and 2. IF, Player 1 manages to catch and engage Player 2 then a battle is initiated – however – you have to give Player 2 (who in this case only has a stack of 6 units) the opportunity to completely withdraw.

Multiplayer battles – I think they’re going to be pretty essential to this end game, but like most here I haven’t taken part in any either. Not worried about it though other than from a technical standpoint.

(at least we know there isn’t any “Tank Rush”!)

What I think would be useful is if we do some custom battle tests using our RTR to make sure its stable, I did some early on in the campaign and they seemed ok but they weren’t multiplayer so we need to test again.

Assuming we can use our Modded version of the game, the next step or perhaps something someone should do now, is post on the Multiplayer section of this forum to ask about the mechanics of MP.

I’m pretty sure we can’t use GameSpot (or whatever the attachments called) that normal Rome MP uses so we’ll have to do direct link LAN games – simplest way to link the players machines.

However, for a LAN link game, we’d need the participants ISP address – if we trust each other with that info then we can do it that way. Otherwise we’d have to use a MP forum like Gamespot.

3-4 way battles sound great to me and I would think that we should try to avoid too many of those until its fighting for a whole region – Asia-Minor, Greece or the final battles for Rome – so, we’d have some 1 to 1 battles to get the forces into position and then one climactic battle to decide the outcome of all that movement.

Personally, if the faction commanders are any good, then we won’t have any on-sided battles BUT if they aren’t then we will. I’d prefer to leave it up to how the players move on the campaign map rather than trying to artificially ensure an even battle.

If your faction leader leaves you out to dry with a half stack against a full stack then that’s his fault and its certainly more IC for you then to decide if you do fight that one sided battle or withdraw or disband your army or even defect over!

Edit – Just realised. There is no way that we can represent depleted units in MP/custom games, I don’t see that as a “major” issue but just thought I would mention it now as we may want to consider a mechanism by which two depleted units (i.e. below half strength) = 1 full unit.

[Mount Suribachi]

hehe, have any of us ever actually played MP?

edit: Something else struck me last night. We can edit the game to remove units, right? Well, when all is said and done the Roman army is going to be seriously depleted, and short of a few senior generals. If the game can be edited to reflect this, holding on to our empire, er excuse me, Republic, could suddenly be a whole lot more interesting....

[econ21]

hehe, have any of us ever actually played MP?

No one has come forward and revealed themselves yet! (Although we may have a very cool poker player hiding his expertise, who knows?). It would be good if a couple of protaganists could try out the logistics of Multiplayer. Maybe Braden and Tamur? (Numerius may flee Manius, screaming like a girl, so it could come down to those two in the east.) Or even Braden and Wonderland? Perhaps, GeneralHankerchief and Dutch_guy in the Afrika? Just as a trial, not in-game. (For dramatic reasons, I think the central conflict in Rome might be better played out for real for the first time, not pre-tested through a trial). As I say, I have zero interest in MP and am going to be preoccupied with manipulating the campaign map.

edit: Something else struck me last night. We can edit the game to remove units, right? Well, when all is said and done the Roman army is going to be seriously depleted, and short of a few senior generals. If the game can be edited to reflect this, holding on to our empire, er excuse me, Republic, could suddenly be a whole lot more interesting....

Indeed, we set this up as ending the game with a bang, but this does not have to be fatal. I know Braden, Generalhankerchief and others have indicated in the past that they would like a shot at being First Consul so the door is open. Those of us wanting to scale down our involvement in the PBM (moving over to M2TW), might be able to do so without ruining the PBM. The AI would provide more of a challenge and we've probably satiated our lust for poltiics and feuding, so the game could play on like a more conventional PBM with the survivors rebuilding the Republic. (I don't know if there are any Babylon 5 fans here, but I rather liked the idea of that show that the fifth season was devoted to the aftermath of a brutal war.) Just an idea.

[Braden]

B-5 fan here *sticks hand up*

I think we need to speak to people who know the in’s and out’s of multiplayer – i.e. the Multiplayer forum, before we go much further.

I don’t mind doing some test MP battles against….erm…just about anyone in this PBeM who wants to have a go!

“Numerius may flee Manius, screaming like a girl..” God’s! had to laugh at that one!! Although wouldn’t a MP game of 3 vs 1 be possible?

Even if we do some test MP games with non-comparative forces (i.e. like a normal MP game we have 10,000 points to spend etc etc). At least if we do some MP battles like that we can test if our Mod holds up to MP games, and I’d like to see how my old PC stands up to having perhaps 3 armies on at the same time.

My knowledge of LAN games is that the best PC connected does most of the work though.

As for it being “End Game”, we’ll that largely depends on the result. IF the Republic win, then we’re left with basically what we had a little while ago but may have lost some settlements to outside enemies, it’s also entirely possible that the Republic may forgive certain generals who sided with Servius (similar happened in real history).

IF Servius wins I’m unsure on how the PBeM could proceed as Servius would effectively be Emperor in all but name so most will hang upon how, he, as a player, wants to play it at that point.

Whoever wins will face the same issues of rebuilding though with the main difference being how other players are involved in this.

Now, I believe my email address is open for anyone to use but if not, just PM me and we’ll knock heads about some trial MP battles. Seems that in Econ21’s scenario Manius is doing most of the fighting anyway…….

Edit : also thinking on reporting on the battles. Anyone with FRAPPS installed who can take footage of the battles their in? I can learn to use FRAPPS but just don't have the HDD space.

[TinCow]

I've never played any TW multiplayer either.

[Mount Suribachi]

Hehe, at least we're all on a level playing field I know X-Danger was an award winning MPer, so its a shame he's not here to help up out.

I am quite happy to try and play a few trial games with folks to see how things work etc. My MSN thingy should be below if you want to contact me and try and arrange a game

[Braden]

Mount,

I "think" I've managed to send you an IM.

Andy

[Dutch_guy]

Well, I obviously want this PBM to end with a bang, and I'd like to help build up that bang. But MP doesn't quite sound that attractive seeing my internet speeds aren't great, which is the understatment of the year by the way. So, if there would be an other way (I think I've seen a couple of such ideas in this thread) then I'd be interested.

As said, I won't be watching this one out - I may even pick a side

[Braden]

Dutch - I think what we're going to go with is a mix of the methods Econ21 has thought of.

Personally, I like the hands on approach of MP battles (though never played any) and if connection speed is an issue then I think it'll be a matter of negotiation at the time with whomever you're up against.

[Dutch_guy]

Dutch - I think what we're going to go with is a mix of the methods Econ21 has thought of.

Personally, I like the hands on approach of MP battles (though never played any) and if connection speed is an issue then I think it'll be a matter of negotiation at the time with whomever you're up against.

Ok, that sounds good.

Well, obviously the hands on approach is a fitting one to end our PBM in, but as said, I'd be playing at frame rates which would take all the excitement out of the MP battle.