The Will of the Senate - Out of character thread V

[Tamur]

Wisdom rallied in a protected glade. Stupidity assailed the lines again, but was repulsed

Ha, I laughed at this too. There are some great writers in this group, thanks all for the excellent reading!

[Dutch_guy]

I'm getting an alarming black screen of death crash after exiting RTRPE. I thought it was a problem with RTW, but then loaded the Thracian vanilla PBM save and coul exit fine. Maybe this campaign is trying to tell us something?!

Memory leak perhaps ? How much RAM are you running currently ?

It that's it, try turning of un necessary programms like Quicktime, or a Virus scan, when playing Rome.

All I can come up with at the moment....

[Braden]

Simon,

Quick Note – been off line all weekend and was back very late from University last night so haven’t got this info until today, however, orders will be sent out today to you on email

[econ21]

OK - no problem; I only need your deployment - ie just arrange those icons in a battle line.

We will then have a "move to contact" turn, where both you and Tamur will give your opening moves which will be executed simultaneously until either of you gets into missile or charge range.

After that, we will have 6 regular turns, where you will be able to give incremental orders. I am going to try to simulate a real ancient battle, so it may take more than a turn for a melee between two lines of heavy infantry to be resolved. A cavalry charge will be resolved more quickly though (and if successful may overrun into other enemy units during the same turn).

I will also impose fatigue penalties, so units that come into the action later in the day will have an edge. A typical unit will only be able to fight for two turns and then be exhausted. Units will not be able to withdraw easily from a melee, except Roman infantry which was apparently practiced that.

Units may be able to change their facing autonomously so if you want a flank attack, make sure you pin the enemy first. Units next to a general may be able to do even more in reaction to an enemy move so make sure you place your general where he needs to be to control things.

[econ21]

This post is primarily for Braden and Tamur, but I thought I would make it public in case others are curious about how we are going to do this umpired battle.

It would be good if I could have your initial move to contact orders asap - they will likely be only minor tweaks of what you have already given me.

Army "divisions" and how they will work

To simplify this, please give orders only to groups (“division”) of your army. You may have a maximum of 8 “divisions” in your army.

You currently have 6 each and so may create another 2 during the course of the battle by detaching units from existing divisions. It would be foolish to try to re-arrange units locked in melee, though. Your main reserves are probably the best formations to try to break down in new divisions – e.g. if you only want to commit some at a particular time.

However, each general may be given individual orders and need not be in a division. The generals are Numerius, Appius, Manius and son. The Senate Tribune is not a general per se, although his presence in a division may give that division more autonomous capability.

The initial deployment looks like this:



Current divisions

Consular – these are the six formations that Braden ringed & labelled in his deployment diagram to me.

I. Battle division - main battle line
II. Light infantry division – slingers and skirmish detachment
III. Command division - generals and equites
IV. Light cavalry division
V. Cavalry reserve division
VI. Reserve division

Senate – I have created these after consolidating some of Tamur’s labelled formations on his diagram.

I. Battle division - main battle line inc. Manius & flanking swords
II. Light infantry division - frontal skirmisher and slinger detachment
III. Second battle division - Numerius + hastati
IV. Cavalry division (to the left)
V. Horse archer detachment
VI. Reserve division


How to draft orders

Please draft your orders in character, as if given by a real general. They should be clear and simple. The more confused or complicated, the more likely the divisional commander will mess up. Ideally, I would like to publish these orders in a battle report (after the battle is concluded – so they will be confidential until then). You may allow for contingencies, but if the orders are too complex, the divisional commander may become confused or feel constrained from acting on his own initiative. You can trust your divisional commanders to execute their orders in a competent way (you don’t need to micromanage them and tell them how to fight – I may let the AI control them to see how a division vs division fight would play out). But they will have limited initiative to respond to new developments.

What orders should cover:
- where to move, inc. facing
- which formation to engage or screen (this will help me determine facing)
- for missiles (inc. pila and javelin armed heavily infantry): whether to fire at will or who to target
- for melee units: whether to charge or prepare to receive a charge
- whether to pursue or hold ground once in place

You should also edit the jpg in Paint to indicate where you would like your units to move (both of you provided much better graphs than my pitiful attempts, so in the edit I just stuck each of yours on top of the other). Remember - movement in the advance to contact turn stops once you are within range.

[econ21]

OK, orders for turn 2 (mid-morning), please. The situation upon advancing to contact is:

[econ21]

To simulate the fog of war, from this point on, I will only provide partial information on the situation to each general as it is appears to them. This will be done in private to Braden and Tamur separately. I will create diagrams for the record, but will not show (bits of) them to the generals unless it is needed to illustrate a tricky point.

Tamur and Braden can of course, send me diagrams to clarify their orders but in reality, I doubt generals would scribble down maps mid-battle so any centurions receiving them may be suitably bemused.

[Braden]

Maps I'm sending you are for OOC assistance only - a picture tells a thousand words.

FoW - would that now be realistic? both commanders are on the field and as its level ground, they'd have a pretty good idea what's going on.

I think the main thing to consider is the limited scope open to the commanders to relay any adjustments to any orders they gave at the initial advance (or before).

Certainly after melee has begun, anything more complex than "Break contact" or "Withdraw" or "charge" can really only be given to unengaged units that have visual on the commander.

[econ21]

***********On the campaign ******************

I hope to get in turn 3 (autumn) of the campaign tonight. Any last minute orders, please let me know.

********** On the battle of Ancrya **********************

Just to say I am having e-mail problems today, so if Tamur could use a PM to give his orders, that would be good. I am hoping I can move on to turn 3 of the battle swiftly.

On the realism of fog of war - a general can only see through line of sight. He does not have a helicopter or interactive total war style map laid out. Once the lines have met in combat, I doubt he could see much - particularly on level ground. He would have to use riders to keep in touch with his divisons, but riders can be lost, reports garbled and orders can be misunderstood (think Balaclava).

As I said above:

Players should act like historical armies and not try to micro-manage too much. Orders may get lost and things may slip up. The position of the 4 generals will be particularly important in determining the outcome of any fine maneouvring - if he is far away or locked in combat, he may not be able to control events. (Best avoid the RTW bad habit of using your general as a spearhead.)

(I guess the first sentence should have said "generals" not "armies".)

[Braden]

Ok Simon,

BTW – I guess now would be a good time to send you some more order then (should cover nearly to the end of the battle, with very minor adjustment by Manius “on the field”).

[econ21]

OK, I've got both Braden and Tamur's orders - I will get back to you both with the end of turn situation asap. E-mail seems fine now btw.

[econ21]

Braden requested a rough depiction of the situation at the end of turn 2. Given that units have not got into melee yet, fog of war is not a serious problem. So both sides can see that the situation looks roughly like this:



Please don't ask me to align unit x to fight unit y - I don't think a real Roman general would get into such a level of micromanagement (unless he was adjacent to unit x).

NB: slightly revised diagram from original post.

[TinCow]

WOO! KICK HIS ASS SEABASS! Er... Numerius.

[econ21]

Unfortunately, Numerius has gone down with a bad case of stomach cramps so it is all up to his former Tribune, Appius Barbatus to win the day! (It seemed unfair to get Tamur to do all the work and not (potentially at least) get the glory.)

I am hoping Glaucus uploads the savegame tonight as I am keen to play out turn 3 on the campaign map. With Servius making landfall, it's going to get very tactical on turn 4.

Unless the participants can assure me that they have successfully played a multiplayer RTRPE battle, I propose that in future, all "non-critical" battles be resolved in an AI vs AI custom battle. A critical battle will be defined as one where Servius could lose - ie where he does not clearly outmatch his opponent.

If the Ancrya battle works out, the umpired game mechanism could be used for critical battles. But I think we will work on the "reinforcing armies" principle - ie only one stack initially deployed; each other stack comes on - somewhat randomly (1/6 chance first turn, 2/6 chance second turn etc.) This may make the battles a little simpler at first and also add a fun element (when's backup arriving?!?).

If there is a really important battle not involving Servius, I may be persuaded to call it critical but the default position is let the AI call it.

[flyd]

Well, I wouldn't like to give up on MP without actually trying it, mainly because I'm pretty sure it'll work just fine. Does anyone wish to conduct any tests?

[econ21]

Well, I wouldn't like to give up on MP without actually trying it, mainly because I'm pretty sure it'll work just fine. Does anyone wish to conduct any tests?

Not to preempt anything, but it looks at least plausible that Tiberius Coruncanius may soon get into a scrap with Quintus Naevius. Does Lucjan want to try out a MP battle with FLYdude? Or some other player on the Consular side?

[TinCow]

I am not on the Consular side, but I am willing to test out a MP game if needed.

[econ21]

FLYdude vs TinCow - I think you are both in the US, so maybe you can work something out?

You should be able to fight Roman vs Roman using the first two factions on the custom faction list. (If we do it for real, we'll want to change the EDU to enable recruitment of some of those fun mercs we've been hiring. But for a test, it's unnecessary)

[TinCow]

I am on EST and am off work Friday through Sunday. Any time you want is good with me FLYdude. Are we using RTRPE 1.6 with the BI.exe?

[flyd]

Scheduling won't be a problem, I'm off everything for several weeks, except for a few finals next week. So, I'm good to go 24 hours a day, more or less, although I would appreciate it if it wasn't in the early hours of the morning. I'm on MST, which is +2 to EST, and +7 to GMT.

I don't have BI, so I suppose we should stick to 1.5? They might be compatible anyway.

[Mount Suribachi]

If you can't get MP to work with RTRPE, can't we just fight the battles online using RTW vanilla? The differences on the battle map between the 2 versions for Roman armies shouldn't be that huge........should they?

BTW, great job everyone in the Civil War stories thread, outstanding writing. Guess you got your wish after all Lucjan?

[econ21]

If you can't get MP to work with RTRPE, can't we just fight the battles online using RTW vanilla? The differences on the battle map between the 2 versions for Roman armies shouldn't be that huge........should they?

Good idea. I could fairly easily tweak the unit stats of the key Roman units in RTW so that they handle like their RTRPE counterparts. We could also slow down the movement speeds.

But on reflection I am not sure there should be a problem with doing MP on a mod. Aren't some mods - Napoleonic TW - mainly for multiplayer only?

But let's try this: TinCow and FLYdude try to play a multiplayer battle with the mod we are using. If there is a technical problem, they try with just vanilla RTW 1.5. Given we are all new to MP, it would be useful to get their feedback on the practicalities and feel of MP, regardless of whether we can use this mod.

[TinCow]

No problems with 1.5, I have an install with that version as well. Want to plan on something around noon MST on Saturday? I also run a BF2/BF2142/ETF community and we host a Teamspeak server as well. If you want to use Teamspeak to make setup easier, I can create a private channel for us. That would probably be easier from a troubleshooting aspect.

[flyd]

Noon saturday is good, teamspeak is fine if you want it.

I suppose I should, at this stage, mention that I'm not entirely new to MP, in that I've played it in vanilla, the first release of RTR 6.0, as well as EB, having no technical issues in any of them. This is why I suspect there won't be an issue.

[Lucjan]

I'd be willing to practice against anybody Friday Saturday or Sunday, we just need to work out a time.

And Mount, what was my wish? *lost*

[econ21]

The situation at the end of turn 3 (late morning) of the battle of Ancrya:



Note to Braden and Tamur: there may be some light cavalry off to the right of the map, but they are out of command and out of sight.

Another note to the participants - sending me a map of where you would like the units you can control to be at the end of turn 4 would be very useful. However, don't move the Battle Divisions or the Senate Reserve Division - they are committed and after the antics your generals got up to in turn 3, I really can't see them being able to effect any kind of tactical control over them in this turn. The scrummage will be resolved by the end of this turn, however, and then the victors be free to control the survivors.

To the non-participants: apologies for not making progress with the campaign. Resolving this battle is surprisingly time consuming. I hope to play turn 3 of the war on the campaign map this weekend and ideally finish off this battle, so I can move the victor as well and then press "end turn".

[Mount Suribachi]

And Mount, what was my wish? *lost*

That thing about writing a story with different authors for the differenct characters.

[Lucjan]

Oh yeah, it happened, just not quite in the manner I had expected it to. Though I am very, very pleased with the incredible story unraveling in the civil war stories thread.

[Braden]

This is really touch-and-go at the moment!

I can't call who's going to win but what I do know is...

....I really don't believe they'll be much of a victorious army left, whoever leads that army.

(though, potentially not Appius and definately not Manius's adoptive son - RiP)

[Tamur]

I really don't believe they'll be much of a victorious army left, whoever leads that army.

Oj, it's tense! And with the cause at hand I don't think there will be an easy victory for either side. Whoever wins will have to do a lot of recruiting on the way to Rome.