The Will of the Senate - Out of character thread V

[Braden]

Yeah...good job there's Greece to go through (Phalanx Merc's....yummy!)

[Dutch_guy]

Guys, is it really necessay to name each and every side character Flavius ?! It's really quite confusing

[Braden]

Is a "Whoops!" in order??

I have a very large list of Romano names.....darn-it am I using to many Flavius's's (or is that Flaviuii??)

...hang on....I can only see one person called Flavius in our Econ/Braden/Lucjan joint story, part of Sextus's retune. He is mentioned quite a bit but he's only the one guy.

[TinCow]

Lucjan, you are welcome to join FLYdude and I on saturday. We can test just as easily with a three way battle as with a two way.

My suggestion is to meet up on Teamspeak first. I will make a RTW channel and we can use that until we are done.

TS IP: ts.railbait.com

Be there at 12:00 pm MST (2:00pm EST, 7:00pm GMT)

[Lucjan]

I'd like to help, but 2pm EST wouldn't work for me, I have to pick up my girlfriend from work at that time. Maybe shortly after that? 2:30 or 3?

[TinCow]

I am sure we will still be on at 2:30 or 3:00pm EST. If you've got teamspeak, just join the channel when you get home.

[Lucjan]

Ok, will do.

[econ21]

Just to say, I've played out what I think is the decisive phase of the battle of Ancrya and posted the results in a new thread.

I am a little alarmed that my computer keeps crashing - and sometimes not rebooting - when I exit RTW. It's a big worry and almost as if this PBM is telling me to wind it down. I will move things on in the campaign map - the way I see it, we will have a series of decisive battles in or around Italy; the war ending with either Servius in chains or victorious against all comers.

If we can get MP battles working, that might take some of the pressure of me - although I think the umpired model is viable (as is a one big custom battle AI vs AI). It's easy to edit the EDU to be able to use our mercs in custom or MP battles; we can also mod the file to reflect significantly below strength units. We should add experience and upgrades to reflect the units involved. Also, we should adjust unit experience by the difference in the two generals' command stars and traits - I did not do this at Ancrya, as it would have been unfair to spring it on Braden. But it would have meant a +2 experience (+3 to infantry) for the Senate forces.

[TinCow]

Excellent work on umpiring the battle, econ21. I am massively impressed that you were able to make it fair and realistic given the circumstances.

As an aside, one further advantage of using multiplayer is that we can record the battles for everyone else to see.

[TinCow]

Bad news from the MP testing front. FLYdude, Lucjan, and I were not able to get a game to work. We all received incompatible version errors when we tried to join each other, no matter who was hosting or what version of the game we tried. FLYdude seems to think it is the Platinum version that is causing the problems and suggests that Gold might work. Another option would be to do the battles in a Vanilla version and fudge the armies as best as we were able to.

[econ21]

That's disappointing. You could explore RTR Gold, as it's basically got the same units etc. But it could be a hassle installing it for some.

I think going with vanilla RTW would be easiest, especially if we could mod the unit stats and movement speeds (they are just two text files and it would be very easy to tweak the relevant units to have RTRPE stats). Luckily in the case of the Romans, I think there's a decent match between RTR units and RTW ones. We'd only have problems with a few exotic mercenaries.

I am not sure whether there is a problem doing MP with a modded EDU file. I don't think there should be, but I've asked in the RTW MP forum to check:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...09&postcount=1

Even if we can't mod the stats or movement speeds, I think RTW would give a decent approximation.

[Lucjan]

I don't see why anybody would have an issue with accepting approximated units due to platinums failure to somehow be compatible with itself.

I've asked a friend for his cd key from a disc that no longer works and he's going to look for it for me tomorrow, I'll try some more things to see if I can't get platinum to work for us when I have the second key, I'll let you guys know what's up after that.

[Mount Suribachi]

Yeah, I think playing with all Roman armies with vanilla should be OK. Other than the increased movement speeds I would imagine its pretty similar.

[econ21]

Myrddraal reckons it would not be a problem to mod the stats and movement speeds in MP, so we should be fine.

Now that Ancrya has been resolved, I've played turn 3 of the civil war (autumn 250). I now need orders for turn 4. The savegame is:

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

Most important are Lucjan's orders for Servius and Quintus Naevius; Swordsmaster's and Tiberius's for Luca and Decius; and GeneralHankerchief's. The others will not reach Italy for another season or more.

If people could get me orders by Monday night or Tuesday at the latest, that would be good.

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

Just a brief note that I found the battle and the reports utterly fascinating.
Muchos kudos for econ21 !
Of course I am also enjoying the civil war stories.
Senate - Consul
1 - 0

[Tamur]

And I have to add that, even though I was in the "general" chair for the Senate, I found the reports equally fascinating. It made me wish in a big way that there were a way to do that more often -- though of course I would not wish it on econ to have to referee another battle spending hours and hours of his time to do it.

He gave both Braden and I obscured and incomplete battle reports based on where our generals were, made us order by division rather than unit, and generally turned it into a much more real experience. At times it was frustrating, at times rather shocking, but both in a good way.

I've often wished that, in TW battles, I didn't even have the option to micromanage each unit -- that I could instead turn things over to a division commander and say "get this job done" without worrying that said commander will simply charge any enemy in sight range.

So, having econ give us exactly that possibility was jarring at first. Now I'm having a lot of trouble going back to the normal fashion of TW battles.

A big thanks to econ for the way he handled this.

[econ21]

I really enjoyed doing the umpired battle, although I was surprised by the amount of work it involved. I always wanted a game which simulated the real decisions of a general, rather than getting you to micromanage each individual unit. If we did it again, what I would change would be starting out with two stacks only on the field and then bring on any other stacks a random time during the battle (say probability = [turn #]/6). I think that would add a little more drama and also space out of the combats a little, so everything was not resolved by turn 4 as here.

I think the mechanisms of splitting up fights into mirrored mini-custom battles is a reasonable way of weighing the forces involved, but still allowing some role for battle strategy. After the battle, Lucjan wondered if each that each general should have the chance to fight the AI in these mirrored contests, but on reflection I think it is better that an umpire do it trying to follow the orders given and reflect the lines of deployment. The AI is so awful, there are lots of gamey things you can do to win with virtually no casualties (and our campaign tallies of kill ratios have encouraged the development of these!) but these don't accurately simulate what would happen. Trying to follow the orders of each general and averaging the result seems preferable.

Just a note on translating battlefield losses to the campaign map: I don't have an easy means of changing the strength of units on the campaign map, so I either disbanded them or kept them whole strength. I took the estimated unit survivors, then added 35% of the casualties back (as recovered wounded, prisoners, stragglers, whatever). The final % of the unit remaining was the chance that the unit stayed on the campaign map - I used a random generator to test against that. We could use the same method for translating MP battles onto the campaign map - although we would have to think about whether there should be a further penalty for the loser (the possibility of army dissolution). It struck me after the battle that it would be a shame to dissolve Legio II, so Numerius did a deal with Manius that his survivors would guard the east rather than just be disbanded en masse.

[econ21]

To keep things on track, I'm going to set a deadline of 6pm UK time tomorrow (Tuesday) for any orders for the campaign map. If I don't receive orders, I'll use my judgement to make the moves but won't get anyone into any trouble if I can avoid it.

[Braden]

Econ21,

I think the current options we have are just two for MP battles in the Civil War now.

1) A slightly modded Vanilla based MP game
2) Ref (GM) led MP battle similar to the one we’ve just had

Now, currently I think that option one is our best bet, mainly as it cuts down on time. I do have one suggestion if we have to run another GM’d game though, perhaps using a historical based War-Game system to roll the results will be quicker?

From my experience of these type of War-Game they don’t produce a result much different from the results we had in the Ancyra battle, potentially, we could use that as a basis (and a sprinkling of Total War based common sense)?

[econ21]

I don't mind spending the time to work out combat resolution for a potentially decisive battle - as I suspect the next ones in Italy will be. To be honest, MP may not be that much quicker than a refereed game due to logistical issues (getting everyone on line at the same time and getting things working - we are probably looking at weekends only). I was thinking of using a war-game system originally, but then I realised the custom battles would probably be easier than trying to adapt a system to TW and decide the results (the nice thing about computer games is that the computer does all the maths).

I'm going to try to bring the campaign to a head by the weekend, so that if people want MP battles, they can do them this weekend. The likely participants are Lucjan, FLYdude, Swordsmaster and GeneralHankerchief.

From what's been posted previously, Lucjan and FLYdude prefer MP battles so if Quintus Naevius and Tiberius Coruncanius clash, we can use that method.

Swordsmaster can't do a MP battle. GeneralHankerchief was the one who originally proposed umpired battles, so I suspect he has a preference for that. If Lucjan, GeneralHankerchief and Swordsmaster meet for a big battle, one possibility is to mix the MP and umpired battles as Lucjan proposed a while back. We would proceed as with Ancrya, but when we got to resolving specific combats (like the four in turn 3/4), we could set them up as MP mini-battles that people with good internet connections etc could play out. It would be the most time consuming of all methods, but also potentially the most dramatic. Given that the battle might well be the decisive one of the war, I think that would be ok.

[Lucjan]

Ultimately it's going to end up being a wait and see issue. Wait for players to clash and see what they can agree on.

[Braden]

BTW - don't rush too much guys. I'm still considering the next part of my civil war story

I also have to write some thing IC about Manius now (will try and get that on today though).

[econ21]

Ok, the Winter turn played out without an inter-player incident (Quintus Libo took Alesia; and Lucius Aemilius stomped some rebels). The savegame is here:

http://www.totalwar.org/patrons/pbm/249-spr.zip

The people who could see action this Spring turn are: Lucjan, GeneralHankerchief, Swordsmaster, Tiberius, FLYdude and Mount Suribachi. So those players should pay particular attention to their moves. It's ok to give me orders with simple contingencies (e.g. chase him if he runs etc).

Here's a screenshot of the situation in Italy:



To clarify on how I will deal with naval interceptions: if a fleet is ordered to intercept another one and, given the targets ordered movement that turn, could catch it, there will be a 50% chance of interception. If interception occurs, I will stage a sea battle (by editing the descr_strat and starting a new game) and follow the result. It is likely the loser will be forced to sail away from the area and suffer losses (each ship sunk = 1 transported unit disbanded). If interception does not occur, the target fleets slips past and can proceed unmolested.

[econ21]

OK, just to say, I have the key players' orders in so I am going to execute the Spring turn tonight. This is going to be very interesting.

[econ21]

Ok, Spring passed without any player vs player battles. (Quintus Libo trashed an Iberian army outside Alesia; as Appius did to a Seleucid army outside Ancrya.)

From this point on, I think we should play with some fog of war. So I will not upload savegames for now. I will send an "umpire" report to each general near the action following a very simple system. For each enemy army or fleet that the general is concerned with, I will roll a 6-sided dice:

1 = the player controlling the enemy formation gets to write the report (ie you are duped)
2 = the formation goes under the radar: you have no reports
3-4 = you have rough information (e.g. "it went north")
5-6 = you have exact information

I am going to apply this system to the following players/formations:

Lucjan - controlling (1) Servius's army; (2) Quintus Naevius's army; (3) Servius's fleet

Mount Suribachi - controlling (1) his army; (2) his fleet

GeneralHankerchief - controlling 3 armies (Marcellus; Luca; Decius) + his fleet

FLYdude - controlling his army

The other generals are not so close to the action yet and also are not communicating over territory quite likely controlled by the enemy.

The above two pairs of allied players should not communicate directly with each other (or via a third party). Any communications they wish to send should be written in character and sent to me. I will then roll a dice:
1= Message intercepted goes to your enemy
2= Message gets lost
3+ Message gets delivered
I will subtract 1 for each additional message sent per turn.

You can deliberately try to get one message intercepted per enemy general. Send it to me and I will roll a dice
1-2 = Message recognised as phoney & sent to enemy with that information
3-4 = Message lost
5-6 = Message passed on as is

There will be an element of blundering about. But I will make some allowance for searches etc so that armies don't implausibly pass each other. Fleets can patrol a coast with a 50% chance of intercepting another fleet moving through that area.

One important point - if you get your army into an ambush position on the campaign map (the general crouches down and says "ambush ready" or something) then I will subtract 2 from the intelligence die roll (although only natural 1s lead to duping). If an enemy moves next to it, I will roll a dice:
1-2 = Ambush successful - set up as in TW campaign
3-5 = Normal battle
6 = Ambushers are ambushed (repaid with interest)

Also: if we fight a battle, it will have appropriate terrain (unlike Ancrya). So settlements, hills, river positions etc are advanageous. And I have decided not to adjust troop experience to reflect general's command stars (apparently command stars only affect morale and that is sky high already in RTR).

I will draft some reports for players tomorrow, after I have contacted any "duping" generals for instructions.

[flyd]

Oh, this is gonna get interesting. I certainly have no issue with how this is to be conducted, and I understand we already started, and that it would be additional work, but it is a bit of a shame that the traits of the characters don't seem to come into the equations anywhere. I suppose morale bonuses would be difficult or impossible to implement, but traits that increase line of sight or chance of enemy agent detection could be used to modify the dice rolls. The more observant among you may realize that Tiberius happens to have some of these traits, but I promise I'm being completely impartial in suggesting this.

[Mount Suribachi]

Hmm, yes, I believe Oppius has the "scout" trait

I'll leave this to Simons discretion

[econ21]

Yes, I did check the traits but it seems virtually everyone is a scout or better so they would cancel out to a large degree.

In terms of the scout/recon bonuses, we have:
Numerius/Secundus/Oppius/Tiberius +2
Luca/Servius +3
Quintus/Lucius +4

If one side had a big recon edge, I would be inclined to factor it in but given the virtual parity, I think we should keep it simple.

EDIT: One point to keep in mind - because of my messing about with the save, the seasons are now out of whack. The game thinks it is winter, when in fact it is Summer. Accordingly, land movement rates will be slow this turn.

EDIT: Umpire briefings have been sent out.

Deadline for orders: 6pm UK time tomorrow (Friday).

[SwordsMaster]

Sorry for the absence guys, had to take a sudden trip for a couple of days. I hope i didn't miss anything important.

[econ21]

No, Swordsmaster, I think you are just in time. But don't go away! Study the last screen shot in this thread and read the rules about fog of war.

I will send you the feedback I sent GeneralHankerchief. Your characters are close together and so do not have a risk of your communications being intercepted. You should formulate a joint course of action, although of course you are always free to move your stacks separately. In the event you fall out, I am going to give control of Decius Laevinus's stack to GeneralHankerchief as he has the mod installed and so can check out the possible moves more easily.