Will of the Senate Post-mortem

[econ21]

Good stuff, Flydude!

While you were writing, I just posted a companion piece proposing ideas for the WotSII in a M2TW setting:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...&postcount=106

Two issues from your post:

(a) on sharing out the battles - would 10 turns of leave to 10 turns of active duty be enough? However, my idea of permanent Field Marshall positions reinforces the dominance of the old guard. Perhaps a general should only be a Field Marshall for a maximum 40 turns, then get retired with an extra settlement as pension?

I am also thinking an avatar should be knighted by having his general delegate command of a battle to him, rather than just having his unit do great deeds?

(b) An in-character stories thread from the start is a good idea! (I was nervous about how the civil war stories thread would turn out, but it did great! )

I am not persuaded on the veto idea - I think the reigning player (Consul, whatever) has a lot of power, especially if they appoint generals and governors.

[Death the destroyer of worlds]

Very good post. I have not much to add to this summary. The two most important issues were time and complexity. Whatever the setup in the future these must be carefully (and better) balanced. The time of a consulship became much too long at the end, and the complexity (which greatly added to the fun) scared of a lot of people and made the game barely manageable at times.

Nevertheless, I consider tWotS a major RPG-succes ! My congratulations to all who were involved !

[Braden]

Firstly, I have to say that the WotS was perhaps one of THE best gaming experiences I’ve ever had. It was enriching, lively, engrossing and above all fun!

I’m going to keep my comments and observations completely in the context of the WotS game and will also borrow Econs format.

Worked Very Well:

Upper and Lower house Senate – as mentioned above, one of the main problems with the WotS was the large number of mods that had to be installed to take a physical part in the game. To me, and others, the lifeline was the Upper House and at no point did I feel left out of the game. I believe you will always get players who will not be able to or wish to take an active part in any PBeM over the entirety of its lifespan and we’ve been lucky to have a core of perhaps 6 players who have carried the game through from start to finish in various capacities.

Generals Fighting Battles – This kept those players who’d managed to install the Mod busy and “hooked” to the core of the game. Whilst I have to agree that it might have been better for more generals to have more battles (i.e. a greater spread of battles), that isn’t always possible and wholly reliant on how the game pans out. I am sure there are several things we can do to improve the involvement of generals in battles but that might also be dependant on how aggressive the AI is and how aggressive the players who make the policies are.

It’s no point trying to get more battles if there just aren’t any. Generally, we tried to be “A-historical” and this led to a general policy for large periods of the game where we acted in a passive manner. This was to be as historical as possible but, mostly, to give the poor AI a chance.

Perhaps more and stronger Rebel forces could be added (more modding), and generals more compelled to fight them. It’s not an ideal scenario but perhaps “insurgencies” is a better way of letting the AI surprise us?

What Worked but wasn’t “That great”:

Historical Armies – I thought this was a great idea and fantastic guidelines. I was concerned though that later in the game the rules around this were bent to serious conditions as native forces were amalgamated into the formations and we ended up with armies far larger than I was happy with.

Role-Play and Stories – I have to agree that we needed to promote “WotS Based” stories more, and there should have been an open thread throughout to be honest. Who knows, perhaps the Decius/Manius story would have evolved much earlier for example. There was a lack of PM based RP and negotiation, I don’t know if its possible to enhance this or expand on it. As my LRP group say “Role-Play is something that happens, not something you Plan”.

What was Not Good:

Mods – the number of mods involved was completely complex and required lots of work to get it right. However, in our case, it was required. I can’t envisage us running an as successful game without all those mods. Perhaps better facilities to download all of the mods as one extractable file?

Suggestions for the Future:

One of the main features I thought was missing was an “a-historical” depiction of Governors. To tag this into Flydudes suggestion – Once serving Generals have reached a certain age and status (could be command stars but perhaps would be best to use Influence) they would be allocated a Goverorship and much like the regional governments being trialled in the M2 PBeM, they should have control over armies and recruitment – a certain independence from Rome as it were.

I could be wrong but from my knowledge of the workings of early to mid Rome, the Governors of regions were gifted a command by Rome and then left to their own devices. They fought wars and raised extra troops as they saw fit and Rome didn’t mind as long as:

1) they won
2) they kept the taxes flowing
3) trade wasn’t interrupted
4) the plebs didn’t get to unhappy about it

So, perhaps a system where the Consul has less direct power. The Senate would remain essentially the same as we have arranged but with the ability for generals to actively steer their careers towards Governorship where they’d have control over a full Roman army as well as a Region and its recruitment pool and the ability to start a fight with whom ever they want to get at I can see more pressure from those Generals against the Senate to promote their own agendas and to obtain the greatest glory and ultimately their own “Duchy”?

Devolving direct power away from the Consul will, at first, mean that the Consulship would be less attractive BUT as the game progresses (and workloads increase) this method will make it more attractive to players. Obviously, a Consul will have their own Governorship to run and will issue general orders to the Governors (much like the M2 PBeM) but as he’s not physically having to control build queues, set taxes, recruit forces, control populations or borders etc the work load will be significantly less whilst he’d still retain the honour involved.

Of course, some form of Rules system will have to be set in place to prevent Governors becoming too bold but we’d have to sit down and talk the mechanics through in more detail.

We have a historical base for a better campaign than the M2 version. After all, the HRE was chosen due to its similarities to a Roman basis and I think there’s a future for a Rome campaign again using the best from both systems.

The other issue we really need to address to make such a system work is Player-vs-Player battles.

Whilst the Ref’d system Econ used for the Civil War was ok I don’t think that anyone was completely happy with it. It put far too much work on Econ for one thing, the results were not representative of MP battles and if we are to use a system, as detailed above, where it is possible for Governors to initiate a Civil War as they please…then we need a solution to this issue where players have a chance to take part in full MP battles or have the option of a more expressive medium for the battles.

[Dutch_guy]

First of all I'd like to say this PBM was a very, very interesting and fun experience. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if something on this scale was never done before, and I'm absolutely sure it never happened here.

I too, have some comments on how the game worked out - although a lot has already been said by the previous posters...

And yes, I'm going to shamelessly borrow Econ's format too.

Worked very well:

Communication: obviously a very important part of a successful PBM is if the game proceeds in a fluent manner, no long period stalls and of low participation. I think we managed to keep this one running, and one thing which - amongst others - made this possible was the all around great interaction and communication between the characters. Econ PMing all of us was a good way to remind us what was going on, and in character PMing was also done quite frequently.

Lower House: from the mid- to the late game almost everything was exclusively done by these members. This quite small, select ?, didn't bog the game down but at the same time didn't make anyone feel un welcome - even though the senate floor wasn't always the best place to be after a fierce exchange of words...

The Senate: I think the senate feature, for lack of a better word, made the game to what is was. The concept was and is great, and something like it should definitely be included in the next major PBM. The entire procedure of going through the election of consuls, putting forward motions and voting for just about everything kept the game interesting and open for player (and Upper house) participation.


Worked fairly well

Upper House: It has been said already, but the Upper house wasn't all that great as the initial idea. Sure, in the beginning of the game Upper house did play an important part of the game. But eventually, when conquest started in earnest, the Upper house members had almost no say in the matter. They had no political leverage, as their characters often feel way behind when it came to influence. Which is a shame, because we lost a lot of people there. Not every Upper house member eventually made the transition to Lower house.

Army assignment: Since the consul basically decided which troops were made and who'd get them and when, the individual general was basically in the power of the consul. In theory not bad, but this could have been handled better by, as already mentioned, letting the generals (lower house members) decide, at least to a certain degree of historical accuracy, which unit to build, when and in what amount. This would require the consul to manage even more than he might have already, but it would add to the flavour.

Did not work well

The Mod: the modification itself was a god find, and I enjoyed playing it. But in my opinion it was quite hard to install, and I imagine a lot of people were scared of actually having to install such a quagmire of various different components. This could have gone a lot worse, in the end a lot of people managed to install it perfectly, but it did deter a lot of potential players. And was also the reason a lot of Upper house members didn't make the transition to Lower house.

Usage of individual cities In my opinion it would have been a nice addition to the PBM if we had assigned a city to each and every avatar to manage (not merely the upper house members). This would have created some sort of government system which the Romans also used, I would have liked to have seen something along the lines of a proconsul. A proconsul would have near total power of said district or city, managing troop production and building cues in his district or city(ies). This would relieve the consol of some tedious micro management, and at the same time force an avatar to participate in the game and check up on his city or district at times.

For future games:

We should definitely keep some sort of a senate, or some sort of other system in which each member of the game can have a say in the matter and put forward his ideas.

The Reign of a consul should be scaled down after each King or Consul. Say the first Reign 'd take 15 years, then the next should take 12.5, the next 10 and so forth. People lose interest in a game which seems to be taking ages and ages, when things start to turn tedious later in the game we should relieve the consul of his command earlier as to force participation and not having to burden the same person with idle micro management for too long a time. I realise this may get messy, so I do propose some sort of a minimum time a consul or King should reign. Needless to say, a consul or King should be able to refuse to step down and create an interesting civil war-esque situation.

In my opinion we should try more of a proconsular style of city management. I think this is sort of being tried / done in the trial M2TW PBM (HRE) ? An avatar should have the power to decide just about everything which happens in his district, to the limits of certain motions and Papal decrees - or something like that. More so, I think a King should decide how much funds are allocated to each city. This would encourage reasoning on the senate floor, and could create some spicy situations between certain factions on one side, and the King and his loyalists on the other.

Family should be more important than it was in tWotS. We shouldn't force players to work together with his or her family members, but at least a bit more interaction between them would be great.

Well, that's all for the moment.

[Tricky Lady]

Well, I haven't contributed to this PBM a lot, so I'll keep my post short.

I completely agree with the fact that the Upper House alienates the players a bit from the PBM. I found it difficult to roleplay my character, but that's probably also due to the fact that I didn't have any experience in any RP'ing whatsoever, plus the fact that my knowledge of Roman history and politics is very very limited, so sometimes I found myself a bit intimidated by the superb knowledge shown by other members. So I drifted away from this PBM slowly, even though I couldn't resist coming back to read the magnificent posts, and just enjoying the read.
Some silly computer problems (internet browser being unable to load posts with many images) made it almost impossible to read the battle reports or the first consul reports, so I eventually lost touch completely. And I never really got into the PBM again, which was a pity.

And now that I've come back to the Org after a couple of weeks, you have posted a post-mortem report, heh heh.

So this PBM was really great to be a (very very small) part of, and I do hope that you'll start another one. Hopefully one for RTW again, as I still haven't got the new game yet.

[Mount Suribachi]

Hmmm,so many thoughts

Good

The idea of having different characters fight their battles. This, more than anything kept the game fresh, and kept all the players interested, whereas a traditional PBEM, one tends to play their own reign, then forget about the game - or puts ones name down, gets bored waiting, and moves on and forgets about it

Bad as Flydude and others have mentioned, a handful of people fought the majority of battles as they had the characters at the start of the game. I like the idea of our senior generals becoming army group commanders as it were. My plan for both my co-consuls was to have them retire to governorships somewhere when their reigns were up except...

Bad Mount Suribachi fighting battles. I think I won 3 and lost 3, and got 2 consuls killed in the process! I don't know if econ, Flydude, DDW, Lucjan and TinCow lost 3 battles between them!

Bad the amount of work involved for a Consul once the game got going with all those provinces to manage, a ton of legislation from the Senate to obey, not to mention Generals constantly PM'ing you with their desires... :lol: I gotta be honest, I found it a bit of a chore. I'm not sure that the suggestions for giving players their own dukedoms will reduce this workload, if anything I can see it increasing their workload, as they seek to implement all the orders every turn. I don't like the idea of players having a "holiday", you need your hardcore PBEMers to keep the game driving forward. I do like the suggestion of reigns reducing in length as the game goes on. MTW2 has flexible time built in anyway, right?

Bad The early expansionism. To my mind, it made for a game of unrelenting fighting, as well as being unbecoming of the Roman Republic. Not only that, it meant that very quickly we became unbeatable as we had a solid power base. One reason why I fought tooth and nail against it. Grabbing rebel provinces at the start is too easy, almost cheesy, and makes Rome powerful quickly. Of course we weren't helped by the...

Bad Diplomatic AI. Playing on VH was a mistake, it just means the AI will attack you as soon as you border them and refuse any diplomatic overtures. I see there is a diplomacy mod for MTW2, I am curious to see it in action.

Good The Senate. Wonderful. Just remind me to always be on the side of Tincow - you're a lawyer in real life right? Not that it shows or anything....

Good The Civil War stories thread. A shame no-one thought to do one earlier, Braden is too talented a story-teller to be denied...

In conclusion I want to say several things. First of all, a huge thankyou to all of you who made this what it was. First and foremost is econ21, the heart and soul of the Throne Room - without your passion, drive, hard work, vision and commitment, this would never have happened. TinCow for being the Senate Librarian - a lot of work, as well as for me old mucker, Augustus Verginius. DDW for all his work as Senate Fixer getting us all up and running, and for running back to back Consulships when the game could have had a dangerous mid-life crisis. Braden for his ever entertaining vignettes, even if the torture ones are a bit scary in the "how does he know that?" way. Lucjan for the skillful way he manipulated us all to set up such a grand finale.

To all of you, including all the others I have not mentioned, for the roles you have played, big and small, a sincere, heartfelt thankyou. Senior Memberships all round!!

Secondly, I want to say this has been one of the most enthralling, exciting, entertaining, enlightening, enjoyable and memorable gaming experiences I've ever had - and this comes from someone who's been playing games since '82 on my Vic-20. Its been a priviledge and an honour to play just a small part in it

Finally I want to issue a warning. Yes, we should try to recreate what has made TWOTS special in future PBEMs, but we may never achieve it. We may take succesful elements from it to apply to future games, but we may never again combine the unique blend of factors that have made this such an outstanding success. We may find ourselves forever chasing our tails trying to recapture this vibe again. Savour it ladies and gentlemen, and remember it. I feel sorry for the rest of the forum that missed out on this. Shakespeare said it best

"We few, we happy few, we band of Senators;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And Orgahs everywhere now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here.."

[Lucjan]

Good The Civil War stories thread. A shame no-one thought to do one earlier,

*ahem*

Maybe I just didn't push it enough, but I started a thread for that sort of thing when ddw, gh and myself did the Servius/Marcellus/Oppius meeting.

Don't worry, we'll keep it going next time. So much more intrigue to play around with in the middle ages.

And thank you Mount for your praise. It's going to be hard to really grasp the feel of a new character after Servius was such an intrigueing little bugger. But I have faith I'll be able to come up with another good'n.

[econ21]

As a side note: I've just updated the measure of how many Senate voting sessions people participated (end & interim votes, plus the penultimate impeachment vote).

It comes out as:

DDW - 13
econ21 - 13
FLYdude -13
GeneralHankerchief - 13
TinCow - 13
Mount Suribachi - 12
Braden - 11
Tiberius - 11
Ignoramus - 10
Swordsmaster - 10
Tricky Lady - 9
Glaucus - 8
Dutch_guy - 7
Lucjan - 5
Wonderland - 4
Stonecold - 3
Tamur - 2

It may not be wholly accurate and anyway, the numbers obviously do not reflect the contribution of each participant.

I'm tempted to use the above list as the basis for a playlst for a M2TW "spiritual successor" to WotS, although I won't use it too mechanically. For example, Lucjan made an enormous contribution to WotS despite joining towards the end (in terms of number of votes); and also has done a lot trialling the M2TW game. It would also be invidious to exclude any newcomers. But the big killer of PBMs tends to be players dropping out, so I am inclined to give some preference when allocating HRE avatars to WotS players who were in the campaign at the end.

========================================================
Looking at people's replies, I'm inclined to think about the following changes to the WotS format for the coming HRE spiritual successor:

(a) As already mentioned, have a "stories" thread for in-character story-telling right from the start.

(b) Try to share out the battles more. People are not keen on my "leave idea". I know the FLYdude's "army group commander" and Braden's "regional governor" are more appealing solutions in character - it's just that out of character, I think they add complexity and detract from the simple unitary decision-making of the Consul/Chancellor. I'm tempted to leave these proposals as options for Chancellors to run with, but try to redraft my "leave" idea as saying that military appointments should be for 10 turns. This would both make it more politically significant to be "sacked" before your time is up; and also less objectionable to be "booted upstairs" or whereever if you have had a good innings.

(c) Reduce the 20 turn tenure of Consuls/Chancellors. I still think 20 turns is a good duration early on and am reluctant to mess with the time scale too much in the way Dutch_guy suggests because I think meetings of the Senate/Diet every 10 turns is a good interval. I suggest we switch to 10 turn tenures when the Empire gets large. How large is large? No idea. Let's say 20 provinces?

(d) We may need to think about "historical armies". Anyone know anything about historical HRE armies? (I can find out.) And in terms of mercenaries - perhaps we need to have a limit on them? Say 4 units per stack maximum?

(e) I agree with avatars managing cities up to a point. The HRE trial showed where that point can be passed, IMO. But I don't see a big problem with a governor setting his own taxes and build queue - once every 10 turns and with the Consul/Chancellor not obliged to build anything (but if he builds anything it must be the top item on the governor's build queue).

(f) To make families matter more, I'm wondering whether settlements should be allocated via families. ie the Emperor gives captured settlements to the senior family member and he gives them to his landless sons. That will keep things more dynastic and encourage familial bonding.

(g) Tricky_lady's point about threads with loads of images hits home. The battle reports thread got insane. Maybe we should switch to thumbnails? Plus I now know it's 30 posts to a page, so perhaps we can switch to shorter posts to turn the pages more often.

(h) On Mount's point about expansionism and rushing, it's a tricky balance to get right. Braden suggests we were cautious in our expansion. We undoubtedly reduced the challenge by expanding fairly rapidly at the beginning. But generally I think the pace of expansion may have been about right for the campaign. It turned out we only had a certain amount of time for the campaign (6 months) and we accomplished a fair amount, fighting almost all the major powers, although less than I had initially intended in setting the victory conditions. I think the issue of the speed of expansion is probably best resolved "politically" among the players in the Senate/Diet. HRE will have a lot more of a precarious position than Rome in RTR. But I know rushing can reduce a lot of the challenge.

(i) I would like us to "forget" about civil wars and player vs player battles. We'll have enough AI enemies. A multiplayer RTW campaign, with player vs player battles, is a very real option now that we have Myrddraal's MP script - it's what I used to get the Carthies moving for Servius. But it's not what I want to do as the successor to WotS. Let's have no discussion of this for at least another 6 months!