What is basically being proposed here is that TinCow act as a Games Master, kind of like a Dungeon Master for those of you familiar with Dungeons and Dragons. He will use the console and various in-game manipulations to mix things up. I will help with the lead up and act as an agency of restraint in case things get too hairy for people.

The Apollonia event in Will of the Senate that TC referred to was an instance of this kind of thing. We had passed a controversial law mandating an expedition from Italy to Apollonia, a city controlled by Greece. TC was the Consul (read Chancellor) and was opposed to the expedition for in character reasons, so he decided to obey the will of the Senate to the letter only. He despatched a very modest expedition which my avatar commanded. Initially, we thought it would be like marching into the lions' den, as the Greeks had multiple stacks wandering around. Unfortunately, RTWs strategic AI being what it was, it was more like marching into a lions' den where the lions are all tame, well fed and very sleepy. So what TC did was use the console to manipulate a large Greek army into attacking my modest garrison, giving me the fight of a lifetime.

The cool thing about this episode is that I believe no one apart from TC and I knew what he had done to manipulate the game to provide the challenge. We built the tension up around the episode, with TC as Consul organising a relief army to rescue the Apollonia garrions. It was a sort of Gordon of Khartoum episode and one of the more dramatic parts of the PBM. This is the battle report of the final battle of the expedition:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...2&postcount=11

Here, because we are proposing something of much wider significance in the game, we can't manipulate the game without you knowing. But we are asking that you allow us to take care of the details. We can use this thread to discuss possibilities, suggest ideas etc. We will listen and ideally steal the best ideas, but won't publicly commit to a specific plan. On Friday, I will ask you to vote yes or no to something like the proposal in my first post - essentially trust Tincow to sort out the details.

Don't feel compelled to vote yes just because you think other people want this. If you would rather stick with the rules we have been playing under, that is fair enough. It's just that now seems a good time to mix things up and TinCow is well positioned to do that for us.