Hard-coded senate missions

[Monkwarrior]

This post from ER reminds me the doubts I have for a long time about the senate missions.

No, the Senate missions are for each Roman faction independently. The first ones are hard-coded (Segesta, Apollonia, Syracuse) and the rest are determined based on the progress made by the faction. To take an extreme example, if you mod the game to start the Julii off in the Steppe, the first mission you might get will be to take the Chersonnees.

Do you mean that in that case the first mission for the Julii won't be Segesta?
Will it be another objective due to the distance?
Even in that case, must Segesta be in the map?
What would happen with a campaign with only senate and julii? Should Apollonia and Syracuse be also in the map?

[Epistolary Richard]

Ah... I was perhaps a little confusing (or more likely confused). As far as I am aware, there must be settlements with an internal game name of Segesta, Rome, Apollonia and Syracuse (though what the visible name is is whatever you want).

The first senate missions are hard-coded to those settlements, when I said mod the game to start the Julii off in the Steppe I was thinking of the Totally Random Total War mod which - due to the pecularities of the way it works - means that for the Julii alone it ignores the hardcoded Senate mission. So in that case the first Senate mission was for Chersonesos.



If you just modded it normally then the first mission would be for Segesta (I believe), though subsequent missions would be based on your actual physical location.
.

[Monkwarrior]

GREAT!
I've modified my campaign and... it works!

Remember that it is a campaign with a small portion of the map for the imperial_campaign, with different regions. I've "hidden" Segesta and Apollonia (Syracuse was already in the map).
Now the Senate is in Rome city and the Julii is the only roman faction (brutii and scipii are not present, either in the original form or modified).
I've played around ten turns with 5 different missions: 2 conquest of cities (Genua, the hidden Segesta, and Volcei), 2 for information of other two factions and 1 for a commercial agreement.

The only problem is that those missions are too much easy, but I will modify descr_strat and other files to make them harder.

P.S.: I will also try to hide Segesta far away from Italy, just to see which is the first mission.

[Monkwarrior]

Perhaps the map is too small, because the first mission is always "hidden-Segesta", even if it is in the furthest corner (Tingi in Africa).
It is even impossible to arrive there at time. But it is curious that after failing this first mission, the second one is another conquest, in this case Volcei.

[Epistolary Richard]

That's in line with expectations, the first Julii mission is always for Segesta. The only way to stop this - and the way that Totally Random does it - is to run a declare_prologue command in your campaign script for a few seconds. That supresses the hardcoded mission, so you get your first Senate mission after a couple of turns, and that mission will vary as to your location.