PBM Campaign BI.

[Dutch_guy]

I tried to start one for MTW, to no avail. So now I'm trying to start one for RTW BI

Anyhow , would anyone be interested in a PBM ( play by mail ) campaign ?

For those who haven't heard of this PBM thingy, this is in short what it is , and how one could make it work:

* playing a pbm is just like playing a regular campaign , only in shorter sessions, each player plays the campaing for a ( to be decided ) length of time, be it 10 years , 20 , or an intire kings/emperor's life.

* each player saves his campaign when his ''time'' is over, and then copies the save file to then send it to the next player in line.
He in turn pasts the save file into the save file directory, and continues the campaign.

Everyone who has the game can participate.

Faction, difficulty, play time, strategy must all be decided with the pbm group/players.

After each player's reign, a write up must be done, meaning one must write and post the highlights (sp?) of his or her reign, for all to see.
Posting screenies would be even better.

Now if that is the sole reason you wouldn't want to participate, we can ofcourse discuss this.

Now , an unmodded version is requiered, now I don't know if minor changes like making certain factions playable is allowed, but even if that causes problems , I'm sure everyone has made a backup of his or her descr.strat file

So , any questions concerning this PMB campaign can be posted in this thread or sent to me by pm.

Also for a little more information on how to pbm and all , check this link:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=30871

( yes we have a thing called throne room at the guild :D).

cheers.

EDIT : to the mods, please don't move this thread immediatly, since it concerns BI ,and more people can / will respond to it if the thread stays in the colosseum ~

EDIT 2 : To read all the right ups ( after action reports ) of this pbm , check this link:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=55882

EDIT 3 :

this is the order in which we are playing, this list is subject to change everytime another player wishes to join.


TinCow
Simon Appleton
Tibilicus
Destroyer of Hope
Littlegannon

[TinCow]

Count me in. I loved reading the MTW games and I would be happy to participate in a BI game with good write-ups and screenshots.

[Dutch_guy]

Ok , great!

now, we'll discuss the details of the pbm once everyone-who would like to particpate - is accounted for.

[Kraxis]

Every time I played this for MTW it was a blast.

But sadly I have already got a well modded game. It is hardly different from yours, but it contains both the BUG-fixer and the horde mod and of course a few of my own little fixes and tweaks.

I think if you are going for 'Ruler's life' then you need to be a civilized faction, preferably the WRE and ERE as they have a very hard time expanding fast and have the highest requirements.
If you pick a barbarian faction then it would have to be the less immersive 'X years' version.

By playing 'Ruler's life' then each player can easily keep track and get him to his man. Roleplaying him and so on, that also makes it so much easier to write the history of his life.

[Dutch_guy]

yes , that's true .

but a ruler can live to be ( in extreme cases ) over 100 years , so it can take a while for each player to end his reign ( + write up ), well you get the point.

The idea of the role-playing you faction leader is good, and will make for a very nice pbm and write up, so it is definatly an idea.

However , the reign period of each player is open for discussion

And to bad you can't play Kraxis, thanks for the input though.

[Kraxis]

That is the trouble with that system. And time in BI is rather a lot less than the previous games.

Anyway, the two rulers of the Roman Empire are if I'm not mistaken already fairly advanced in age. Then you only need to give an older family member the trait as Heir, thus each ruler might get 20 years at best.
Btw, I haven't experienced any of those silly 100 year olds or anything close to that. Most of mine die off before 70.

[CountMRVHS]

I'd love to try this! Currently doing one with MTW:VI that works a little differently: we use the -ian code to switch factions. There's 3 of us: I play the Irish for 5 turns, then switch to the Picts and mail it to the guy who plays the Picts for 5 turns, then he switches to the Welsh and mails it to the Welsh guy, who mails it back to me. It's tons of fun and you get to compete against a *human* in strategic terms .... of course, the battles you fight are all against the AI.

But a more "straightforward," "sharing" kind of game is fun too. I did one as the Spanish in MTW before it got dropped.

I like the idea of playing for an entire king's lifetime. However, with 2 turns per year, this might take a long time, and not everybody gets to play all that often. My wife & i are trying to cut back to a couple of hours during the week (we play more on weekends, though) -- it's an addiction, man!

Anyway, that said, it would be fun to "roleplay" for an entire ruler's lifetime, if everyone didn't mind having to wait a few days or a week or so to get the game.

I'd suggest the ERE as the faction. They're probably the easier of the 2 Roman factions, but will be in the middle of the action so it won't be "boring" for anyone. Lots of opportunities for expansionists or those who prefer to turtle. Plus, you'd have the decision Byzantine Emperors had to make: focus on the East, or the Western front?

I play on H/H right now but am certainly having an interesting time.... I am flexible on the difficulty level, at any rate.

Keep us posted! Sounds fun,

CountMRVHS

[econ21]

I'm up for this!

A few observations/personal preferences:

- For it to be really fun, participants really should commit to write up their experience in a characterful way and to take screenshots. (I confess I did not do this in the last PBM as Pontus).

- A reign is way too long for a RTW PBM. I think 10 years is enough - that's 20 turns, more than enough to have some fun. Plus if you are writing an account of your experience, even 20 years is a lot to keep track of.

- I think we should use player1's bug-fixer and probably also quick-save/quick-reload after every turn to help sea-born AI factions (Celts, Saxons etc)

- I would prefer VH campaigns for a challenge and M battles for a historical "feel".

- I think "large" units is probably best too.

- I think WRE would be a fun faction to play, but would need an experienced player for the first 10 years. However, any faction should be interesting.

- In the unlikely event this call generates a lot of interest, we could have multiple PBMs going at the same time. A race between a WRE team and ERE team to see who can win by the earliest date sounds fun, for example.

[Jambo]

Cool idea! Unfortunately, reign of a King is probably too long for BI - unless that is, you mod the end date! ;)

One could ensure that the heir is always the oldest family member thereby shortening the likely reign time? Plus Kings will get killed and so some will have short reigns...!

I'd recommend the Bug Fixer, the horde mod (Alemanni, Saxons and Celts can all horde) and playing as Simon suggested at VH/M for the tough, but immersive feel.

[Dutch_guy]

ok so now the following people are in :

TinCow
CountMRVHS
Simon Appleton
ChaosLord

And Jambo would you like to play too ?

so the following has been decided upon I presume :

-player reign, I have to say I liked Simon's idea best , a 10 year reign.
-difficulty : vh (camp.map ) h /m ( battles ).
-unit scale: large
-faction , either WRE, ER, probably ERE (?). , other sugestions concerning factions are welcome too,
-bug-fixer , which I myself do not have, though I could get it if the majority of the group has it , or decides to play with it.

Some other stuff that needs deciding on :

-will we play with fog of war on ?
-Follow Ai characters on/off ?
-Time limit ?

anyway ,I'll get back to this thread later on-it's getting late over here - and with a little luck we could start the pmb tomorrow.
We'll probably play in order of the list made at the top of this post, though if anyone really wants to play first , second or last, the line up can be altered.

[ChaosLord]

I'm in, though I propose instead of writing things up as the king/emperor/grand whatever, we do it as an advisor. We can say the ruler is advised(controlled) by a council of advisors, and a new Head Advisor(the player) is picked by the council every 10 years. To represent this, we can train a Diplomat/Spy/Assassin in game and have them serve as the players piece instead of the ruler. Since Agents can acompany ships/armies/etc... it would work fine and add a more personal feel to the writeups. It also allows a realistic chance for death or assassination unlike playing as the ruler.

The player stepping down would just start a new Diplomat/Spy/Assassin(agent type left up player taking over) training in the capitol at the end of the turn, and that characters name can serve. The first to go will just choose from the starting agents. What does everyone think of that?

Also i'd prefer to play a barbarian civ, WRE/ERE/Sassinids seem too easy after the intial hurdle of finances and rebels. In particular I think the Alemanni could be fun, with the goal to unite all the Germanic tribes under their rule(defeat them completely, hordes and all) before fulfilling the other victory conditions. Alternatively playing the Celts and trying to reclaim all their former lands could be lots of fun too.

[TinCow]

I agree with the 10 year (20 turn) limit. Do we really need Medium difficulty battles though? The only challenge I've ever gotten is on VH. It would be nice if a few 'reigns' suffered the occasional defeat.

[Jambo]

Hard battle difficulty is quite a good compromise. It affords a tougher battle without completely off-setting the stone paper scissors aspects too greatly.

[Kraxis]

If the Bug-fixer and hordes mod are used then I can join. My own changes are mainly stuff that would affect my game and would have no impact on any savegames.

[CountMRVHS]

Hmm. I don't have any mods installed, and don't know what they do....

also, for the save/reload every turn, I haven't noticed the AI having trouble with naval transport in BI. I've noticed it in RTW 1.3 for the Roman factions, but nobody else. But the Celts were able to get to the mainland in my vanilla campaign no problem.

I play with Fog of War on; don't even know how to switch that but I guess someone could tell me if we insisted. I'd prefer to keep it on though, to keep us guessing.

The only modification I've done to BI is making the Celts and Berbers playable. Something I could easily switch back if it's a problem, but I doubt it would be.

The 10 year/20 turn thing seems fine & realistic to me. Probably would take too long to do an entire ruler's reign.

I look forward to doing the write-ups, but I've never posted screenshots (or even *taken* screenshots in RTW), so someone would have to help teach me how to do that.

Also, ChaosLord, are you suggesting we just write from the point of view of a particular agent? That sounds interesting, but some people might prefer to do a more omniscient summary of how things went. What if my diplomat character was half the world away from a battle I really wanted to describe in detail?

Factions: I can be persuaded any way. ERE seems like it would be a bit easier, but we've got to remember that we're all probably at different levels playing this game, so you might inherit a very difficult situation from the last player! Of course, that's part of what keeps it fun. That said, if we're playing something like VH/H, some veterans might feel it would be best to go for the WRE to keep it more challenging, if they're used to VH battles. I'm a little scared of going to VH campaign myself, but ready for the challenge . Anyway, my vote would be for ERE at this point, but I will gladly go along with what the majority wants to do.

CountMRVHS

[ChaosLord]

Not as the agent just as the diplomat/spy/assassin, but as the agent partly and head advisor that pretty much controls the ruler. The idea is that the council is made up of the influential people that are on the edges/behind the
shadows or it could be the elders/nobility/etc... Its open to interpretation.

I'm not suggesting everyone write this way, but this does give people a character of their own to control unlike the ruler who will end up controlled by many. There is also the ability for said character to die by assassination and such. Adds some mortality and chance to the players game that was there in MTW, but can't be done in RTW because of the 2 turns per year making playing as the ruler too long.

I proposed this also because more then one people describing things from like the heirs/rulers/X generals point of view could make them start to look schitzophrenic.

[Dutch_guy]

@ Kraxis:

Well the bug-fixer has been dicided upon, we wil install that ( for those , like me who don't have it yet ).
The all can horde mod , I don't have , and I don't know who else has it.

I think we should just go for bug-fixer.

further more , I would say lpay the game at : Vh ( campaign ) and H battles , this is what I normally do, and should provide a good challenge.

@CountMRVHS:

I , at the moment , don't have any mods installed on bi too, only just like you made some factions playable.
But installing the bug-fixer, shouldn't be much of a problem.

Also, I think for the screenshots ( for the write up ) fog of war should be off.

Screenshots you take by pressing print screen, then alt tabbing out of the game, open paint, past, then you'll see you shot , then save as a .jpg file.
Then upload it to image-shack , or photobucket , to make it possible to post them here

@ChaosLord:

your suggestion for the write up is a good one, though I don't know if I'm going to do it that way, you ofcourse are welcome to do it, and if it enhances the write up, we could all switch

At all of the players;

Which faction is still the most important question at the moment.

As a civilised faction I would say ERE.
FOr barbarian faction I would say Franks , Saxons.

If the faction is decided , and the yes or no to the bug-fixer mod , then we're good to go
And I could start the pbm today.

[Kekvit Irae]

Since this thread has gained quite a bit of popularity while in the Colosseum, I will move it now to the MP forums.

EDIT: Mah English R gud

[TinCow]

I agree with Fog of War off for screenshots, but on for gameplay. For those that don't know how, you can toggle it by bringing down the console with the ~ key and then typing "toggle_fow" (w/o quotes). Do it again and it will be turned back on.

As for mods, I will use whatever you want.

[CountMRVHS]

@Tin Cow - good compromise for Fog of War. I'll probably leave it on most of the time while I'm playing then take it off for a screenshot to pass along at the end of my turn.

@ChaosLord - ok, I get it. Sounds like a good idea, I may try this writing perspective. You're right about everyone writing from the same ruler's POV - would get odd.



Alright, I'll see about getting the BugFixer mod. If it's too big I worry .... I'm on dialup you see, so it may take some doing.

Everything else sounds good. I'm still for the ERE .

Oh, where do we post our write-ups?

Looking forward to this!

CountMRVHS

[Dutch_guy]

Ok, so bugfixer it is

I too , am still for the ERE, could provdide a challenge - expansoin wise - and a challenge for the turtle style players- those who wish to fight the horde(s).

The posting of the write ups... I think we should at first post them in the colosseum , like this thread, that is , if that's Ok with the mods ?
To get some attention for the whole concept of pmbing.

Ok, I'm of to download the bug-fixer mod,and after that , I guess we can start ?

Il post in this thread once I'm starting, so everyone can still post his or her sugestions concerning factions, strategy ,expansion et all.

[econ21]

I've asked Rob to move this to the Throne Room, as that's the forum dedicated to PBMs. I suggest Dutch_guy start a new thread in the Throne Room for write-ups of the campaign and that no one post in that thread unless it is to post a write-up. We can keep this thread for the administration of the game, so that readers don't have to wade through out of character stuff.

On the writing style, I think we should leave that to each individual's creativity. There's been some wonderfully off-beat perspectives in the past - I still remember Demon of Light's write-up of an Almohad campaign as a history teacher giving a short lesson to students about how boring the reign of Demon's king was.

I think ERE is fine, so starting today would be ok. Strike while the iron is hot. The problem with PBMs in the past has been that people sign up for them and then find they don't get the time, then the momentum dies out.

It would be good if this game has someone who undertakes to coordinate the logistics and make tough decisions if necessary (eg about who's next in line to play). I nominate Dutch_guy as he initiated this idea. The key thing is to make sure the ball keeps rolling. I rather liked Kukrikhan's groundrule that the player post every two days just to confirm that they were still playing, otherwise the game moves on to the next player. We should use the Throne room uploader to store savegames. It's probably a good idea to have a "wake-up call" system, so that the next in-line person is alerted to confirm that they are still interested in playing. That can help ensure a smooth transition, rather than waiting around for players to show up and download the game.

If Dutch_guy does not want to take on that role, I can do it but it should not be an onerous job.

[CBR]

Throne room it is then.


CBR

[Dutch_guy]

Ok thanks for moving this thread CBR.

Some good ideas there Simon, I'll post a thread dedicated to this pmb campaign in the throne room.
And I'll update the thread every 2 days if there is no activity in the thread , while it's still active, thanks to Kukrikhan for that idea.

So, I'll start a ERE campaign today-as a matter of fact in a couple of minutes, and myabe send the file over to TinCow as soon as today.

We should pass the game on in the following order :

TinCow
CountMRVHS
Simon Appleton
ChaosLord
Tibilicus
Destroyer of Hope

after ChaosLord has completed his 10 year reign, you should send it back to me, or to any other player who has shown intrest in this campaign , and posted that he would like to play.

Everyone can join, you'll just be added to the list.

CountMRVHS

The bug-fixer mod is about 360kb, and will take about 10 seconds to load, even with a dialup

From now on , all write ups will be found in the throne room.

All other questions should be posted in this thread.

[TinCow]

Sounds good. I promise I'll finish both my turn and write-up promptly.

[Dutch_guy]

I've finished my reign.

it is now TinCow's turn, I stored the save file to the .org's throne room section you should be able to download it from this location :

http://www.totalwar.org/Downloads/Upload_Index.shtml

I'll start my write up as soon as possible, though I've taken a lot of screenshots , so the entire write up may take me a while.

I'll make sure it's finished by the time TinCow wants to do his write up

[TinCow]

I'll d/l the save when I get home from work and I should be able to finish it tonight, unless there are some ridiculously long battles. What's the battle time limit set at?

[Dutch_guy]

Depends what kind of battles and how big heh armies are.

So in sieges you'll get aprox. 45 minutes and field battles 30 - 45 , maybe more in some cases.

You should be able to finish every battle with lot's of minutes left.

[tibilicus]

If it's not to late I would like to get invloved. Also over at my clan site (link is in sig) we are hoping to run a series of PBM campaigns from there.If interested check it out. Just a note MSN is required for are clan PBM as we obiously don't have the file hosting capabilities but the file is only a very very small one. Any way on topic.Once again if it's not to late I would like to get involved.
Tibilicus

[Dutch_guy]

ok, I'll add you to the list Tibilicus, good to have you onboard

ChaosLord should be the one to send you the game.