Roman Leadership System

[Calvin]

Hi guys. For the past week I've been working on implementing Marcus Camillus' Roman Leadership system into the RS 2.0 beta. I finally succeeded, but now that it's done I have come to believe it is too fiddly and disorganised to stay as it is. I gave some of my ideas in the Beta forums, but I'd like to set out here exactly what it is I plan on doing.

The Original Leadership System

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Here we have Marcus Camillus' original Roman Leadership system. I personally got confused when I first looked at this diagram, so don't be discouraged if you don't quite get it straight away. As a system it works and is finely detailed, but there are some issues that I think should be dealt with.

• It is too military focused. The civil traits all depend on military service.
• The two legatus positions were pretty much the top of the Roman ladder apart from Consul. Considering RS 2.0 goes up to the Imperial era when Roman provincial governors held more clout than the Consuls, I think they should be top of the career ladders.
• Getting promoted from one rank to another is a fiddly business. To get from Tribune to Legate, the character needs to leave his army, then spend 3 turns in a settlement and then rejoin the army where he will be a Legate and get the Legion ancillary. When going from Legate to Praetor, he needs to give away his Legion ancillary and then spend 3 turns in a settlement and then return to a legion to become a Praetor and get a Field Army ancillary. If he does not get rid of the Legion ancillary first then he does not get promoted and he gains no more military service. It can be frustrating having to move legion ancillaries to tribunes who should not have them.
• The two temporary governor positions are far more difficult to get to work. In fact, I have only once successfully got a Legate to become a temporary governor, and I'm not even sure how it happened.

Calvin's Proposed Leadership System

Military Career

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Civil Career

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As you can see, the biggest change is that I will be splitting the system into two completely separate career paths, where it is up to the player to decide what route a character takes. Some points I'd like to make about the new system:

• Having two systems means each one is much simpler than the original with only one path to follow.
• I plan on making promotion as painless as possible by not requiring characters to need to be moved in and out of settlements to have their traits changed. I'm not yet sure if this is achievable but I have some ideas I'd like to run with in regards to it. Ideally, civil careers only need to stay in a city, and military careers only need to stay in the field.
• There will be one Consul spot open for both trees, so there will only be two Consuls at most.
• With only one Legion ancillary, I can make them for the named Legions, and in the order that they appear in game.
• Whereas before there were several ways to gain a Quaestor ancillary which could cause a lot of problems, now there is only one way. This should streamline it and make promotion etc a lot easier.
• The careers are more historically accurate.

That's it for now. I'd appreciate ideas and input

EDIT: In the beta forum dvk asked:

Another thing I want to ask you is, if this system is in place, do the Roman Governors, Proconsuls and Praetor Vicarius units become 'redundant'? Or what about the 'Emperor' unit. Do they fit into, or could they fit into the plan, or would they just be in the way? With the Senate gone, we kinda lose the whole 'Imperator' thing and all the offices, so I don't know. What do you think?

As far as I know, recruited generals are given traits the same as a family member so they could gain these levels too. I don't think it makes them redundant, but at the same time it does lessen the need for them. I leave any decision about what to do with them up to you. It depends on whether you want the player to have a governor in every single province, or more regionalised governors. With regards to the Emperor, I'm not sure. I never actually got far enough in a campaign to come across it so I need to know more about it. I am sure there could be room for it.

To answer another question, if I succeed with this I am confident similar things could be done for every culture.

[apple]

This sounds really great.
I think that most if not all players should be able to understand this, atleast with your easy to follow picture explanations.

[tone]

Yeah, this is looking great and I'm so glad you're taking the time to see it happen.


I wonder whether we couldn't somehow tie in some sort of script a bit like Julius Caesar crossing the rubicon that basically means that if you are a top ranking general you have to fight a scripted "senate" army and enter Rome to be made Emperor.

Another idea could be to have some sort of triumph thing for victories in the field ( a certain number of heroic victories or something being tied to advancement in the military)??

Just ideas....

[Calvin]

A triumph ancillary could easily be made. When it comes to scripting unfortunately I'm not your man, though I agree that having an actual event happen like that to confirm the arrival of Emperor would be a great feature.

[swhunter]

Very cool!
I understand it and I'm most people!
BTW will there be one for perg? and Sparta also ?
Or is it enough what we have?

[Calvin]

I'd like to get the Roman one working before I think about any other cultures. It can't be faction specific unfortunately, only culture specific. There could potentially be one for barbarian, greek, eastern, egyptian, carthaginian cultures.

[Father Jack]

It sounds excellent Calvin. The extra amount of depth this could give would really be a cherry on the top of the RS2 cake. Having it later expanded to other cultures would also be a great addition in the future. +rep

[swhunter]

Great work clavin rep!
BTW i love his books!

[rory o'kane]

personally, i wouldn't mind dropping the Roman Governors - i only use the mounted Generals any ways...

[MarcusTullius]

Fantastic work so far! Looking forward to the implementation!

[dvk901]

I am going to remove the Governor, the Proconsul and the Preator Vicarius, as I think the Roman Leadership system is more accurate, and will be easier to follow without a unit named something it isn't or can't be. The 'Emperor', however, I'll leave in, as I feel this is a pretty fun role-play unit, and hopefully can be worked into the system somehow.

[Calvin]

Oh how I despise triggers. Nothing confuses me like trait triggers.

[rory o'kane]

sounds good - any chance of replacing those Roman units with some others...?

[Calvin]

After a whole lot of testing, experimenting and confusing myself, I have come to the conclusion that the only way to cause promotions to happen is to have a character move into a city for one turn for military career and a character to move out of a city for one turn for civil career. The other ways I have tried...well...don't work to put it simply.

Although (thinking aloud and typing it out here), I could try and create a separate trait to act as a go between when getting promoted. So, I currently have just the Tribune trait, and I cannot have that going to former tribune without there being a difference like EndedInSettlement without former tribune negating the tribune trait straight away causing the character to be promoted to tribune, but demoted to former tribune in the same turn. I could try and create a Tribune_1 trait which the Tribune trait goes into. This would be a one turn trait and would mean that Former_Tribune does not interact at all with Tribune.

But then what is to stop Former_Tribune negating Tribune_1 the same was it currently does with Tribune?

*Goes round in circles in his head*

This may take me a while.

Edit: More thinking. Perhaps I should stop relying on time limit to cause the character to lose the Tribune status. After all, it makes sense for him to stay as a Tribune if he doesn't get promoted to Praetor straight away. I should try and use the actual promotion to Praetor itself to cause the demotion from Tribune. That way, instead of using EndedInSettlement to be the key difference, I could use IsGeneral. The Tribune should not be leading an army, he should be under a Praetor or Legatus Legionis. So to promote him once he has reach 10 years service, he would need to be given his own command. This would be more logical anyway. Now I just need to figure out the damn triggers to make this work.

[dvk901]

You are a born 'thinker', Calvin.

I like it...."if it doesn't work the way I want it to, make it do it anyway."

[Calvin]

Hah, thanks It's been a real brainstorming session in my head today. Spent hours trying different things and I'm still full of half formed ideas which need more thought. Sigh!

[Calvin]

Progress:

Senator added in. Every family member will be a Senator. Gives +1 influence.

Tribune working in game. However, Former Tribune isn't and I need to sort out the promotion process before it will be implemented.

Edit: Quaestor is in. I'm also trying to make it so that a character can be just a Tribune or Quaestor for 25 years. More complicated than I expected of course

[Calvin]

2 hours later:

I have had a WONDERFUL breakthrough. My original idea to make the promotions as easy as possible by not needing to move the character in and out of cities has happened Only for Student to Senator, but I can use the same formula for every other promotion. Fantastic!

Also, I have managed to make it so that a character does not have to be promoted, but can stay at a level for the rest of his military or civil service, and the clock will keep ticking. So you could have a Tribune who is older than the Praetor AND with more years military service if you disliked him, or just thought he was an awesome tribune or something.

Ahhhh...feels good to be making progress

[dvk901]

Great!!

[Calvin]

Too many hours later:

Hmm, where to begin. The good stuff. The military tree is virtually complete, I just need to get the Consul and that's that. I have the first two civil traits up and running.

The bad stuff. Well, it turns out that I can't have tribunes gaining military experience all the way up to 25 years. It has caused a bug which means that even if he does get promoted, he ends up becoming a tribune AGAIN at the same time he becomes a Legatus Legionis. There is probably a way around this, but I haven't found it yet. Another unexpected side effect is that while Praetor, he gets hidden Tribune bonuses...every turn. Eventually the game crashes because it can't handle more than 10 command stars. Obviously a way around that as well, in fact I know exactly what to do but I'm tired and my head really needs a rest from this.

Another very annoying bug is that for some reason, the second two kids that come of age have all the stuff that adoptions, marriages and man of the hours get - 4 years of civil and military service and being a senator. None of the other characters that come of age get it, just those two. I can't for the life of me figure it out - I haven't changed anything in the trait to make it do that, and I have gone over it with a fine tooth comb to see if there is a problem without avail. It has me completely stumped. Very annoying since they start their careers early and it is just messy since they're students at the same time. Grr.

Anyway, I'll leave all that for another day. Thanks for the encouragement guys.