SPQR help guide
Okay i'm starting this tab for all those questions that come up time and time again
Alot of people have come on the forum and asked about civil order and the reforms and dealing with elephants (that's my one).
First of all the download of SPQR is here, but i recommend that you read the posts that are before it
This is meant to be a summary of the info contained in many of the threads.
If any one has any suggestions or disagrees with what i've said post, and i'll add it to the first post in this thread.
The first port of call should be the FAQ & Installation, troubleshooting by Hesus de bodemloze and czePowerslave, as this is more for in-game questions.
Okay so here goes;
1-Dealing with elephants
This is actually easier than it seems, Velites or other skirmishers (ie; peltast mercs) are the best units for taking those beasts down. What you need to do is place your velites behind the first or second line with skirmish, guard, and fire at will turned OFF. Then by micro-managing your velites wait unitil the elephants get close enough and then target them with your velites. All things going well they will die before having a chance to do any serious damage.
Take a look at this thread for the detailed disscusion Elephants
2-Maintaining civil order
In SPQR foriegn buildings especially temples and military buildings give negative impacts on maintaining civil order, so destroying these buildings will definativly help. A large garrison is also a good way of maintaining civil order (thankfully town watch and urban cohorts are fairly cheap). Finally bringing in a general to govern the settlement always helps - but try to save your best characters (those with a good influence and (hopefully) loyalty) for the distant and troublesome areas.
generals can be recruited within Italy and are generally good enough for those areas but don't usually have the traits and influnce to keep order high in those distant areas - so make sure to use your 'proper' family members.
take a look at this thread for more info Public Order in highly populated cities - how to keep it high?
This post also nicely summarises many of the points
3-Reforms
In SPQR 7.0 the marian reforms will only take place once all of Carthages starting settlements have been taken - Carthage doesn't need to be destroyed but they can't have any of their starting settlements.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
your looking for the area in white.
Further more all of these areas must have been upgraded to a huge city - so there must be an imperial palace (Rome) or a Royal Palace (Carthage).
This is also covered in the FAQ & Installation, troubleshooting
it was also recently discussed as to the specifics on how to trigger the reforms, and it has been asked by LT (SPQR creator) that it doesn't get told to others - so if you look at exactly how to trigger the reforms, then please don't share it here on the forum as some of us quite like being slightly unsure.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
4-Playing a non-Roman Faction
This is a debated one here on the forum, SPQR is designed specifically as a Roman campaign and many of the methods used to make this such a challenging and fun game means that the other nations are balanced horribly. There is an add-on so the Senate is playable but other than that the other nations are no no's as far as a full campaign is concerned.
However many players like to have a play with them as some fun (nice to lead some differnent troops from time to time) or do some recognisance on the enermy.
5-Surviving the start
Well there's a few dedicated threads to this and i'd reconmend Hesus' (the top one) but i've added as many of the others as i could find for completion.
SPQR guide : How to survive the first fifteen turns.
Lucky Seven Guide: Alternate Approach to Establishing a Republic
Roman Clone's Guide to The First Turn
Guide to Defeat Hannibal
This ones not so much for the start, but it's a great thread about tactics so i'm including it anyway
SPQR Guide: Battle Tactics & Formations
Now i know there a few more but i can't find the threads at the moment, if any one knows them please tell me and i'll add them.
6-Contionous attacks
This is another wonderful feature of SPQR but admittedly can get a little draining sometimes. The AI will attack you if you have a shared boarder and it thinks you are a little weak. Of course with the zero turn recriutment in SPQR the AI can produce troops very quickly and so it takes little time to replenish losses and think you are weak again. This means that if you wish to stop the repeated attacks you need to build up you strength on your boarders - the more legions the better.
Early on in the game you should find 4 or 5 legions enough to stop gaul along the Po river (the river just north of Genoa), as long as you've got some troops elsewhere.
An alternative method used by a few of our players is the forced diplomacy script, however this is only a tempory solution (we're talking 2 or 3 turns max usually) because as soon as the AI has rebuilt it's strength and thinks your weak again...
take a look in the files section of the FAQ & Installation, troubleshooting if your interested.
7-Peasants
These have been provided by LT to make it easier to maintain manpower in certain settlements - at some point in your campaign you'll find yourself getting attacked repeatedly and the closest city will start to get a little depleated of people. This is where the peasants come in, as they are extremely cheap to recruit and maintain they are indeal for taking men from one city to another without wasting to much money - thus icreasing the manpower of the depleated city.
Don't use them for battle though, no matter how despeate you are they will do nothing except die!
8-Share your Rome
We love nothing more than logging on and hearing about you stories and there are a couple of great places to do it.
Post your Empire, share your stories! [SPQR 7.0]
this is a great thread if you've just had a fabious battle or just want to give an up-date on your campaign.
Famous Battle's, okay this is pretty much the same as the last thread but is for battle's more specifically - whilst many people do post battle reports in the last thread this is for those true epics, such as finally driving Carthage out of Italy or destroying Greece once and for all!
SPQR nice screenshots
and this is the best place if you just found a stuning screenshot. Have a look at these for an exampleSpoiler Alert, click show to read:
Kill Thread
most of us use the kill sheet to keep track of the statistics of our campaign and this thread was created to keep track of them (or boast about them-lol).
or alternativly you could start an AAR (after action report - basically a little story of you campaign) and this is the place to do it Rome: Total War After Action Reports just make sure that you PM Hesus so he can add you AAR to the index list.
Another place that was created for random talk and anything that comes up in a thread thats out of topic was the Side Topic's thread although this never really got going there may, (or may not) be some interesting stuff in there.
9-Killsheet
This is a great little feature once you've got the hang of it.
The best thread on this is Garnier's Killsheet and Legion Tracking V2.0 ,however this is a slightly different killsheet that works best with Sulla's ancilary add-on (in the files section of the FAQ & Installation, troubleshooting).
First of all you'll find the kill sheet in C/"Your installation"/SPQR_Readme, and it's named SPQR7.0 Kill Sheet.
When you open it up it looks quite baffaling, but it's split into 3 main sections.-there's the campaign info and the graph at the top (1)(1)-This bit doesn't need much work, but gives most of the interesting info. The graph gives a relative display of each factions casulties (caused in battles with Rome) so the higher the column the more casulties that faction has taken.
-there's the battle records down the bottom (2)
-and finally there are legion performance sheets on the tabs (3)
(2)-This is the most confusing bit, and is explained well in Garnier's thread, but i'll try and summarise.
The first box is date of battle and the second box is the legion number (only relavant after the reforms or if your playing with Sulla's add-on), ie; XI.
After this is the box where you put the casualties Rome took. The next box contains an automatic formula, so do not enter number in it. Instead, enter enermy casualties in the boxes in the right part of the sheet, finding the correct nationality of the troops you killed.
If for example you killed 2000 Gauls, enter 2000 under the column that says Gauls and the kill ratio, graph and the box with the automatic formula should automatically update.
(3)-The tabs take you to a sheet that records the total wins/losses of each legion simply find the legion number of the legion involved in the battle and note down the results of the battles
ie; XI has had 3 battles and made 2 wins and 1 loss all agaist the Gaul's, so you would note these numbers (2 and 1) in the Gaul column and XI row.
This is where Garnier's kill sheet differs to the one provided, it has an extra tab for pre-reform legions which are easiest to track with Sulla's Legate Ancillaries add-on.
i do recognmend taking 10 minutes looking at the Kill sheet because once you've figured it out it will become a favorite feature, that allows you to remember those past glories...lol
This is a more detailed explaination posted by Gauliez
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
10-Gladiators
In SPQR all three Gladiator types (Velite, Samnite and Mirmillo) are available, however they are only available in Capua - the starting capital - and each level of Arena, Amphitheatre and Colosseum allows another type to be used. The Gladiators are only available in Capua because this was historically an important place in the training of them (the best were considered to come from Capua)
11-The Script
This is a very important part of SPQR because it makes the game longer, more realistic and more challenging. It has been explained very well in the SPQR Index. It is important to remember to activate it EVERY time you load your game, as not doing so can lead to some strange problems.
This script provides garrisons for enermy settlements (creates a full stack of troops in the city when you besiege it - this represents the towns people rushing to defend the walls), be careful as the garrison can be quite effective and may require different tactics to what you may be used to.
The script also provides 4 turns per year instead of the original 2 - this helps make the movement amounts more realistic and give you and the AI much longer to attempt to win the game. It is this 4tpy (4 turns per play) script that can cause the problems if you forget to activate the script so be careful.
12-Dipolmats & Peace
In SPQR only the Roman faction has diplomats, it is sometimes possible to gain a white peace with some of the factions. I do however advise agaist this as it can lead to some fairly unexpected side effects - mainly not being able to attack them again.
This is due to how LT balanced the game to help keep many of the factions around, unlike in vanilla where it was quite possible for factions to get destroyed without you going anywhere near them. The game now treats them in a simular way to the Senate - something that has no effect at the game start because you start at war just about everyone.
So, you may ask what do i do if i have gotten that probmatic peace?
your best bet is to send a legion (or at least a decent sized army) into there lands and hope that they attack you. Something they may do - but there are no garentees. If the problem persites then you have two choices, ignore them until later or restart the game.
13-Multiplayer
For those interested in playing SPQR in Multiplayer, the following fix should allow you to do so:
Note: I typed out the steps very methodically so almost anyone could get it right, even if you know nothing about computers. If anyone has questions about any of the steps, feel free to message me here.
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Step 1.) One of the players involved needs to open their SPQR folder, and find the following file: [Your SPQR game folder] --> [Data] --> [World] --> [Maps] --> [Campaign] --> [Sons of Mars]
Step 2.) In the above folder, COPY the file named [ Map.rwm ].
Step 3.) PASTE the [ Map.rwm ] file you just copied into the following folders:
- [Base] (Inside the [Maps] folder)
- [Imperial Campaign] (in the [Campaign] folder)
- [Sons of Mars] (in the [Campaign] folder)
When you see a prompt saying: "This folder already contains a file named "Map.rwm" would you like to replace it? Click YES.
Step 4.) Once you have the same [Map.rwm] file in all 3 folders, go to your email service.
Step 5.) Compose an email to each of the players looking to fight you online. In the email, select "Attach File" to create an attachment.
When it prompts you for the file to attach, find the same directory you just copied the file from: [Your SPQR game folder] --> [Data] --> [World] --> [Maps] --> [Campaign] --> [Sons of Mars]
Select the [Map.rwm] file you just copied, and attach it to the email. (Then send it out. Duh.)
That does it for the sending player. The below is the process for those who get the email...
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For receiving users:
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Step 6.) Open the email and chose "Download Attachment".
Step 7.) Once you have downloaded it, open the folder you downloaded it to. COPY the file.
Step 8.) PASTE the [ Map.rwm ] file you just copied into the following folders:
- [Base] (Folder is located at: [Your SPQR game folder] --> [Data] --> [World] --> [Maps] --> [Base])
- [Imperial Campaign] (Folder is located at: [Your SPQR game folder] --> [Data] --> [World] --> [Maps] --> [Campaign] --> [Imperial Campaign])
- [Sons of Mars] (Folder is located at: [Your SPQR game folder] --> [Data] --> [World] --> [Maps] --> [Campaign] --> [Sons of Mars])
When you see a prompt saying: "This folder already contains a file named "Map.rwm" would you like to replace it? Click YES.
========================================================
After all players have completed the above steps, each of them should have an identical [Map.rwm] file in their [Base], [Imperial Campaign], and [Sons of Mars] folders.
Load up SPQR, and go to the Multiplayer lobby. You should now be able to play the mod.
Remember, 3 things are needed for this fix to work:
1. ALL players MUST have a clean RTW install, patched to RTW V.1.5
2. ALL players MUST have the SAME, EXACT, IDENTICAL, copy of SPQR running. (SPQR V.6 - v.6.4 - v.7, will not work together. Everyone must be the same!)
3. ALL players MUST have copied the SAME, EXACT, IDENTICAL, [Map.rwm] file into the [Base], [Imperial Campaign], and [Sons of Mars] folders. If that folder is not exactly the same for all players involved, and is not in all 3 of those folders, it will not work.
ENJOY!
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Well that's about all i could think of for the moment, hope that's helped
Raglan
Originally Posted by lt1956
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