Realistic ways to screw up you empire

[ray243]

In the history of all empires, there are always good and bad leaders. Some good leaders can build an empire that takes tons of bad emperors to tear it down, while others can build a very unstable empire that collapse easily.

In most campaigns, the player would hardly think of handicapping themselves to simulate how bad an Emperor could be. Hence, is there anything to make the campaign more realistic in RS 1.5 or RS 2?

Doing deliberate and stupid action to screw your empire up, so you can have a fun time maintaining your empire.

[Ybbon]

Build only cultural buildings and never upgrade the military ones. Set taxes to VH and leave a small garrison - that would cause the cities to rebel. Make an alliance and then attack that faction. Load your stacks onto ships and then send them into battle with every other navy you can find. Build stacks of wildly inappropriate troops and attack stacks you will always lose to - like lots of onagers and ballistas against a stack of HA? Send stacks off to attack wildly remote areas and then send the navy that transported them on a suicide mission. I would have thought it would be quite easy to ruin your empire very quickly?

[drazeN]

Simply put all of your attention towards 10-15 regions (where your emperor was born). Soon you will have large bag of trouble in front of your doors, you'll maybe even have to split your empire into two parts (western and eastern).

[ray243]

Build only cultural buildings and never upgrade the military ones. Set taxes to VH and leave a small garrison - that would cause the cities to rebel. Make an alliance and then attack that faction. Load your stacks onto ships and then send them into battle with every other navy you can find. Build stacks of wildly inappropriate troops and attack stacks you will always lose to - like lots of onagers and ballistas against a stack of HA? Send stacks off to attack wildly remote areas and then send the navy that transported them on a suicide mission. I would have thought it would be quite easy to ruin your empire very quickly?

But in a realistic manner. Like the mistakes a bad emperor will make unintentionally.

[Ybbon]

Yeah, sorry, I thought about that after posting.

Focus all builds on a few regions? Favouritism in other words so you foment rebellion elsewhere.
Send a large expeditionary force to somewhere far off? you'd annoy every faction you went through and start wars with pretty much everybody else? Make it large enough not to be wiped out immediately.
Try and start another East/West/North/South empire, when it is started, transfer your capital there? that would cause your original lands to get pretty upset?
Build lots of cultural buildings would be fairly realistic though. Races and Games in every city every day - you could be Commodus as depicted in Gladiator.

[King Nud]

you could simulate a corrupt emperor, simply hike up taxes in cities spread over your empire and BAM! rebellions all over

[dvk901]

Historically speaking, Emperors who screwed up the Empire were particularly bad because they focused all their attention on a few 'pet cities' and neglected the rest of the Empire. High taxes everywhere (except in your favored cities) and neglect elsewhere would do the trick. You could role-play this by setting taxes very high when the faction leader is a bad one (has bad traits), and then the opposite when he has good ones. Nero, for example, bankrupted the Empire with all his building projects in Rome while neglecting the rest of the Empire and taxing the crap out of it. Aurelian (I believe), on the otherhand, actually fixed a broken economy by lowering taxes and paying more attention to the whole Empire.

[Leeham991]

Based on my personal experience and that of modern leaders...

Do absolutely NOTHING for about 10-30 turns. End turn, read what you must, then end it again. It's a very sure way to make just about everything fall apart.

[ray243]

Too bad you can't build totally useless buildings that just waste the treasury of the empire.

The options to build buildings that has extremely little benefits in contrast to the extremely high cost.

Perhaps RS2 can give us that sort of buildings? Hell, some buildings that does NOTHING but decrease public order, such as the option to spend large amount of money on personal entertainment for the faction leader and the family member.


It would really help and change the game dynamics, making it fun to play as a giant empire, even when you are not facing enemy troops.

[Natachi]

I like what most have said, about favoring only certain cities.

In my current game as romans, only the starting cities, and then Croton and Taranteum.. for some reason I cant remember how it is spelled...
Anyways only these cities, and then what I consider "capital" cities where Legions are recruited receive special treatment, like advanced buildings and go beyond procouncil palace or whatever that 3rd government upgrade building is.

The surrounding cities are assigned to a legion city, so a legion city may be responsible for keeping 3-5 cities in line. So needless to say in a historical roleplay campaign I am in now, I have fallen behind about 50 years because sicily and spain have been a huge pain in my rear. Even Macedon has been troublesom.

But yes, hike up taxes to very high in settlements surrounding Legion cities and you can have a pretty fun time.

Another way to screw up intentionally in the game without ruining too much of your fun, would be to send in a legion to a slaughter. Like 3 full stacks of germans, and roleplay the battle of Teutoberg forrest. Even if you come out of it as a victor, youll have to return to home perhaps as a hero, but with a delayed campaign against those savages.

[dvk901]

Too bad you can't build totally useless buildings that just waste the treasury of the empire.

The options to build buildings that has extremely little benefits in contrast to the extremely high cost.

Perhaps RS2 can give us that sort of buildings? Hell, some buildings that does NOTHING but decrease public order, such as the option to spend large amount of money on personal entertainment for the faction leader and the family member.


It would really help and change the game dynamics, making it fun to play as a giant empire, even when you are not facing enemy troops.

That is an astoundingly good idea. It just gave me an idea to at least try to simulate some of this 'useless' spending. For example, the Emperors were good at trying to 'out-do' each other when it came to building 'baths'.....each one buildings greater, larger, more lavish examples. Sure, they made people happy...and they surely offered a health benefit to the people, but they were extremely costly...

[ray243]

That is an astoundingly good idea. It just gave me an idea to at least try to simulate some of this 'useless' spending. For example, the Emperors were good at trying to 'out-do' each other when it came to building 'baths'.....each one buildings greater, larger, more lavish examples. Sure, they made people happy...and they surely offered a health benefit to the people, but they were extremely costly...

Well, it would be nice to see it in RS 2. The only thing I fear is the AI keep trying to build those useless buildings.

[Killerbee]

That is an astoundingly good idea. It just gave me an idea to at least try to simulate some of this 'useless' spending. For example, the Emperors were good at trying to 'out-do' each other when it came to building 'baths'.....each one buildings greater, larger, more lavish examples. Sure, they made people happy...and they surely offered a health benefit to the people, but they were extremely costly...

Could be done with a script that appears randomly :

The other dude has better baths ! make newer ones to beat him !
Click show me how button to spend 50.000 denarii

Could be fun ...

[Companion Cavalry]

Use RomeShell to switch with another faction and let the AI run your empire for a few years.

[apple]

Use RomeShell to switch with another faction and let the AI run your empire for a few years.

Can you do that? How?

[Tombl]

Use RomeShell to switch with another faction and let the AI run your empire for a few years.

OMG how?

[Enyalius]

OMG how?

there is supposed to be some "control" cheat allthough ive never goten it to work it just showes up the same error message as when you misspell any other cheat.
It would be a cool way to screw up your empire if anybody knows how it works and what excactly to type in romeshell.. please do tell..

[Bob Bobinson]

control <value> - Switch player control to specified faction; old faction may not act correctly as AI faction

That's all I managed to find.

[chaplain118]

Pack up all your armies and invade the strongest neighboring nation. Do nothing when they start invading your borders because all of your other armies are away.

[ray243]

Well, you can always 'simulate' a massive and destructive civil wars by using the console to decrease your population size, demolish buildings and and disband your armies.