Roleplaying Vices and Virtues

[Posantio of Umbria]

In total war, I atempt to do a bit of roleplaying, but I have found I'm not actually doing any roleplaying beyond the conduct of campaigns and the aplication of strategy in a historic way: Focussing on sieges over pitched battles and notions of chivalry etc. I only seldom roleplay the vices and virtues a Family member has. The vices and virtues are the food for true roleplaying, but I have found I avoid it because in some cases it can be limiting my chances of victory and success. If a FM has vices, I go out of my way to either negate them or to obtain some virtues.

However, I plan to start up a campaign today where I will try to act on FM's vices and virtues, whatever the result. The FM's will be handled on their personal traits first and foremost and I will not atempt to make them change their life for victory's sake, if they earn virtues, all the better, but I will act on vices and virtues the FM's have, not on what vices/virtues they may earn.

I will do stupid things with stupid family members, and intelligent things with intelligent ones. The greedy guys will set taxes at the highest level, regardless of social order so I will probably face more rebellions (likewise, philantropists will be moderate on tax-levels). I will autoresolve all battles led by incompetent/cowardly/drunk generals (and captains), because if I play them myself, I will be too competent and win what should be lost.

Does anyone else try to roleplay vices and virtues? How do you go about it? what is your approach? is it sensible to restrict roleplaying vices and virtues to a couple of key FM's or would you do this with all the FM's you get?

[Leaf-Fan-Forever]

It's an interesting idea, but I don't think I would have the patience to be constantly checking my Family Members traits and making decisions according to what they want. What happens when you have 20 to 30 FM's? If you can last a whole campaign then good for you.

[Xion]

i agree with the above post..interesting, but as your royal family grows larger, it'd be more of a nusiance..but if you can keep it going, good for you. I do a bit of rp'ing..assigning nobles to be Dukes,Counts, Earls, Baron of a province..basically, i have no real wandering standing army and have to summon the lords to fight under a chosen general.

[Silverheart]

While I do RP (makes the game a lot more fun), I don´t really go to that extent.
But I suppose - since we all have different imaginations - everyone roleplays a little differently...
Furthermore, I agree with the above posts - interesting, but annoying in the long run.

[Townsaver]

Im actually thinking ill be starting a new game, takign notes on what happens each turn on my laptop (ill be playing on my desktop) trying to watch all the moves of the enemies on their turn for completeness's sake, and writing it all up as an AAR.
It would be my first, tho.
I got to thinking about using this idea for it, and i like it.
I think, tho, since im not supreme at this game, that following it to that extent might well lead to my losing.
but alas, some empires never made it, maybe I wont.

I do have one thought, tho.
Auto-resolving might not me the best way to do it.
If you have a cowardly FM, thats not taken in to account in the AR.
So instead, play that out, keep him behind all your other troops, and well.. be stupid. it coudl be a lot of fun...

[Orihalco]

Im actually thinking ill be starting a new game, takign notes on what happens each turn on my laptop (ill be playing on my desktop) trying to watch all the moves of the enemies on their turn for completeness's sake, and writing it all up as an AAR.
It would be my first, tho.
I got to thinking about using this idea for it, and i like it.
I think, tho, since im not supreme at this game, that following it to that extent might well lead to my losing.
but alas, some empires never made it, maybe I wont.

I do have one thought, tho.
Auto-resolving might not me the best way to do it.
If you have a cowardly FM, thats not taken in to account in the AR.
So instead, play that out, keep him behind all your other troops, and well.. be stupid. it coudl be a lot of fun...

Your post is very interesting to me; one because you brought up the point of possibly failing, and two because of your idea of playing out the cowardly generals on the battle map.

The concept of losing brings up a pivotal question when it comes to history which is: how and why did some empires succeed while other failed? By acting out this RP in the game, perhaps a better understanding of the answer to this question could come about. Keep me up to date if you do an AAR anytime soon using this method!

[Scelesticfish]

I always end up sad if I roleplay too much. I kinda grow attached to the character and an saddened when he dies

[Litoralis]

I will autoresolve all battles led by incompetent/cowardly/drunk generals (and captains), because if I play them myself, I will be too competent and win what should be lost.

Does anyone else try to roleplay vices and virtues? How do you go about it? what is your approach? is it sensible to restrict roleplaying vices and virtues to a couple of key FM's or would you do this with all the FM's you get?

I almost always roleplay to an extent, although I generally make up my own vices and virtues rather than taking them exclusively from the character's actual in-game traits, although I do draw from the traits in game. I also give a prominent role to ancillaries in my characters' actions. I typically pick particular family members that I like more than others and use them more often and roleplay them more, so I basically restrict roleplaying to a couple of key FMs.

I don't think you need to autoresolve battles with drunken generals, etc. I would just try to play out those traits in battle. I do this, and I'll give an example, although this was in a campaign on Empire: TW instead of M2TW.

I had a general who was super overzealous and overconfident, to the extent that I would get him to essentially destroy my armies fighting uneven battle and costing me a fortune. However, once, when attacking Moscow, he was waiting for another stack to approach so we could take the city, which was heavily garrisoned and well defended. But then my general with one stack of about 5,000 troops (I was using Darthmod with bigger units) was attacked by three stacks of Russians amounting to 18,000 or more men . . .

And I hesitated, but thought, well, let's play this character out. This will be the end of him, but I'll make it a dramatic fight to the death; that's what this character would do. Instead of retreating to safety, I fought the battle, which was on a ford. Most of my units had lost 3/4 of their men and were in a constant state of "wavering" by the end of the battle, but miraculously I won... the Russians had only 2,000 troops left in the end (and I had 2,000 or so, as well). So, this overzealous general who had cost me loads of money killing off my armies in ridiculous battles, basically destroyed Russia with one battle...

So, just play out your characters. Leaving a real possibility of failure makes the game more exciting and fun. You never know what could happen.

[xjohnnywas]

I suppose that Pious Generals would build Churches whereas Drunkards and Sexual Libertines would build Taverns and Brothels.

Pious Generals probably likely to close the Inns which might prove a bit expensive and upset the constituency