Leadership Traits: drop it, improve it or expand it?

[Muizer]

RTR VII has a leadership trait system for the Roman faction. If you have experience playing with the system I'd like your feedback. Click the poll and leave a message!

Note: TWC requires a minimum post count before you can vote. If you get the message you cannot vote, feel free to reply with your vote. We'll include it in the tally somehow.

[Pico]

My vote goes to : Keep it, improve it.

I was actually thinking about leaving a post about that yesterday, coincidence (or providence)!

The leadership system is great, that's a no-brainer, but it requires some tweaks. My main complaint about it is that it becomes near unplayable when you reach 50-60+ regions. I just stopped my campaign after conquering Carthage due to that. Every turns I had over 6 young FMs running around with offices, trying to figure a way to order this complete chaos. At that point, I couldn't manage my office well enough, there was a downtime of at least 1 year (more like 3 if the FM was not in Italy/Sicily) to transfert offices.

Possible solutions: I'll give you a quick glance at two solutions which would improve the effiency of the system.

1) Add more cities that generate offices (example : Carthago, Syracuse and Roma for Africa, Sicily and Italy).
Each turn the system would cycle available offices from the nearest to the further city (Check Rome for elligible FMs then Syracuse then Carthago...). I'm not sure if at some points the system will become unbearable again, but that's a possible improvement.

2) Remove the distribution of offices at Roma.
Every time a FM enters a city, the system checks if he's elligible for an available office and if he leaves a city, he loses the title instantly. That way, it will still be possible to "choose" which office each FM gets. I understand it removes some depth but some changes are necessaries.

I would also suggest a small change. It would be nice if we could know how many offices of each type are available (in the description that appears when we put our hand over the "Control more than XX regions" traits of the faction leader could be a good place).

Apologizes if my post is not clear, I've done my best.

Once again, wonderful mod.

Pico

[BattlerBritain]

I like the idea of the Roman Leadership system but think it could be improved.

From what I've read (eg Adrian Goldsworthy's 'Roman Warfare' http://www.amazon.co.uk/Roman-Warfar...8129574&sr=8-1 ) a Consul had to be elected and could only hold office for a maximum of 2 years, and there were always 2 Consuls.

So I think you could expand the political system in the game (and use the Senate as well maybe?) to influence who gets voted in?

I also think the 'shell game' of moving the tokens of office around could be improved. I somehow think it would take a lot less than 2 years to send a scroll from Rome to Syracuse, so either speeding up the token transfer or directly allocating from Rome (with a short delay) may be better?

Just some ideas,

Keep up the good work,

Battler

[BattlerBritain]

PS Can't vote in the Poll as it says 'You may not vote on this poll'. Is it closed already?

[Finn]

I believe a minimum # of posts are needed in order to vote in a poll......25 I think.

[Muizer]

I believe a minimum # of posts are needed in order to vote in a poll......25 I think.

That's probably true. So much for a poll being a good means to gather feedback .

Anyway, the poll remains open indefinitely. If you cannot wait or don't feel like making that many posts on TWC , feel free to reply with your preference in this thread.

[Maurits]

Good initiative Muizer!

@Battler: just PM me your choice and I'll vote for you

[Teutomatos]

We knows that you make the best possible. Because the engine ...
But transfert of leadership, could be more intuitiv if it's possible, than a game in a game, like mail post juvénil's runners, across the empire.

[Maximus14]

@Teutomatos: that's actually an idea... any way to trigger diplomats to carry office appointments? Or are diplomat and FM "companions" hard coded to be incomparable?

[BattlerBritain]

Good initiative Muizer!

@Battler: just PM me your choice and I'll vote for you

Cheers Maurits, but my vote would be the same as most people seem to be voting anyway, so no worries

[Maurits]

Np Battler, just used my vote after a PM from someone else. I wouldn't want to influence the poll result myself, but like this my vote's still used in a good way.

[Maximus14]

First of all the mod is brilliant, thank you very much! Where others focus on a few nations, this one makes all of the ones I've tried so far tons of fun!

It's definitely a good idea and it ads a whole new depth to the game. I love the fact that you have to make more strategic decisions regarding where to send your consuls. Do I hold these guys down and attack Carthage with 2 armies or do I spread out? It also adds a bit more difficulty to the game, which I think is a good thing considering the inadequacy of the AI. I play on VH/VH and except for the opening battle as Rome, Epeiros is a pushover. In my experience Epeiros AI splits their army or shuts Pyrrhus up in some town all by himself (i beat romans time to retire??).

But back to leadership, I like the idea that aggressive armies have to be led by consuls. It's as if Senate did not give anyone else the "authority" to campaign aggressively, so the soldiers would now follow them. I'm in the process of rolling over Carthage right now so I haven't had my starting consuls die off yet, but it seems that their command ratings are a bit too high? How large is the consul command buff? I would turn it down, there were after all incompetent consuls (many many). I am all for the 'no office' limitations, but i think office benefits, especially consuls need to toned down. So not only the FM needs to have an office to be successful but he should also not be a total fool. I think, especially with lack of leadership system for other nations, Rome is too strong in that sense.

@BattlerBritain: I doubt it will be possible to make consul exchanges every 2 years, can you imagine running them back and fourth every 2 years? Plus wasn't it that they could not (with few exceptions) run again for office for something like 10 years? We'd run out of FM members. After Ceasar and even before (see Sulla), office holder system was losing it's power. So it would make sense to increase the number of consuls (perhaps they can be renamed?) once the empire got large. Also regarding Adrian Goldsworthy, Cannae: http://www.amazon.com/Cannae-Hanniba...8233981&sr=1-2 was pretty excellent, easy entertaining read. If you like history that is!

As far as dealing with a large empire, maybe "reforming" the system midway through the game is a possibility? Something to simulate the fall senate's power and Ceasar (or someone else in the game's case) taking control of the government. Trigger something like [x/x settlements in Gaul] & [x/x in Greece] & [Carthage defeated] & [year is past XXX] --> allow for more "aggressive generals", Masters of Horse or something. Clearly i haven't thought this part out

and once again awesome mod thank you!

[Muizer]

@Teutomatos: an essential part of the leadership system is that it poses restrictions on the use of family members (who is allowed command, and under what circumstances). That is at the top of our "realism" priority list. The flip side of this restriction is that we have to give the player enough control that he can ensure those officials are deployed effectively. In game terms, elections are the opposite: the game decides for you.

A totally different style of leadership system would be Vanilla's: It takes control over the offices away from the player, but the price to pay is that those offices cannot be made "essential" to the functioning of FM's.

Theoretically, a solution would be to have something like the "president elect" or an "incumbent", meaning the election and entering in office are some time apart, allowing the player to redeploy his FM's in anticipation of them entering office. But, at first glance it does not seem that would reduce the logistical burden, compared to the current situation. It would just explain the delay caused by transport better than "the appointment is underway".

[Teutomatos]

Thx Miuizer for answers.
But i've dreaming or i ve seen an elected annual vote system in a TW games ?

[Muizer]

Thx Miuizer for answers.
But i've dreaming or i ve seen an elected annual vote system in a TW games ?

The only one I know is in the original RTW. But as said, those offices do not come with restrictions on what they can or cannot do, which makes their assignment a lot less critical issue.

Nevertheless, the idea of periodic assignment has its merit I need to give this some thought.

[Mars_Ultor]

Hi

The leadership system is better than any other mods' system for dealing with the subject. But as others have said it could do with 'tinkering' with.


With regard to the facet of only consuls' having offensive capabilities, i would have the consuls' keeping to a historical 2 years of office, but then moving them sideways to office of 'pro- consul' keeping their offensive capability, so with the current consuls and pro-consuls, it would therefore increase offensive unit numbers.


As for units running to and from Rome from the possibly distant frontiers for appointments, maybe a messenger unit could be sent from Rome to deliver the award, if the recipient is beyond a certain distance from Rome, e.g. outside Italy.

Personally i would like the unit cards for FMs' a little more helpfull, with 'post eligible for' standing out clearly , so at a quick glance through a list of FMs', you can keep track better of who needs to travel to Rome.

Otherwise for me it is the best RTW mod because of the political aspect, which gives the game more depth.

Great work

[Muizer]

With regard to the facet of only consuls' having offensive capabilities, i would have the consuls' keeping to a historical 2 years of office, but then moving them sideways to office of 'pro- consul' keeping their offensive capability, so with the current consuls and pro-consuls, it would therefore increase offensive unit numbers.

Currently, ProConsuls are lumped with Consuls. This is done to tie their number to the size of your empire. (Historically the first province governed by a pro-consul was Sicily)

However, given the low rate and relatively short lifespan of FM's after reaching the consulate, perhaps your suggestion would not lead to an excessive number of pro-consuls anyway. Could be a small but useful simplification.

Problem with the 2 year term: the in-game family tree is too small to sustain 2 consuls at that rate. Even if it were large enough, the amount of micromanagement would be prohibitive.

As for units running to and from Rome from the possibly distant frontiers for appointments, maybe a messenger unit could be sent from Rome to deliver the award, if the recipient is beyond a certain distance from Rome, e.g. outside Italy.

Only characters (family member, diplomat, spy, assassin) can carry ancillaries and it is probably not even possible to transfer ancillaries from one character type to another.

Personally i would like the unit cards for FMs' a little more helpfull, with 'post eligible for' standing out clearly , so at a quick glance through a list of FMs', you can keep track better of who needs to travel to Rome.

As a rule, you should use junior family members as couriers for your appointments, rather than have your eligible family members travel to Rome to pick up appointments in person.

Anyway, I'm afraid this is probably not possible eiter. There are but a few things attached graphically to portraits or character scrolls (age, command, management and influence attributes, religion) and none of these can realistically be pressed into service as indicator of eligibility.



As you probably have gathered by now, we have very little (unused!) room to manoeuver left.

[Mars_Ultor]

Hi
Have taken onboard your comments, and i am sorry for being ignorant of the constraints in which you guys have to work .

Could heroic deeds enable an FM to scale the ladder of the 'cursus' quicker?

e.g. a tribune successfully defending a major city could leap to the next rung of the ladder regardless of age.
Which in turn with time would increase candidates for the consulship, and possibly more youthful candidates, which may compensate for the in game-family tree restrictions, then in turn having a fixed period for the consulship ( not needing to be restricted to 2 yr for game play) and then moved sideways to the pro-consulship.

Only a suggestion, shoot me down if not feasable, hehehehehe

Cheers

[Bargle]

I LOVE the system, although it could be even better with tinkering.
I would like to see more information provided with the appoinment titles; eg what are the extact bonuses to command, management and influence each particular office bestows.
That would help me determine in what city an office is best suited for.
e.g. If the appiontment provided high influence then it would be best suited for far flung outpost ...... etc.

[Bargle]

What do I need to do to be able to vote in the poll ?