Res Publica - A Mod In Development and I Want YOUR Input

[TheLoneGunman]

Hey folks!

I've been brainstorming all week, and I've finally decided I'm going to attack the whole of the Roman Republic in my first major release.

Before I get too far ahead of myself though I wanted to bring the discussion to the forum and see what everyone thinks and hopefully open up some useful discussion, debate, and suggestions.

My starting aims for this mod are going to be simple, yet many.

Ideally, the initial goal is to introduce the most realistic depiction of the Roman Republic I can possibly include within the constraints of the EU:R engine.

This is no simple task, since the Republic was an ever-changing and evolving creature.

One of my major gripes with vanilla and even most mods is that there is relatively no difference between a "Military Republic", a "Civic Republic", or any other variation thereof. In a sense Rome was all of these at one point and time, and the differences were much greater than extra trade income or reduced war exhaustion.

Therefore my intent is to grant the player a much more sweeping ability to change the politics and powers of the Republic (provided the proper conditions are met).

To do this I plan on creating a new government type, the "Roman Republic", available only to Rome. Now here's the catch. I'm not only making one catch-all "Roman Republic". I'm going to make multiple "Roman Republic"s and model them all after different points in the history of Rome and allow the player to decide which will be best suited to his or her interests.

The way to do this is simple, I'll make the multiple entries and name them in the text file by their approximate dates (yet in the game they will all be known as Roman Republic), and allow the player to change government types the same way that is already allowed, but now only for these specific types, and provided that they meet the requirements needed for each.

An example would be this:

In 280BC, the Roman Republic had no clear limit on the amount of time after being elected Consul one had to wait to stand for election again. There are occaisions where Consuls are elected consequetively, and multiple example of 4-6 years wait between being re-elected.

By approximately 150BC laws had been enacted to prevent a Consul from running for re-election until after a period of 10 years passed.

Then about 20 years later around 130BC it has been said that there were laws to prevent a Consul from even being elected a second time all together!

And then of course Marius comes on to the scene in 107BC and does away with this entirely, racking up 7 Consulships in no time flat.

With multiple government types, and the decision-based government switching, all of this can be modeled, and best of all none of it is forced upon the player, but instead up to the player's discretion (again provided the proper pre-reqs are met).

On top of this, I'd like to tackle the Cursus Honorum my own way, and allow offices within the Senate to be influenced in a similar way to the government type, but using laws rather than decisions. As well as make Prominence and possibly Popularity important components of rising up through the ranks of the Senate.

This way, it is possible to pass laws to strengthen or weaken offices within the Senate, or even change the requirements needed to gain access to certain offices.

A good example, though a little late for our time period, would be the opening up of offices to the Plebeians, and even the creation of Plebeian-only offices.

On top of all of these changes I've already adapted my old list of names for mostly Romans and Greeks to VV, so that will be included. And I'm also interested in modifying combat as well, since the stats do not seem very well-balanced, and the units still seem rather bland to me.

Now that you know my intentions, I'd like your opinions and welcome any information that may help. Also, other than purely historical options, is there any interest for options that while not historically accurate were entirely plausible?

 

[Cheexsta]

Hi LG,

I have some very similar thoughts in mind for the Magna Mundi: Rome project (working title ). My idea was to include the government changes as laws instead of decisions: this way, the player can easily revoke them if need be.

So, you'd have the starting government with an election_delay of 0, allowing consecutive consulships. Then a law to change to a government type with an election_delay of 10, but is otherwise identical. That law can then be revoked later on if the player wants to have a Marius-esque set of consecutive consulships. Best of all, laws remain in place in government changes, as long as it remains a republic in the process.

However, in testing this proved to be very impractical. Consuls did not begin a second consulship straight away: instead, the consulship tended to alternate between two characters, continuously. The only solution I can think of is a character event for an ex-consul where they decide if they want to stand for the consulship again. If they don't, they get a temporary character flag that can be used as a "not" requirement for the consulship position (or maybe a trait so that it's more visible to the player).

My idea also included a huge list of potential laws to be added which would allow for various government and military reforms. The Marian Reforms in vanilla are sadly lacking (I mean, come on: Rome is encouraged to take "Professional Infantry" from the start of the game! Not cool.), so it makes sense to need to enact various laws in order to change your military type.

 

[Duke of Bavaria]

I like your ideas, but iw ould really be happy if you could ccordinate your work with other major mods already out there. I know there are different approaches, but better spend some tiem to find a comrpomise and work in bigger groups for a major mod, than having hundreds of them out there that each have their own strenghts and weaknesses. You always feel you are missing out on something.

 

[Darthvegeta800]

I like your ideas, but iw ould really be happy if you could ccordinate your work with other major mods already out there. I know there are different approaches, but better spend some tiem to find a comrpomise and work in bigger groups for a major mod, than having hundreds of them out there that each have their own strenghts and weaknesses. You always feel you are missing out on something.

Agreed.

You have good ideas. Why not cooperate with the Magna Mundi or Imperium thread?

 

[TheLoneGunman]

Well the MM:Rome thread sorta died out with no clear direction on where it was going which is why I started on this.

But Cheexsta, if you've got a similar plan already in mind, then I've got no problem contributing at all. I just wasn't sure what was happening in the meantime.

Lets at least use this thread to fuel some discussion on ideas however.

However, in testing this proved to be very impractical. Consuls did not begin a second consulship straight away: instead, the consulship tended to alternate between two characters, continuously. The only solution I can think of is a character event for an ex-consul where they decide if they want to stand for the consulship again. If they don't, they get a temporary character flag that can be used as a "not" requirement for the consulship position (or maybe a trait so that it's more visible to the player).

It would have to be for the "Proconsul" title and not the "Ex-Consul" one, since you could have multiple Ex-Consuls, but you'll only have one Proconsul at a time.

Edit: Have you checked out the event where a rival Consul "buys" the election? That could also hold some clues into making event-driven consecutive consulships!

Oh and another thing that I did was do a little research and find out which Roman characters at the start of the game had already held the position of Consul so that there was a pool of available generals/admirals/governors/censors, which IMHO was needed in the Cursus Honorum Mod since you basically have a limited government for at least the first year. Worked out pretty well!

 

[Darthvegeta800]

The MM thread is reinvigorated now.

 

[Cheexsta]

LG: the MM thread did peter off a bit, but the concept is still strong. I'm still trying to hammer out some ideas before posting them up in about a week or so.

If you're up for it, you can be the man in charge of this part of the project. I like where you're headed, so definitely go for it.

As for getting consecutive consulships going, it would be tricky but I think it's very possible to script it without going with events. It's hard to explain, but I'll try.

First, we have the government type. In my files, I called it consecutive_enabled_republic.

Then, in titles.txt, add the following lines to the "allow" section for title_ruler:

		OR = {
			country = { 
				NOT = { government = consecutive_enabled_republic }
			}
			country = {
				NOT = {
					any_character = { has_title = title_wants_second_consulship }
				}
			}
			has_title = title_wants_second_consulship
		}

What this does is check the following:
1. Is the country a republic with a consecutive-enabled consulship? If no, then stop. If yes, go to 2.
2. Does the country have a character who has a desire to go for a second consulship (ie has the title title_wants_second_consulship)? If no, then stop. If yes, then go to 3.
3. Does this character want a second consulship? If yes, then stop.

Then it's a simple matter of creating a title that is given automatically to the ruler with the following code:

title_wants_second_consulship = {
	allow = {
		is_ruler = yes
		country = { government = consecutive_enabled_republic }
	}
	gain_trigger = {
		popularity = 90
		num_of_loyal_cohorts = 10 #for example
		NOT = { traits = content } 
		#etc
	}
	lose_trigger = {
		title_wants_second_consulship = 365
	}
}

Now, I think that should work. I haven't tested it yet, but in theory it should prevent any character other than the one with this title from becoming ruler.

 

[TheLoneGunman]

Now, I think that should work. I haven't tested it yet, but in theory it should prevent any character other than the one with this title from becoming ruler.

Now how would we turn it off?

 

[GLENN]

Make the consecutive Consul have a unique tite, then make a law which searches for that title and then terminates it, maybe even terminate the character.

So if you choose to enact consective terms it comes with a penalty of being assassinated.

 

[Cheexsta]

Now how would we turn it off?

Either through a Decision or a Law, which changes the government type back to a non-consecutive consulship government type. Might have to include "NOT = { country = { government = consecutive_enabled_republic } }" in the lose trigger for the title_wants_second_consulship just to make sure that it causes no futher problems.

 

[TheLoneGunman]

Well when it comes to consecutive consulships, remember even Marius didn't hold the title of Consul TOO many times.

The ability to continuously serve as Consul should depend on the Consul's popularity, what his political views are, and if there is enough support for his views in the Senate.

Another thing I'd like to see the whole Political Party thing changed.

During the Republic there were no true organized political parties, even the Populares and Optimates were very loosely tied together.

They were more similar goals and schools of that that would allow you to know where a Senator stands on particular issues.