Actually you will find that this is totally not my fault... :D

See, Sulla looting Delphi wasn't my idea. That happened in real life, so blame him for that.

The only difference is that Apollo, while no more pissed in this timeline, has less divine interference in his attempts to screw over 'Lucky Lucius' AKA Sulla, because Athena/Minerva is otherwise occupied. Which is in turn because Atellus the Younger actually exists in this timeline, with the original 'patient zero' butterfly being Lucius Cingulatus Atellus' appeal to the gods of Carthage.

So it's all Atellus the Elder's doing. :D

Notably, we knew that was a thing before. Remember that when we attacked Aeclanum, there was an augury and it was unfavorable. Because the augur the First Cohort had with it had Poor Augury and a -2 on the die roll.

But yeah, we're already in a good starting position to angle for a priesthood of Mars. Being as how we, uh, literally founded a blood cult to him. :p

Well, yes... and then again no.

For example, good news, Sulla isn't going to march on Rome while we're tied up fighting Mithridates, at least not until he's decisively beaten at least one Mithridatic army. Some of us were worrying about that. Bad news, Cinna probably doesn't know that, or he'd have been willing to send Marius another legion or two I suspect.

Bad news, Sulla will be harsher with Marius and Sertorius personally. Neutral news, that basically just reduces to how unpleasant their deaths are likely to be if they ever fall into his hands anyway, and either of those men would have known to fall upon their swords rather than let Sulla capture them as it is. Good news, if Sulla actually heeds the one vaguely helpful piece of advice in the entire prophecy that was otherwise unilaterally intended to screw him over through deliberately misleading wording, he'll be looking for a man "dark without and deep within" to "bind him to you if you can, the odds are on the [Athena-affiliated] man." That... might benefit us, in principle.

Interesting. We may wish to consider using free XP to 'tap' Logistics, Administration, or possibly Stewardship to the next level. Any or all of those skills could be useful to us in the coming turns, and all of them are relative weaknesses for us- we could afford to complete all of them by spending down the bank, spending 127, 750, and 2800 points respectively.

On the other hand, only the Stewardship expenditure would actually kick us up into the next modifier tier.

The gods only know when we'll get a chance to travel to Delphi at this rate; we're pretty much legally bound to follow around whichever legion the Senate assigns us to for the next nine years or so.

I will be doing so forthwith.

I'd say we should definitely look for sources of Military XP, but not spend free XP on it because we're like 18000 XP away from actually 'leveling up' in terms of our modifier. The return on investment for Subterfuge or Intelligence is going to be more favorable, as is that of any of our low-rank skills like Engineering, Logistics, and Administration.

Point of order, leveling up Engineering would take us up a modifier level, from -6 to -4.
 
Engineering could play a huge role in the future. Sulla won the first war in part of his engineering ability and making a trap for the chariots that the Greeks have. He also made fortifications that made the enemy numbers meaningless forcing the enemy to attack him. Engineering has and will continue to play a important part of Roman military "defense " against the invading barbarians who attack and provoke poor defenseless Rome.
 
Which plan is yours? The tally system is being weird for me.
"Plan Dual Command," as seen in the last update. I think I'd better go back and 'disarm' my previous version of the plan come to think of it.

I believe the general reason for not focusing on leveling logistics in the past has been that they could delegate supply trains to lessers, but not command to lessers.
No.

Firstly, each level in Command costs us several times more XP than an equivalent boost to Logistics for the same bonus on the die roll, because of how XP cost scales with level.

Secondly, we can delegate supply trains to subordinates, but we have no guarantee that our immediate subordinates will be better at Logistics than we are. By the time we get to the point where we're commanding our own armies and making critical strategic decisions that directly alter the fate of Rome, we need to be able to win Logistics rolls ourselves, or be very good at finding subordinates who can do it for us. And it'll be hard for us to find and identify experts if we ourselves are ignorant.

Thirdly, some Logistics rolls (like the ones for sieges) seem to be made directly by the overall commander, and we can't automatically have a subordinate make ALL such rolls for us, any more than we can ensure that a subordinate bodyguard makes all our Combat rolls for us while remaining on the front lines of a battle.

Naturally, but if we were choosing one over the other, being able to lead armies is better than being able to supply them, at least in this period of antiquity
Given the way XP expenditure works in this game, the question is going to be something like "OK, so do we spend 60000 XP on Command, 60000 XP on Logistics, 45000 on Command and 15000 on Logistics, or do we do a 30/30 or 15/45 split?

But because of the way XP expenditure works in this game, spending 45000 on Command and 15000 on Logistics is likely to pay off better than a 60/0 split, because it means we avoid large maluses on our Logistics rolls, while merely sacrificing small bonuses on our Command rolls. We may not even sacrifice any bonuses at all, depending on the exact level balances.

Remember that training up from "-6 malus" to "avoid malus" levels of skill in this game only requires you to reach Rank 5. That costs 10000 XP, total, which is significantly less than it takes to level from "no bonus" to "+1 bonus," from +1 to +2, or from +2 to +4 or any of the steps after that.

Training up the skills we view as 'side skills' to avoid major penalties is going to be a big part of avoiding exploitable weaknesses in our character going forwards.
 
"Plan Dual Command," as seen in the last update. I think I'd better go back and 'disarm' my previous version of the plan come to think of it.

No.

Firstly, each level in Command costs us several times more XP than an equivalent boost to Logistics for the same bonus on the die roll, because of how XP cost scales with level.

Secondly, we can delegate supply trains to subordinates, but we have no guarantee that our immediate subordinates will be better at Logistics than we are. By the time we get to the point where we're commanding our own armies and making critical strategic decisions that directly alter the fate of Rome, we need to be able to win Logistics rolls ourselves, or be very good at finding subordinates who can do it for us. And it'll be hard for us to find and identify experts if we ourselves are ignorant.

Thirdly, some Logistics rolls (like the ones for sieges) seem to be made directly by the overall commander, and we can't automatically have a subordinate make ALL such rolls for us, any more than we can ensure that a subordinate bodyguard makes all our Combat rolls for us while remaining on the front lines of a battle.

Given the way XP expenditure works in this game, the question is going to be something like "OK, so do we spend 60000 XP on Command, 60000 XP on Logistics, 45000 on Command and 15000 on Logistics, or do we do a 30/30 or 15/45 split?

But because of the way XP expenditure works in this game, spending 45000 on Command and 15000 on Logistics is likely to pay off better than a 60/0 split, because it means we avoid large maluses on our Logistics rolls, while merely sacrificing small bonuses on our Command rolls. We may not even sacrifice any bonuses at all, depending on the exact level balances.

Remember that training up from "-6 malus" to "avoid malus" levels of skill in this game only requires you to reach Rank 5. That costs 10000 XP, total, which is significantly less than it takes to level from "no bonus" to "+1 bonus," from +1 to +2, or from +2 to +4 or any of the steps after that.

Training up the skills we view as 'side skills' to avoid major penalties is going to be a big part of avoiding exploitable weaknesses in our character going forwards.

Plus, book studying explicitly gives more XP the lower your skill level is.
 
No.

Firstly, each level in Command costs us several times more XP than an equivalent boost to Logistics for the same bonus on the die roll, because of how XP cost scales with level.

Secondly, we can delegate supply trains to subordinates, but we have no guarantee that our immediate subordinates will be better at Logistics than we are. By the time we get to the point where we're commanding our own armies and making critical strategic decisions that directly alter the fate of Rome, we need to be able to win Logistics rolls ourselves, or be very good at finding subordinates who can do it for us. And it'll be hard for us to find and identify experts if we ourselves are ignorant.

Thirdly, some Logistics rolls (like the ones for sieges) seem to be made directly by the overall commander, and we can't automatically have a subordinate make ALL such rolls for us, any more than we can ensure that a subordinate bodyguard makes all our Combat rolls for us while remaining on the front lines of a battle.
Sheesh Simon, I was just answering the guy's question with some comments I remember seeing while playing catch-up to the last chapter. No need to be so snippy about it.
 
Engineering could play a huge role in the future. Sulla won the first war in part of his engineering ability and making a trap for the chariots that the Greeks have. He also made fortifications that made the enemy numbers meaningless forcing the enemy to attack him. Engineering has and will continue to play a important part of Roman military "defense " against the invading barbarians who attack and provoke poor defenseless Rome.
Agreed.

Oh dang, that'll be a problem if we don't bump it up to at least five.
Yeah.

At a bare minimum we cannot consider Atellus to be a competent senior officer for a Roman military force without at least Rank 5 in Logistics, Engineering, and Siegecraft. He may be deadly with a blade and inspirational when leading a charge, but he's not a professional like the leaders that made the Roman Empire so powerful.

To be a good general, one capable of crossing swords with someone like Pompey and coming out on top in the future, we need to aspire to something like what Sertorius has- Renowned (rank 15-17) or Epic (rank 18) tier in most of the core warfare set {Military, Command, Logistics, Engineering, Siegecraft}, with maybe one or at most two areas where his bonus is Accomplished, 'only' the +2 that comes with being at rank 10 or higher.

Right now, all we've got is high-Accomplished Military, low-Proficient Command, Abysmal Engineering, Very Poor Logistics, and Abysmal Siegecraft. That is, appropriately given that Atellus is nineteen with all of one campaign under his belt, fine and good for a junior officer... but it is not remotely the stuff of a man who can add provinces to an empire in the face of strong opposition. And we won't get from there to here by mono-focusing on Military and Command.
 
You'd think we'd have revealed Siegecraft already at Nola.

Regarding the other skills, Logistics is never bad, Siegecraft we can probably leave at 5, and Engineering is useful as a commander, an aedile, and a provincial governor.
 
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[X] Plan Firm Foundations
-[X] Make Terms
-[X] Promote Centurions
-[X] See To Repairs
-[X] Brothers in Arms
-[X] Correspondence
--[X] Scaevola
-[X] Brotherhood
-[X] Para Bellum
-[X] Res Publica
-[X] The Crone of Bithynia
-[X] The Prince
-[X] Study

[X] Plan Make Connections and Study v2
 
[X] Plan Dual Command
[X] Plan Love of the Legion and various Studies
[X] Plan Off with the gloves

Oh wow, are we now the second best admiral in Rome? Probably only third best since Rufus seems to have an aptitude for the subskills.

Not to mention that there is one more! Siegecraft, really? Alexander and Caesar didn't even unlock that!
Anyway, I'm all in favour of grinding engineering and logistics. Feats of engineering like the bridge across the Rhine helped make Caesar the legend in his time that he was.
Logistics: Very Poor (2) -- (Levels 2-3) (-4 Modifier) -- (1873/2000) to Rank 2.
It should say to Rank 3.
 
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[] Plan Dual Command

Oh wow, are we now the second best admiral in Rome? Probably only third best since Rufus seems to have an aptitude for the subskills.

Not to mention that there is one more! Siegecraft, really? Alexander and Caesar didn't even unlock that!
:p

I suspect that those skills are not revealed because we didn't have them at the time. Alexander and Caesar are both rather famous for some significant feats of siegecraft, among many other things, after all.

[] Plan Firm Foundations

Still don't quite get how this voting system works
Vote for any plan that you think is a good plan.

Voting is easy. It's the tallying system that's messed up right now, to the point where it'd probably be easier to count the plan votes by hand.

So we focus on getting the abysmals to five, and depend on battle for Military/Command XP?
Historically, our best strategy seems to be to use book study and a dash of free XP to get abysmals to five, and to depend on both battle and strong relationships with more experienced soldiers and officers for Military/Command XP.

It's like, the trickles of Military and Command XP we got from Sertorius and Tercerus during the Fourth Samnite War were pretty sizeable; we leveled up Command at least once on the strength of that alone as I recall, and we didn't level up Military only because our MIlitary stat was absurdly high for a teenager.

If we could actually strike up a friendship with Marius (hell of an ask, I know), we'd probably get an absurd flood of OMGWTFBBQ Military/Command XP, probably more than we could get from fighting a battle without his guidance. Even the guys Marius trained (like Sertorius, and possibly like this Carbo guy running the legion next to ours) are pretty good and likely have a lot to teach us.

You'd think we'd have revealed Siegecraft already at Nola.

Regarding the other skills, Logistics is never bad, Siegecraft we can probably leave at 5, and Engineering is useful as a commander, an aedile, and a provincial governor.
Yeah. Notice that we're actually inhibited from a possible useful action right now due to low Engineering. One argument that's been advanced against the "repair the barracks" action, and not just by me, is the risk that it'll force Atellus to roll an Engineering check and fuuuu-

Anyway, not sure I agree about Siegecraft. Being good at siege warfare is extremely useful for a pre-modern commander, because sieges are the one thing that can really pin your army down and fuck it up. If you want to avoid battle with an enemy army that's a bit intimidating, maybe whittle it down a little before confronting it, usually you can go all Fabius Maximus on (or rather, well away from) their asses for a while... until either they besiege a city you can't afford to lose, or you have to besiege a target they don't want you to have.

Think about how Caesar would have done at Alesia if he'd blown his Siegecraft check, for instance.
 
Still don't quite get how this voting system works
Vote for all the things you like. If one thing you like is winning, good for you. If two or more things you like are winning, drop your vote for the one you like less. The value of this is in lessening vote splitting. (and also lessening complains that a vote won due only to vote-splitting, which would surley be raised for this vote if approval voting wasn't an option given the 2 divergent Make Terms plans)
 
:p

I suspect that those skills are not revealed because we didn't have them at the time. Alexander and Caesar are both rather famous for some significant feats of siegecraft, among many other things, after all.


Vote for any plan that you think is a good plan.

Voting is easy. It's the tallying system that's messed up right now, to the point where it'd probably be easier to count the plan votes by hand.

Historically, our best strategy seems to be to use book study and a dash of free XP to get abysmals to five, and to depend on both battle and strong relationships with more experienced soldiers and officers for Military/Command XP.

It's like, the trickles of Military and Command XP we got from Sertorius and Tercerus during the Fourth Samnite War were pretty sizeable; we leveled up Command at least once on the strength of that alone as I recall, and we didn't level up Military only because our MIlitary stat was absurdly high for a teenager.

If we could actually strike up a friendship with Marius (hell of an ask, I know), we'd probably get an absurd flood of OMGWTFBBQ Military/Command XP, probably more than we could get from fighting a battle without his guidance. Even the guys Marius trained (like Sertorius, and possibly like this Carbo guy running the legion next to ours) are pretty good and likely have a lot to teach us.

Yeah. Notice that we're actually inhibited from a possible useful action right now due to low Engineering. One argument that's been advanced against the "repair the barracks" action, and not just by me, is the risk that it'll force Atellus to roll an Engineering check and fuuuu-

Anyway, not sure I agree about Siegecraft. Being good at siege warfare is extremely useful for a pre-modern commander, because sieges are the one thing that can really pin your army down and fuck it up. If you want to avoid battle with an enemy army that's a bit intimidating, maybe whittle it down a little before confronting it, usually you can go all Fabius Maximus on (or rather, well away from) their asses for a while... until either they besiege a city you can't afford to lose, or you have to besiege a target they don't want you to have.

Think about how Caesar would have done at Alesia if he'd blown his Siegecraft check, for instance.

Out of all the military adjacent skills, it's the most niche. Military and Command are the bread and butter, Logistics provides actual bread and butter, Engineering is useful in peace and war, while Siegecraft is only good for sieges.
 
I suspect that those skills are not revealed because we didn't have them at the time. Alexander and Caesar are both rather famous for some significant feats of siegecraft, among many other things, after all.
Or Telamon is making things up as he goes to make it harder for us.:p

Yeah, if we want to pull off things like the double wall at Alesia, the wall at Dyrrhacium or the ramp Alexander built to reach Tyros (?) we gotta learn some more.
 
Or Telamon is making things up as he goes to make it harder for us.:p

Yeah, if we want to pull off things like the double wall at Alesia, the wall at Dyrrhacium or the ramp Alexander built to reach Tyros (?) we gotta learn some more.

Alesia in particular would be an Engineering/Siegecraft roll.

And yes, I hadn't added Siegecraft to Alexander and Caesar both because you didn't have it yet and because I wasn't sure at that point if I wanted to roll it into Engineering. I have since decided I don't, and I'll actually head back and give it to both of them, so thanks for the reminder.
 
Alesia in particular would be an Engineering/Siegecraft roll.

And yes, I hadn't added Siegecraft to Alexander and Caesar both because you didn't have it yet and because I wasn't sure at that point if I wanted to roll it into Engineering. I have since decided I don't, and I'll actually head back and give it to both of them, so thanks for the reminder.

Since we've already fought a siege, shouldn't it be revealed?
 
Since we've already fought a siege, shouldn't it be revealed?

Yes, but you chose not to be involved in the construction of siege engines at Nola. Just standing outside a bunch of walls in the cold does not give anyone an understanding of the mechanics of a ballistae or of constructing a siege tower.

Dunno, we studiously ignored the chance to learn how to build siege engines in favour of riding with your Gallic brothers from other mothers and looking for food.

Precisely this.
 
Dunno, we studiously ignored the chance to learn how to build siege engines in favour of riding with our Gallic brothers from other mothers and looking for food.
To be fair, the army really needed that food. :p

Out of all the military adjacent skills, it's the most niche. Military and Command are the bread and butter, Logistics provides actual bread and butter, Engineering is useful in peace and war, while Siegecraft is only good for sieges.
The thing is, Siegecraft may only be good for sieges, but when you need it, you really need it. It's like Combat, which you (and I) didn't even think to list as a "military adjacent skill" despite, well, it being the obvious physical art of fighting.

As a military commander, you can be very good at your job and still be at best mediocre in hand to hand combat personally. But in the specific situations where you need to be a great fighter (e.g. leading cavalry charges), if you lack that skill, you are fucked. Having good bodyguards will only get you so far if you personally die the minute anyone pokes a spear in your general direction- which would be the equivalent of having Abysmal-rank Combat.

The same is true for Siegecraft, I suspect... except that while you can usually avoid having to personally duel enemy champions, almost any major campaign will eventually involve one or more sieges. :p
 
Oh, wow, visiting the Pythia is now a really high priority. @Telamon, when we 'level up' a rank in Intelligence, would we lose any XP progress toward the previous level, or is it saved? Either way, we should try to make sure we visit the Pythia after we reach a new rank, and ideally we'd wait until we've already leveled up several times so that Pythia visits bumps us up to 'Legendary' (since the top-tier levels are insanely hard to level up normally).

I'm also really looking forward to unlocking Augury, though I have no idea how we'd be able to do that -- maybe once we return to Rome, we can talk with Scaevola about what we need to do to prepare to become a priest? Or, if there's someone else trained in Augury in the legion, we could ask them for help? No idea how this skill would work, though.

I agree that we could and probably should spend some XP to level up those basic skills. Stewardship would be costly, but probably worthwhile, and Subterfuge and Logistics are pretty easy to upgrade. I'd be willing to go for it this very turn, in fact -- all three of those skills would probably help us this turn. @Telamon, is that an option for this round?


Finally, here's the hand-counted vote tally (with the built-in vote tally below -- I set it to count 'by line' and look for any vote with a 'Plan' in it).

27 votes for Plan Publicola
21 votes for Plan Firm Foundations
18 votes for Plan Love of the Legion and various Studies
15 votes for Plan Dual Command
6 votes for Plan Publicola Plus
5 votes for Plan Off With The Gloves
4 votes for Plan Make Connections and Study v2
1 vote for Plan Destiny
1 vote for Plan The Power of Friendship
1 vote for Plan Carpe Legium et Potestatem
1 vote for Plan Publicola(Proserpina Edition)
Adhoc vote count started by Publicola on Jul 29, 2019 at 12:36 AM, finished with 487 posts and 59 votes.
 
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On The Great Families Of Rome
This isn't really meant to be another huge informational post, but I did think it was important enough to get it's own threadmark, so sorry for those of you (i.e, everyone) who got an alert. I recently got a message asking if Sulla is related to Cinna, seeing as how both of their names begin with 'Lucius Cornelius'. While they are distantly, distantly related, they certainly wouldn't consider themselves family. To better hash it out, I decided to create this post.

The gentes of ancient Rome were the families of the city, vast and colossal -- your gentes was more your 'clan' than your actual family, which was denoted by your third name, your cognomen. Some gentes were plebian and some were patrician, but the lines blurred -- for example, the main branch of the gens Claudia was patrician, but there existed pleabian branches as well. Family members could be adopted by plebians and thus pass over into the plebian class, and freed slaves could take up the gens of their former masters if they so wished. People made into Roman citizens also took on the gens of the magistrate who had facilitated their citizenship, which is why there were so many Julii in the later empire -- because where Caesar and Augustus went, they made citizens.

In Rome, there were many gens, plebian and patrician alike, and which gens you belonged to could determine your social status, who you could marry, where you could go, and what you could do. If family members -- even distant descendants of a slave who had been freed by your great-grandfather, for example -- disgraced your name, the disgrace was yours also to carry. The most powerful and influental gens were called the gentes maiores, the Great Families. These families claimed direct descent from the first settlers of Rome, and often invented mythological or divine connections for their bloodlines.

The gentes maiores:

The 'first family' of Rome was the gens Cornelia, the Cornelii. Scipio, Sulla, Cinna, and more all belonged to this family. The greatest of their branches was the Cornelii Scipiones, the family of the legendary Scipio Africanus. More generals and consuls of Rome hailed from the Cornelii than from any other bloodline, and all the civil wars saw multiple Cornelii on either side.

The gens Claudia, descended from a powerful Sabine family, were famed in Rome for their arrogance, their pride, and their selfishness. Seen as haughty and vain tyrants, the Claudians often boasted a disrespect for the rules of Rome and her Republic. A legendary branch of their dynasty, the Julio-Claudians, would produce the first of the emperors -- and the most infamous. Their most famous cognomen is Nero, a Sabine name meaning 'heroic'. It will be reviled in later times.

The gens Valeria, ancient and powerful, had their roots in the earliest families of Rome. No other family in Rome produced so many great men, or held so many honors. They were often known for their advocacy of plebian causes and were populares even into the last days of the Republic. Their most powerful member in Atellus' time is Gaius Valerius Flaccus, who was consul in 85 BC.

The gens Fabia, another family of famed populares, were honored in Roman legend for the day when every single man of their family, 306 in all, rode out to accomplish a personal vendetta against the Etruscan city of Veii. Aided by none, every single Fabian save one perished fighting for their family's honor. Their descendants have been honored as a race of warriors.

The gens Aemilia, of great age and power, were descended from the second King of Rome. Many public works in the city still bear their name, and their bloodline would eventually produce Marcus Aemilus Lepidus, the oft-forgotten third Triumvir.

The gens Julia, of ancient heritage and storied history, descended, it was said in later times, directly from Aeneas and the goddess Venus. Their most famous branch was the Julii Caesares, who in Atellus' time have risen in Rome due to their association with Gaius Marius. Their name will last a dozen centuries, even when their line has ended.


There are many more gens, but these are the most relevant ones in the time of the quest, and the ones you may see most.
 
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There are many more gens, but these are the most relevant ones in the time of the quest, and the ones you may see most.
Our fictional gens is one too, seeing as we claim descent from one of Romulus' bodyguards, right?
The gens Claudia, descended from a powerful Sabine family, were famed in Rome for their arrogance, their pride, and their selfishness. Seen as haughty and vain tyrants, the Claudians often boasted a disrespect for the rules of Rome and her Republic. A legendary branch of their dynasty, the Julio-Claudians, would produce the first of the emperors -- and the most infamous. Their most famous cognomen is Nero, a Sabine name meaning 'heroic'. It will be reviled in later times.
I think in the who's who in the threadmarks a few of them were described as... poison, wasn't it?
*coughClodiuscough*, *coughClodiacough*
To be fair, the army really needed that food. :p
All the good it did us in the end.:p
 
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