Republic of Rome forum game II

Me? I don’t have any cards, man. Someone else is holding the assassin card.

Ugh, fine. @rho21, Furius attempts to assassinate Aemilius. I’ll play my assassin card.

Boy I’ve been calling this one forever.

Hence all the setup if you get it.

No, I get it. Good luck.

I would say good luck but you are actually trying to assassinate Macedonius, you know. I kinda hope you miss.

Nothing personal. Just trying to keep Rome free of tyrants.

Really enjoyed/enjoying the game by the way, even if we end here. Thanks @rho21 for moderating and everyone for playing.

I have a whole essay to write when the game ends, but I 99% expect you to kill Aemilius. Because that’s my forum game life, yo.

See you all tomorrow when I awaken late and see what happened.

Looks like a lot for me to process.

  • Governorship assigned to Acilius
  • Land bill created; popularity and unrest adjusted
  • Tax farmers assigned

That seems like a strange choice for a tax farmer, given he will either be consul for life or dead. Mentioning which, I’ll roll a die when I’ve woken up properly and can do the write up justice.

👀

345

Aemilius Macedonicus, a war hero and fine statesman was nonetheless getting far too big even for his own ample boots. Influential, wildly popular with the people. And now using that to suggest that Rome needed to go back to the time of kings in order to be able to combat the threat of Carthage. As if a king would frighten off Hannibal!

There was nothing for it though: it was clear now that Aemilius would have the votes to crown himself king - sorry “consul for life”, obviously not the same thing, oh no - so the only hope for the republic was for death to intercede.

Furius was the senator to step up in the republic’s hour of need, though he was far from without support from other quarters. He knew it might mean his life, proscription for his immediate family, even infamy for all time in the annals of state, but what price can be put on that compared to the future of an entire city?

Aemilius’ guards were close about him at all times now that his nomination for consul for life had been announced so Furius chose a different way. His agents suborned a senior cook in the Aemilius household, also a patriot of the republic willing to risk all for principle despite his years of service to a family that had treated him well. The plan was to poison the spiced sparrows’ eggs - made to the head chef’s own recipe and well known as Aemilius’ favourite dish - at a banquet he was hosting.

The poison was acquired and applied liberally, the spicy sauce could be expected to hide the taste for long enough. The dish was presented among many others to the reclining diners and naturally placed close to Aemilius.

But for once Aemilius was in a generous mood and insisted that his fellow diners (senators all, now drawn to his rising prestige) must taste his favourite eggs. He was looking forward to the effusive praise that must surely flow for his chef’s wonderful creation. Instead the eggs got only as far as the fourth senator before the first started choking.

Hearing the news, the suborned cook took his own life; despite their best efforts the investigators could find no leads to accomplices and it was concluded the cook must have acted alone.

Assassination

Furius attempts the assassination of Aemilius Macedonicus.
One assassin card provides a +1 modifier.

The die rolled a 3, modified to 4 giving no effect.

Sorry, that took much longer than anticipated. I imagine most of you were asleep anyway.

Aemilius Macedonicus is truly favored by the gods! All hail Macedonicus, the savior of Rome!

Optimates vote Yes for Aemilius Macedonicus as Consul for Life.

@rho21, I really enjoy your write-ups and the effort you make to give flavor to the game. Thank you so much for that!

Yes, thanks @rho21

We aren’t really going to sit through a vote…

…are we?

@rho21 You do the best game write-ups. Suck it, @CraigM

Giving Tax Farmer to Aemilius may or may not have been a mistake…

I made a lot of mistakes.

Thanks again @rho21, and well played @Knightsaber. I am sorry all for some of my failures in this game, most notably misreading the rules on Consul for life and thinking 35 Influence was required in the early era for a vote, rather than resulting in automatic elevation to Consul for Life. Obviously that error proves relatively costly. Otherwise, I suppose I would prefer the Republic collapse due to the ambitions of a Senator rather than through foreign wars.

It seems allowing senators to go over 22 influence is a no-go in the Early Republic (when people don’t have cash around to outweight the 23 extra votes the influence gives).

I would imagine this is harder to pull off in the Late Republic.

  1. When we started I was so confused.
  2. When we finished I was less confused but confused by other things.
  3. Is @scottagibson nuts? Even I’m not sure.
  4. Yep, we colluded like crazy. We set up this last year so that if Aemilius was killed, Fabius could win.
  5. Nothing is personal, it’s just a game.
  6. I am struck by how BSG-powerful the dice and the card decks are.
  7. Wild Roman toga party tonight for all.

For me, I was genuinely interested in continuing to play into the Middle republic deck, but the elevation of Macedonicus to Consul and the clear description of how he could win the game changed all of that. I think it was a mistake to nominate Macedonicus Consul, but I was not inclined to be the only person voting against it for obvious reasons.

@Knightsaber and I had a deal to support each other with the idea that (probably) one or both of our titans would die soon anyway. Neither one of us came into this round with any intention of winning the game, but the election to Consul changed that.

For my part, I felt somewhat committed against attacking, and felt that the best thing for me to do was to let the other players oppose the CSL, including trying to kill Macedonicus. If he dies, then Fabius wins the game. If he doesn’t die, then @knightsaber got lucky and wins the game.

I agree with @Juan_Raigada that you can’t let people get influence int the twenties or higher. It is a mistake to think people will agree to prosecution more than once, again because of the negative popularity that is certain to result. You basically have to stop using high-influence people rather than adding to their influence every round.

Also: I think @antlers underestimated the extent to which taking my card broke the basis of trust. I got dealt only one card to hand in the entire game, and he took it, at a time when we were all supposed to be working together. From that moment on, I knew that @antlers would put personal gain ahead of cooperation, and I no longer trusted him. It’s fair to say that ‘@antlers doesn’t win’ became one of my top goals and influenced my decision-making from that moment forward.