Also, I believe @scottagibson should be given more credit than @Panzeh in terms of trying to stop me.
Panzeh
1724
I will say I was in a weak position and couldn’t really accomplish a whole lot. As I said, had things gone a little differently I probably would’ve just rebelled in the Macedonian war and won with a couple worse Roman rolls. In general, I think the spending deals would’ve just let Juan take the win from a different angle and left me a much more junior partner than in a deal on the opposite side.
No, @Panzeh was beating the drum before me. I think scott waited too long.
Oh did Juan becoming Emperor for life end the game?
Technically I have a turn to make every faction do what I want (which, admittedly, is amusing), and then the game would end, but with no rebel and less than 4 wars there’s no point to go through that.
And I’m no Emperor, just a Consul.
Panzeh
1728
Yeah, he’s got a couple civil wars, then he gets to be Emperor. ;) Game ends with Julius Caesar, not Augustus.
Other than money, which we all agree is powerful, I noticed influence is a very powerful resource too. High influence allows cheap persuasion attempts and probably gaining one senator per turn (a little less due to 10s and higher).
@CraigM had an early lead there and probably should have taken advantage. With 23 influence you basically get a 5 target number on loyalty 9 aligned senators (the hardest to persuade) so each attempt would have had a cost of 4 talents tops. In general I think the game wants you to use most of the tools early on (minor prosecutions and persuasions being the ones we ignored until very late).
I think we let the RNG decide a lot and just went for the ride for the most part, and luck fell on my side.
Grunden
1730
One of the lovely things about this game is how different the tone is between the different eras.
The ahistorical ‘mix everything up’ variant is entertaining as well; though it becomes a lot harder to match statesmen.
Panzeh
1731
Definitely agree with this.
Panzeh
1732
I may put together a forum game of Rick Heli’s Founding Fathers(Not to be confused with the Jolly Roger board game) which is a fairly different take on this kind of game.
We did. I voted no to this deal. You agreed to it.
I was waiting for the opportunity and took it when it came. But in the early game, I was trying to make a deal to neuter the effect of Juan’s Concessions for the good of all, which would have made a big difference if it had worked. We’d probably still be playing.
Kolbex
1735
I actually misremembered the rule on assassinations and thought a card was necessary for it, like a Tribune veto. Whoops.
Also, one thought on deals: I probably wouldn’t agree to hold 20T on the Pontifex Maximus. At least not a binding public deal. You’ll surely need that money for something else later.
I’d be interested. Is it fairly low complexity mechanically? By that I mean can we do it completely in forum?
Also, one more time: Many thanks to @rho21 for running the game!
Definitely! Thanks @rho21!!!
rho21
1741
Naturally, the new consul for life’s time in this world ended with a successor from his own faction taking the reins of the city. And so a mixture of fear and bribery (and perhaps foreign influence) had convinced the Roman senate to vote itself into irrelevance in a process historians now refer to as Rexit - “the re-kinging”.
The history books would speak of Gaius Junius Servilius as a competent leader who led Rome to peace with Carthage. Not a humiliating peace, but nonetheless Rome ended up as a satellite state of the expanding Carthaginian empire, and eventually absorbed into it. What might have happened if the winds of chance had blown a different way? None can say for sure, but the great scholar Hasdrubal of the Holy Carthaginian Empire (a thousand years from the date of these events) concluded that surely nothing could have stopped the rise of Carthage, that Rome’s quick growth was always destined to collapse in the presence of a pre-eminent naval power just across the strait of Sicilia.
Yes, thanks again, @rho21!
