Popularis

While patiently waiting for the Marian reforms to come round I've been checking my governors to see if one of them fills the conditions needed, and the popularis trait seems to be the sticking point.

Of my 40-odd family members only one has it, and he's an epileptic recluse with as much chance of becoming a consul as I have of becoming a movie star.

Is this trait influenced by anything that I could affect?

And if not, is there a manual way to trigger the Marian reforms? I mean, I love the idea of waiting for a reformer with the right traits but in practice shipping legions to egypt gets old real fast. And yes. I know I could have stayed out of Egypt but the Ptolemaioi looked poised to crush the AS and crush everything in the east after that and I wanted to sap their strength a bit.

I believe that every character that doesn't yet have the optimates or populares trait, has 1/5 chance every turn to acquire the populares trait and 1/5 chance to acquire the optimates trait. Once one of them is acquired the other one can't be acquired anymore, they're antitraits. So that would mean that in normal circumstances, you would get a nice number of populares and optimates, and onely seldomly a character never gets one of those traits during his life.

Something definitely changed compared to 0.81. Optimates and Populares are much more seldom now.

When I finally found a character that had the trait, I sent him campaigning to get the command stars and I made him the faction heir to get the influence and consul trait. With all the requirements in place I rechecked - and now he had lost the Populares trait!

I rechecked all my other family members and couldn't find a single Populares, so I edited the trait file and removed the Populares requirement. Badabing!

cheers/EoE

from the character traits file:

GensOctavia character has 50% chance to be popularis

20% when you acquire Priest of Ceres
20% when worshipper of Ceres build the Temple of Ceres
2% when worshipper of Ceres end in city with the Temple of Ceres
5% every turn for patrician character
15% every turn for plebeian character

there is also 5% hance that character with high influence and politic skill becomes popularis
xxxx

So how to increase chances for this trait? Accept plebeian characters into your family and build temples of Ceres.

As in 0.8x, build temples of Ceres to increase the chances of them being popularis.

Edit: Bah, I'm slow.

Hm, that might explain it. Most of my faction characters are gens Cornelia though I do my damndest to accept other gens when offered.

rgds/EoE

Speaking of the Marian reforms, I think the time for them is unnecessarily prolonged by not having them trigger until 170 BC. It would be a better experience if reforms were possible earlier as long as the other conditions are met. With the player as Rome expansion is practically always going to happen at an unhistorical pace. With no hope of having reforms earlier in response to the expansion I can't help but feeling punished as a player for doing well.

172BC already is early. In EB v0.7x, you had to wait until 107BC. I'm pretty sure there will be no official moving of the reform to sooner.

I edited the script myself to remove the time-condition, so I could get the reform whenever the other conditions were met. And I don't consider this cheating as I think the reforms should be possible whenever a set of certain conditions is met, irregardless of the time being. Unless offcourse the time itself plays an important role. But in this case, I consider the other trigers more important (the latifundia, the reformator-character, the number of provinces). This is certainly true because the expansion as player for Roma, always goes faster the it did historically.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lucasiewicz

Unless offcourse the time itself plays an important role.

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Not that much. The Cimbri invasion played a role, but the reforms could have been triggred by another event or another character living a generation early or later as well. I think the time is implemented because the reforms of the other factions are also (partly) triggered by the time elapsed.

In EB 0.8 I had changed the Romans reforms to be triggered by the number of provinces only. That might make it easyer for the AI to get them - but could also mean that the Romans are stacked in the Camillan Periode for ever, if they don't make it out of Italy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lucasiewicz

I edited the script myself to remove the time-condition, so I could get the reform whenever the other conditions were met. And I don't consider this cheating as I think the reforms should be possible whenever a set of certain conditions is met, irregardless of the time being. Unless offcourse the time itself plays an important role. But in this case, I consider the other trigers more important (the latifundia, the reformator-character, the number of provinces). This is certainly true because the expansion as player for Roma, always goes faster the it did historically.

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Well, the societal factors did play some role as well. My understanding is that aristocratic appropriation of more and more land created more and more disgruntled poor people, especially from around the middle of the second century BC. These poor people allowed people like Tiberius Gracchus to press for reforms; he ended up on the receiving end of a senator's club, but was still succeeded by his brother fighting for the same cause. That led to the killing of some 3,000 people, but the social unrest continued. When an entire Roman legion embarassingly surrendered to the Numidians in 112 BC, the dissatisfaction with the senate reached a new high, and Gaius Marius used the popular sentiment to gain the power of consul. The rest is history.

So social unrest and weaknesses in the senate were important factors. As a matter of fact, they were important in the transformation of Rome into an empire as well.

I edited my eb script so it is ny number of provinces. I think that EB does its best to make things historically accurate but it seems to me that due to the RTW engine things move at an acclerated pace by about 60-70 years in my case. That being said i am not a historian (i learn via TV lol). After the first 40-120 turns things heat up very quickly for me so in my mind its "hey things heated up for the romans in africa and i cant get my troops everywhere anymore, its too far thing heat up for me in 230 I should get the reforms then if i have the same problem. I still train all my troops in italy but it is nice after marching in some god forsaken wilderness to head back to a province that is realtively close and re-train afew. I mean Pompey recruited troops in Spain and Greece (i think) why shouldn't I? I dunno lol maybe i was just ranting cause i love EB a lil too much (may explain why i am single lol)