Faction Member Management

Greetings,
I have been playing as Rome for a few months now. It is 202 BC and I have conquered 23 provinces. As my territory grows I am finding it challenging to manage 31 faction members of varying ages and stages along the Cursus Honorum. I have been keeping the younger FMs out of the cities so they can develop time in the legions and gain military tribune rank. I try to get FMs to Rome for Quaestor, Aedile, Praetor and Consul elections "in their year". I also try to get everyone to at least "blooded" in their military experience. Those goals leave me shuffling my FMs from campaigns, to cities, to Rome and back out again. My experiences leave me with a question for others who play as Rome. Do you try to manage them through the Cursus Honorum and how do you keep track of their development?
Thank you.
- CJ

I never played as Rome before, but a good way to give family members battle experience (and keeping your provinces free of bandits and devastation at the same time) is the following steps:

1- Study your frontiers and find the choke points (river crossings, roads, etc)

2- Train a lot of regional, cheap, garbage tier units (like archers or levy spears) to act as watchmen and send them to those points, only one batallion at each.

3- This will be really usefull because other factions wont be able to march in your land anymore and you will reduce enemy devastation drastically (If you ever play as Kimmerios Bosphoros you will know how anoying it is to see how the stupid sarmatians walk throgh your land every single turn and use your roads as their own, while giving you -2000 devastation income each turn)

4- Grab a bunch of useless family members and spread them equally, each one of them having in range 3-4 batallions (giving one extra cav to each general helps, if you are willing to afford it.) Use them at first to build watchtowers along the perimeter to increase awareness.

5- If a bandit party shows up, rally some units along with your closest general, and kill them in the same turn they appeared (before they cause devastation)

6- Now, what you need. A lot of times, since they are alone and far away from the city, this cheap batallions will desert. Chances are 3 out of 5 turns, one unit deserts. This isnt really bad, since replacing them is quite cheap. But you bring your closest general, and with the other cav unit you provided, you surround them and since they are rabble, they will rout easily. Easy battle, easy experience for your general.

In short time, you will have many "veterans" who the only thing they did was runnin over some starved archers. Cheers!

Ha! Thanks. I'll give it a try.
- CJ