Good work soulflame.
Be careful though with your expansion and population!
I had a good start on my Julii campaign but now it looks like I will abandon it

Started with Julii on medium. Blitzed the Gaul holdings south of the Alps, then invaded Gaul followed by Spain. I also got Balearic Islands and Tingi (morocco) from Carthage, but Scipii beat me to the main prize (it's now about 250 BC or so). Meanwhile Bruti looked about to destroy Macedon. Trying to prevent them from getting too strong, I beat them to Corinth and then used that as a stepping stone to capture western Turkey and Sparta from the Greeks. I also expanded a bit towards Dacia. About 230 BC or so things were looking peachy. I had about 30 provinces. Although I had no money in the bank, I figured it will soon start flowing from all the Greek trade.

Then I ran into MAJOR problems. It turns out my economic strategy was totally flawed. I always expanded farms early to get revenue and increase the population so I get upgrades. Well, I ended up with the now notorious "population explosion" . Most of my main settlements were getting yellow and blue and red. I kept up for a while by decreasing taxes, which EXACERBATED the problem (population up, my money down!). THen I used garrisons. Heck I even had some with all 20 slots filled with Town Watch and they still wanted to rebel!!!. I built as many happiness buildings as possible. More money gone. Although I was making 80K a year, I could only spend 3-4 K per turn. The rest disappeared into corruption and other venues.

Well, that was not totally unsalvageable. But then Marius happened, and soon after the Senate started being nasty with me with threats of "do this or we will investigate you". Unfortunately, I did not have the troops (the new Marian ones) to take them on (no money), so I tried to follow the senate missions. When they asked me to suicide my leader, however, I felt they crossed the line. I refused and now I find myself fighting much stronger Brutii clan.


So there are many ptifalls on the way to Emperor. Good luck!

Afrti