Pre-emptive strike on Rome?

[therother]

This sounds about right. If you don't keep the Senate happy they will outlaw you. If you do keep them happy, and at the same time keep the plebs happy, then it will alert you when you are able to march on Rome instead of just having them outlaw you. This is preferable obviously, so that you can spend a few turns preparing to invade Italy before the actual war starts.

But don't hold off for too long, or the Senate will start giving you ridiculous missions that will damage your overall strategic position, your alliances, and so on. If you don’t do them, they will start bringing out the big guns, like huge fines or suicides of Family members. And even if you do the mission, they just say that they are satisfied.

[sapi]

I know what you mean - you must attack quickly when given the chance. The senate told me 3 times to attack egypt, i just ignored them each time as i didn't want a war.

For me the last straw was my senate popularity dropping from 9 to 4 just because the people liked me!

[Parmenion]

I was beseiging one of the Greek cities (one in North-Western Greece - can't remember the name) in 265BC when my allies the Brutii came along and also attacked the city. The battle was fought immediately as I was already building siege engines and the battle lines showed myself and my Brutii allies lined up to attack the city which we took easily. Afterwards my troops were shown inside the city on the campaign map and the city and province were mine. Outside the city was the Brutii army. All fine so far I hear you say.
However, I received lots of messages from my allies, the first of which was from SPQR telling me that due to my actions against fellow Romans I had been outlawed. They declared war on me, which was followed by all the other Roman factions doing likewise.
No I didn't accidentally attack the Brutii, and no I wasn't breaking an alliance of any sort by sieging the city.
Thus you don't have to wait until you have the support of the people to be outlawed, you just have to behave perfectly normally and a game bug will ensure you're outlawed before long.
Needless to say I reloaded and lifted the siege, letting the Brutii have their precious city........

Exactly what happens if you attack an allied Roman faction before you receive the outlawed message anyway?

[Slaists]

The other night, playing as Brutii, I made the Scipii town, Capua, go rebel (4 spies and two assassins sabotaging loyalty buildings achieved that). The senate didn't say a thing about my transgression. It gave me a mission soon after to blockade the rebel port... I will try taking the city from the rebels (a stack full of veteran principes) tonight: see what happens then.

[Servius]

Hmm, one more reason to look for easily-defensible borders. Expanding to 25-30 provinces could leave you VERY vulnerable. As the Julii I think I'll take Spain and France, hold the Germanic border from Belgica-Germania Superior-Noricum, blockading British and N. African ports. That's 19. Caralis and Palma make 21, Taking England and Ireland would be 25. If I can undermine the Scipii I can add much of N. Africa to make up the difference. That would take 1-2 N. African Legions, 1 Spanish Legion, 2-3 N. Italian Legions, 2 Germanic Legions, and maybe a Gaelic Legion just in case.

By the way, does anyone know why I can't build forts or towers in the lowland provinces of Germania Inferior. Is it because the land is supposedly too soggy? You can't build stuff in parts of NE Belgica too.

[Damiel]

I had a strange experience, and it may have been that I'm using the 1.0 realism mod, but I was playing as the scipii (only roman faction I hadn't tried yet) and fairly early in the game rome outlawed ONE of the other factions, I believe it was the brutii, then the next turn the julii were outlawed.

THEN I saw that I had a chance to be with the rebellion or against it. I chose to be on the side of the senate and faced a few futile attempts from the Julii before I had taken all of italy except for rome and was well on my way to taking the brutii's holdings.

Suddenly, though, a few turns later I was asked to have my leader commit suicide, which I refused to do. So then *I* was outlawed, but with all of my legions out of italy and a sudden lack of funds because I was carrying on several wars at once (because of course, even in civil war the rest of the world was also at my throat) I used my diplomats to try and negotiate peace with rome so I could be better prepared to sack it later.

Strangly enough, they accepted my ceasefire and alliance! That lasted about 6 turns, when they cancelled the alliance on me, but I had enough income by then, having taken out all of the brutii just then and gotten their rich lands, to bribe half of their army away and hold off long enough to get a good legion back on the boot.

So that was an odd situation... but it raises a point, isn't it possible to muck up your rival roman faction's senate missions enough to cause the senate to turn against THEM and create a much more manageable civil war?

As a side note, I owned lands from the black sea to the british isles VERY early in the game this way (though I was so stretched thin several times that my empire almost collapsed) and my production was atleast 4 times that of the closest second nation. Ironincally, my Scipii's then turned around and propped up the wavering carthagenian nation after almost descimating it.(because egypt was about to take over the entire southern med but I couldn't afford/didn't want to fight another war at the time) It was quite fun actually, I sent diplomats/spys/assassins down that way and bought a numidian general, trained up a mercenary force (1 elephant unit, 1 general, 3 cavalry, 2 skirmishers) and with a little creativity and a lot of bribing, conquered and then GAVE carthage all of those lands, accept one, which I use as an elephant recruitment camp . Now they are strong enough to combat egypt (back up from only two provinces) and so I've bought myself about 20 years of time when I'm not really going to have to worry about the lower med.

Oh god I'm rambling now... okbye

[Oaty]

Easy answer..... tell the other 2 factions that they no longer have trading righs, no longer have military access and are no longer your allies. The answer is the senate outlaws the other 2 factions for declaring war on you and the senate outlaws you for being a prick.