I tried refusing all attempts at adopting people for a few more years with Amulius and got about 10 extra turns out of him. There were a few kids born into the family at this time which may have pushed the "potential and real general" number over the number of provinces I had, which may have made it more likely for him to croak. A pity, as there are some real wasters floating about in the family at the moment. I have one fella who has got to the point where cities are much better off without him in charge. Shoulda sent him off into the wild looking for trouble, I reckon.

Anyway, Amulius DID make it to Rome, and did manage to capture it in an almighty battle. He even had time to take out the largest of the Julii armies before he passed away. He ended up being called "Amulius The Infantryman" after getting the Infantry Commander of Genius trait. Bit strange that, as I was using quite a few mounted troops in some of these battles!

I have a feeling the birth rate may step up a gear when it looks like you may be running out of generals (I was still expanding at this point). Perhaps there is some extreme way of testing this by taking your initial faction leader, and sending all his sons off to get killed against massive odds somewhere, and seeing what happens.

It would be interesting to see if suddenly your initial leader starts firing out kids again, or if a lot of Man of the Hour type adoption opportunites appear.