Need Help Starting at Later Date

[Proletariat]

Today I got a copy of The Twelve Caesars. First up was Julius, so naturally after a bit of reading I fire up R:TW and start a new campaign as the Julii.

I've begun to truly detest the early game (the strategy aspect is great, but the armies the AI fields are pathetic.) I decide I would just edit descr_strat to give my faction 15,000 denarii and just click End Turn all the way up to the 220's to see if I could a) trigger the Marian Reforms and b) fight some decent Barbarian armies at that point.

This idea didn't really work. I had the AI controlling my faction (the 'manage everything' tab clicked) and I was swamped by the Gauls. The computer would only recruit town watch, dogs and hastati. This really puzzled me since I have modded the game so that peasants, dogs, town watch, and other 'militia level' units take 3 turns to train and all the superior units take 0 turns (from frogbeast's ideas). If this is the sort of managing the AI is doing for everyone else, I'd rather someone 3 genes from being a monkey call the shots.

Anyway, my main question is, are there any changes I can make so that I can start my campaign at a later date? Is it possible just to change the starting date in descr strat? I may just end up editting the file so that every faction's capitol has the highest available barracks, stables, scriptorium, etc.

I really want to play with the Post MR units but since 1.2 it seems to take a month of sundays for this to occur.