Quote Originally Posted by Bob the Insane
The rebel Roman factions are emergent factions (not there from the beginning) and like other emergent factions have triggers for the emergence. In this case it appear to be a revolt by a settlement in Roman lands. The Loyalty rating seems to determine whether the general govening the settlement actually joins the revolt or gets kicked out of the city. I guess having a general join the revolt must be another trigger for the emergence of the rebel faction as it can't really exist without a general... (I think, after all the rebel faction can exist without a general so I am not 100% sure)..
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The Roman Rebels needs both family members and settlements. If it looses all settlements or family members it is destroyed. It`s a real faction like any other faction, except from that it got the trait 're-emergent' in descr_strat.


Quote Originally Posted by Zatoichi
Anyway... the new thing that happened (other than the revolt, which was a first for me), was that about 10 turns later, I got notified that I'd gained a new recruit to the Eastern cause. There was no 'locator' icon on the message, so I didn't know what it meant. A scan of the map revealed I'd got a new general and army (4 limitari? with silver shield and weapons, gold XP), defected over from the Eastern rebels, halfway from that city to my nearest settlement. This wasn't the original general, but a totally new one.

So my point (yes, I have one) is that these rebel generals evidently have their own loyalty, and can switch back to you randomly - an undocumented feature (unless I skipped that bit in the manual), and a very good one in my opinion.
I once had a 4-ring loyal WRER general joining my faction(WRE). Unsure whether this was the same turn, even a captain 'converted to my cause'. It appears to me WRER generals simply love rebel back to me with crappy loyalty traits so I have to keep them away from my armies.