Its pretty neat!

I personally like to have guidelines that are rigorously enforced in peaceful/prosperous/victorious times - but which get thrown out the window in difficult situations!

I also like to have the "habits" evolve over time. In my most recent game I spent far less time training my younger members in settlements (where they picked up useful, but peaceful, ancilliaries for the most part) and instead made them ride around with my equite "police force" to suppress the abundant brigands. This lead to a kind of extreme "military ethic" which meant that I privileged people with military experience over those without it in getting the good settlements to govern.

In some ways I prefer to let this develop as I play, I'm not really trying to faithfully replicate the development of the Roman Republic in my campaigns - I like to think of it more as a big "what if things went a lot differently?" sort of deal.