OK - so it sounds like we still have at least 3 players who are still interested in being Consuls (Braden, GeneralHankerchief and me), plus there may be more. So I think satisfying our broad territorial goals is viable - I don't think the absence of lower house generals will be an obstacle; we can always get the Consuls to do most of the fighting and autoresolve where necessary. However, there is a risk that the campaign will lose wider interest during a prolonged blitz, so I am open to the possibility of shutting down the PBM earlier. For example, we could have a constitutional ammendment "No more conquests" that would serve as an effective vote for a shutdown.

On the Republic to Empire mechanic, I was thinking of that kind of ending a while back. I had thought about doing it surreptiously - getting enough lower House generals to agree to collude and when we had 50% of the military force, declaring a coup d'etat and installing an Empire. (I hasten to add, I was not thinking of putting Numerius on the throne - the Aemilii seemed the more likely Machiavellian dynasty). However, I never did anything about that idea and now the cat is out of the bag, it would not really work. The problem now is that the Consul can manipulate the assignment of troops to make sure his favoured gang get 50%+.

But we could work out a similar mechanic based on commands: each general with a Legion banner could be worth 1 point and a Field Army 2 points (Consular 3 points, if we ever get one again?). When a group of players has more than 50% of the total points, they can install an Emperor. We could even fiddle around with the points to reflect other factors (command stats? governors of big cities could be given some points etc). We could make commands permanent, to stop a Consul stripping them, unless the Senate agrees by a 2/3 vote.

This kind of thing might add some spice to keep the Senate bubbling over while the Consuls blitz the map.

Any thoughts?