what files do I have to change to get rid of the senate?

[crazydude]

....

[Atilius]

It's done in the first section of this tutorial.

[SSJVegetaTrunks]

That's helpful for me too, is there any way to turn them into a normal faction instead of just getting rid of them?

[Makanyane]

To make them 'normal' you have to change the internal name for them in all the files where they appear in order to circumvent the hard coded issues they have.
I've only done this with a RTW mod running through the BI.exe on -mod, the first post here:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=59665
seems to imply its OK for RTW.exe as well and he
also gives a rough list of the files involved, which is quite extensive.

Its not a lot of fun to do, as you can't test anything until you've changed all the files and if you mess up you can just get a no error, failure to load! Make sure you've got a complete backup of everything before you try it.
(Can't post my version as it was done over something that was already heavily modded)

[Atilius]

I've only done this with a RTW mod running through the BI.exe on -mod, the first post here:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=59665
seems to imply its OK for RTW.exe as well ...

I can confirm that this works with RTW.exe.

[SSJVegetaTrunks]

Thank you!