How to get Popularis and Consul trait?

[jhhowell]

Eques is very bad for this plan - it decreases the chance of gaining Senate offices. That's what the trait says, anyway, and would be historically correct if it works the way it says it does. The equestrian families in Rome were a step below Senatorial rank. Indeed, one could argue that the Eques trait should give -10 fertility, in the sense that the characters we actually see in EB are assumed to be the leading Senators - Eques aren't Senators, therefore an Eques family should disappear from the game... If Eques is backwards like large granaries, having opposite effects from what the text says, I'd like to know about it!

If you actively seek Eques, governing a mining city (Illyricum, for example) seems to work. Senators were not supposed to engage in commercial activity other than owning land (or something along those lines), so extensive mining may have triggered the first Eques in my game. Or maybe it was coincidence - rich city, long term governor -> Wealthy -> Eques.

I agree with the rest of Victor1234's advice - the starting Cotta rocks, I think you'd have to take active efforts to prevent him from becoming Consul eventually. Though in my game he made Consul several years after the historical figure actually gained his second Consulship... Though he was governor of Carthage the whole time, so I guess it balances out.

Enslave is not especially relevant for Wealthy. Two exterminates often does it, as does extended governorship in a wealthy city. If command stars are a concern, governing a city with a Mars temple seems the most reliable method I've found to gain a couple.

[Victor1234]

Well, the text for Plebian says -3 to influence, making him less likely to get elected to Senate offices. For Eques, it says that he is less likely to get elected to Senate offices than the Senatorial class, with no influence penalty mentioned at all. From this, I assume the way it works is that you get the big penalty for being a plebian, and then if you get Eques, the penalty is reduced somewhat or not affected. Either way, since no direct influence penalty is mentioned, it can't hurt. Moreover, since to get the Eques trait, you need to become Wealthy, the Plebian penalty is reduced by 1 at a minimum (since Wealthy gives you +1 influence, and Very Wealthy further increases the influence bonus). So essentially, from what I understand, it works like this:

Plebian: -3 influence
Eques: -2 or -1 influence
Patrician: no bonus or penalty

Therefore a plebian has a lesser chance of being elected to an office, an Eques has a greater chance (thanks to the +1 influence from Wealthy or +2 influence from Very Wealthy), but still less than the Senatorial class, and the Patrician has the best chance of getting an office. Since a Patrician will usually never be a Popularis, being an Eques is an advantage to getting that Popularis Consul.

You are also right, both enslaving and extermination get you Wealthy eventually, as does governorship, but from what I've found, enslaving is the best solution, since governorship might cause it to happen or it might not and extermination gets you bad traits (Restless sleeper, butcher, warmonger, etc). You can enslave as many times as you want, and you'll only get good traits, such as Pillager, which give you a 10% bonus on looting and you will eventually strike it rich.

Edit: Moreover, I disagree about the Eques disappearing completely from the game. Ironically enough, Gaius Marius was himself an Eques, as were other important people in Roman history like Cicero and Tacitus. All these were certainly senators, and Marius was elected Consul seven times. During the Empire, the Eques class played a key role in the running of the empire, so there would no doubt be many of them in the Senate.

[jhhowell]

Ah, you're more focused on Influence than I was. My reading is that Plebeian reduces your chance of being elected to office, and Eques further reduces that chance (and Nobile would increase the chance). I assume, all else being equal, that a Pleb/Eques/Nobile would be as likely as a vanilla Pleb to be elected, and a Pleb/Eques would be the least likely character elected.

But you're right, all else is not necessarily equal, and the wealth series does give you Influence. Do you know how much Influence is needed to offset the Pleb/Eques penalty? If each step of Pleb/Eques (or Patrician/Nobile, in the positive direction) is worth, say, one Influence in terms of election probability, that's not so bad, but for all I know it could be a much stronger effect.

Maybe I misunderstood what historical Eques means. I thought Equestrians were a distinct and non-overlapping class to the Senatorial families, basically the rich merchants and such. So there was plenty of intermarriage and some movement between classes, but at any given moment a figure was either an Eques or a Senator, not both (i.e. Marius, Cicero, et al. started as Eques and became Senators, at which time they were no longer Eques). But maybe that's not how it worked... Ah, according to wikipedia, the separation of the two classes occurred within the EB period as part of the Gracchi reforms. So the Eques trait really shouldn't matter a huge amount for most of the game.

Enslave vs. exterminate - chalk it up to play styles. I'm extremely averse to uncontrolled population growth, I want it between +0.5% and +1.5% almost all the time. Or zero for a city that has reached 24K population. The long duration of the enslavement growth bonus is - to me - more trouble than it's worth. The bad traits from extermination are unfortunate (restless warmonger ) but the guys I use as generals tend to suck anyway - if they were any good they'd stay in school longer and go govern a city somewhere. I suppose that's oddly Roman of me, in a way - the legions are so good they don't need competent leadership (though it's nice to have if available). Thank goodness the AI is no Hannibal.