Popularis

[palmtree]

While patiently waiting for the Marian reforms to come round I've been checking my governors to see if one of them fills the conditions needed, and the popularis trait seems to be the sticking point.

Of my 40-odd family members only one has it, and he's an epileptic recluse with as much chance of becoming a consul as I have of becoming a movie star.

Is this trait influenced by anything that I could affect?

And if not, is there a manual way to trigger the Marian reforms? I mean, I love the idea of waiting for a reformer with the right traits but in practice shipping legions to egypt gets old real fast. And yes. I know I could have stayed out of Egypt but the Ptolemaioi looked poised to crush the AS and crush everything in the east after that and I wanted to sap their strength a bit.

[Lucasiewicz]

I believe that every character that doesn't yet have the optimates or populares trait, has 1/5 chance every turn to acquire the populares trait and 1/5 chance to acquire the optimates trait. Once one of them is acquired the other one can't be acquired anymore, they're antitraits. So that would mean that in normal circumstances, you would get a nice number of populares and optimates, and onely seldomly a character never gets one of those traits during his life.

[EoE]

Something definitely changed compared to 0.81. Optimates and Populares are much more seldom now.

When I finally found a character that had the trait, I sent him campaigning to get the command stars and I made him the faction heir to get the influence and consul trait. With all the requirements in place I rechecked - and now he had lost the Populares trait!

I rechecked all my other family members and couldn't find a single Populares, so I edited the trait file and removed the Populares requirement. Badabing!

cheers/EoE

[bovi]

As in 0.8x, build temples of Ceres to increase the chances of them being popularis.

Edit: Bah, I'm slow.

[EoE]

Hm, that might explain it. Most of my faction characters are gens Cornelia though I do my damndest to accept other gens when offered.

rgds/EoE

[palmtree]

Speaking of the Marian reforms, I think the time for them is unnecessarily prolonged by not having them trigger until 170 BC. It would be a better experience if reforms were possible earlier as long as the other conditions are met. With the player as Rome expansion is practically always going to happen at an unhistorical pace. With no hope of having reforms earlier in response to the expansion I can't help but feeling punished as a player for doing well.

[Revenant]

from the character traits file:

GensOctavia character has 50% chance to be popularis

20% when you acquire Priest of Ceres
20% when worshipper of Ceres build the Temple of Ceres
2% when worshipper of Ceres end in city with the Temple of Ceres
5% every turn for patrician character
15% every turn for plebeian character

there is also 5% hance that character with high influence and politic skill becomes popularis
xxxx

So how to increase chances for this trait? Accept plebeian characters into your family and build temples of Ceres.