How to role-play a civil war?

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

-IMO, it is not worth the effort of getting your family members to go over to the other faction. When an AI faction has more territories than family members, they will "magically" spawn new ones which you can roleplay.

-When the AI has two separate areas of territory, they'll generally concentrate on only one of them (usually the bigger part).

-If the AI doesn not share the same MICs as you, the gifts of the territories will spawn hundreds of "freed slaves" and you'll have to wait a decade or more before they build up their MICs and start making proper armies.

-If the AI uses the same government system as you (normal vs. nomad vs. Pahlava), then they will use your governments normally as though they built them.

-Forced diplomacy can do just about all you need to do, unless you plan to script things...

-From your questions, you pretty much understand what I did and how to do it. There was a whole lot of roleplaying in my AAR, where I couldn't do things gameplay wise.

-To make an Indian faction, your choices really are only Baktria, Pahlava, Saka Rauka, and maybe the Seleukids (since nobody else has any good units in India). Although Baktria and Pahlava & Saka share neither governments nor MICs. If either Parthia or Saka are nearly dead, you could try transplanting them to India and giving them a decade to build up governments and MICs (or script those).

-Don't steamroll a civil war, the AI will be weak and confused by the transplanting for quite some time.

[Lysimachos]

-IMO, it is not worth the effort of getting your family members to go over to the other faction. When an AI faction has more territories than family members, they will "magically" spawn new ones which you can roleplay.

That's correct in most cases. However, in the case I changed the faction to bribe my family members I was pretty determined to get them over, so there was nothing to stop me
It has the advantage, beside certain FMs really opposing you, of getting rid of them and an entry in the family tree as "deserted in xx BC", which I think is quite nice when you browse the tree some decades after the incident.
Trying it once won't hurt, but overall, I guess, it's really not worth it

[V.T. Marvin]

Thank you very much for your advise. I think that I will just give the Indian territories to AS and give them some repite afterwards. They are pretty much doomed right now elsewhere

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

(they have three territories in Asia Minor, three more in Mezopotamia, Persis+Karmania, and Sogdia+that one around Alexandria Eschate - all others taken by Pahlava and PONTOS - amazing AI expansion so far, I will post the picture in the AI expansion thread soon).

so before I manage to conquer India and find a plausible reason for the spilt of my Kigdom, this might well become their last stronghold.

Anyway, thank you - Centurio Nixalsverdrus, MarcusAureliusAntoninus and Lysimachos - once more and if anybody has any new ideas, I will welcome these as well.