Rebelling Family Members

[BobbyC]

Landed in Africa with three armies all with family members (not adopted) at their head. One turned blue before he’d even got a sun tan.

Sent his cousin after him and blue boy destroyed him. So, after negotiating the Mediterranean with my invasion force I'm down to one army and I am pessimistic about the last one's chances as well given Carthage has one or two stacks heading his way.

Is there anything I could have done about this or is it scripted?

[Ejergard]

There's alot of things to take into account with your generals.
A general living inside a town doesn't lose loyalty, besides any traits that he inherits or acquires. On the contrary, he will gradually gain loyalty (very, very slowly though).
A general leading an army will gradually lose loyalty over time, especially as he's succesful on the battlefield.
Try to rotate the legions doing the fighting, so that you don't end up with a few rookie legions and a few super legions, that is a common situation when you'll get a rebellion on your hands soon.
Also, take the time to look through the traits and ancillaries of each of your generals. These change over time depending on what your general experiences during his life, so keep an eye on them regularely.
As a rule of thumb, I employ my generals for a term of 15 years of field duty. After 15 years (60 turns with script) is up, I retire the general inside a town.
This isn't fool proof, and I do get rebelling generals on my hand before the time is up sometimes, but it works good enough. To accomodate this constant changing of generals you'll have to manually recruit generals from your cities instead of relying on family members to pop up.
Another thing you might want to consider is letting your generals rest in a town with good schools and temples for a while before assigning him to field duty, he will then most probably acquire a few good traits and ancillaries before you send him out.

Hope this is of any help, gl

[BobbyC]

Cheers Ejergard. The more I play SPQR the more I appreciate I need more of a structured approach than the one I obviously gave RTW vanila.