Need some help with government

[caralampio]

Since the encyclopedia is not very illustrative, I would ask for some help from the forum members related to government (if we can call it that way).

Gravitas supposedly is what helps you gain influence in the senate, right? More gravitas, more senators. Now we have these generals that belong to the other houses (if I'm Julia most generals seem to be Junia or Cornelia, if I'm Cornelia then most seem to be Junia or Julia, etc.) The generals of your own house not only are more scarce but they also seem to be more inept. And recruiting them usually causes you to lose senator support (why, I wonder). So you end up with most of your military men who are from other houses. They serve you faithfully, but, question> their gravitas applies to your own, or to their house's gravitas? If the latter is true, it would be wise to get rid of them, and try to place your family members in charge.

If I discredit one of these great generals from another house, am I helping or hurting my cause? Not too clear. I lose senators, they lose gravitas...

My faction leader has 0 gravitas. Is this normal because he's the faction leader, or is it because he's a moron? Worse still he's 32 years old and I can't get rid of him. I seem to recall that he was one of the available generals before. One of the bad ones.

[krisslanza]

Gravitas from generals in another Family contribute to their political power, not your own. Only generals belonging to your House will get you more Senators. Odds are your Faction Leader has 0, because there are several random traits to get that cause you to lose Gravitas per turn.

[2gutter67]

There's not a whole lot to do with this whole government thing, at least in my eyes. I pretty much ignored it completely and everything managed to even out between 30% and 20% of the "senate" power for each faction for Carthage.

In my opinion, it's best for you to just keep trucking on your conquests but keep an army or two nearby your capital city for the eventual "revolution." Once that thing happens, it is highly likely that you will never have to face the other families again.

[bzhou]

For barbarian/eastern factions, I've been suiciding the lesser generals in battle then replacing with the elder chiefs, though in my latest playthrough I'm going for no defeats so it's a bit harder.

Important questions:

1. Does gravitas work always or only when NOT leading an army?
2. How is it calculated? I would venture to guess (ambition x gravitas) is summed for each faction, then this ratio affects the number of senators/nobles.
3. I had a trait that gives "+1 to faction power per turn." ????

Edit: Think of senate support as political currency. It takes some leverage to get favors done, such as promotion or giving someone military command, just like it works in real life.

[rrgg]

I would like more information on this as well. As near as I can tell, you gain influence every time one of your family members wins a battle, while other factions gain influence every time one of their generals wins a battle. Oh, and opposing factions also seem to be randomly given free gravitas, promotions, and influence from time to time, even if they've never seen battle in their lifetimes.

To be honest though I'm a bit concerned that the whole politics thing can't even be saved right now. The premise is just so weird, you are controlling some sort of oligarchy, except that you are only in control of one of the main families, although you have complete and absolute control over every detail of the empire anyways and can give your political opponents evil mothers-in-law as retinues or have them charge into the middle of a bunch of enemy pikemen, or put someone else in charge of their army at any time. However there are all of these intrigue things like assassination and blackmail that other families randomly do but you can't because they are all ridiculously expensive and you are apparently the one who has to pay for everyone else's armies. It's just sort of :|