Friendly Senators--A Ghost! A Ghost!

[tuareg109]

So I had a Populist lined up to be next year's consul, and of course I don't want that at all, so I smeared his reputation...twice.
He's still listed as having 22 friendly senators, despite having 1 Civic friend and 6 Populist friends, according to the mouseover on "potential consuls".
What. The. Hell. Gives. Will I have to imprison him or something?

 

[furrykef]

Don't really know what to do about it, I'm afraid -- IIRC trying to imprison somebody who's in line for consul can lead to trouble -- but an ounce of prevention is a pound of cure. If you never put populists in positions of power (as generals, governors, censors, magistrates), make sure you use an omen every year (just use popularity if the success chance is under 50%), and -- this is the most easily overlooked -- make sure you always give titles to characters who "want a title" (have a big empty box next to their portrait on the character screen), you will have very few populists in the first place and they will rarely if ever be in line for consul.

I also like to use populists as envoys when I declare war in case they get imprisoned or killed. (To change the envoy you have to click on one of the country's provinces and click the "diplomacy" button at the bottom of the screen. I don't know why they made this feature so difficult to find.) In fact, even when your government isn't a republic, you should always change the envoy to somebody useless when declaring war. Don't want your best ambassador getting beheaded for no good reason.

Also, if a populist has an easily fulfilled ambition, like "Become Tribune of the Soldiers", fulfilling it may change their conviction and swing them to a different faction.

 

[tuareg109]

Well, I didn't know all that! I only knew about changing envoys.

As a rule I've only favored titles upon men in the Consuls faction; due to Lucius Aemilius Barbula's being in the Military Faction and winning much success and popularity in the Pyrrhic War, I now have 40 Military senators, 26 Populists, 18 Civic senators (second consul was a Civic), 11 Religious senators, and 5 Mercantile senators. I'm aiming at keeping all power in the Military camp and eventually--is it possible?--taking over the entire senate. However, I have enough dissonance as it is. Though Barbula has become something of a legend, every magistrate and commander is a Military member--except for the Naval Prefect, and I'm grooming my golden-boy faction leader ex-tribune of soldiers, ex-governor of Magna Graecia, now Aedile for ultimate command, every diplomatic decision is quite split when it comes to the military Faction, and often up to 1/3 of them prefer Populist candidates for Consul.

Now as for converting Populists to other factions:
1. What's a safe, low enough number of Populist conviction that will probably result in switching conviction if I grant them their wish?
2. Do they always switch to the Consul's faction?

 

[brxbrx]

It seems that most of the intrigue functions have little gameplay use. Apart from holding triumphs as an emergency measure to appease generals, or assassinations as an extra-super-emergency measure for rebellious generals, I don't use other functions. Sometimes I go for imprisonment, but if you can imprison someone without sparking a civil war, then that person isn't much of a threat to you and doesn't need imprisonment.

 

[tuareg109]

It seems that most of the intrigue functions have little gameplay use. Apart from holding triumphs as an emergency measure to appease generals, or assassinations as an extra-super-emergency measure for rebellious generals, I don't use other functions. Sometimes I go for imprisonment, but if you can imprison someone without sparking a civil war, then that person isn't much of a threat to you and doesn't need imprisonment.

Civil War all day erryday now that I've got 53% of the senate. Funny thing is the Military Faction still has a +2% bonus in attraction for "long time at peace".
There's been nonstop civil war for 4 years now.

 

[fmurciap]

There is a lot you can do, but first of all, read the EU:Rome version of Sun Tzu's "Art of War":
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?393106-Unofficial-Strategy-Guide-Republics

You will save a lot of problems if you follow its advices. As of your present problem, in first place, the number of POLITICALLY friendly senators of a candidate has nothing to do with the number of PERSONAL friends or foes the character has. Below the figure you will find an explanation of how many senators, of each faction, support the candidate (and a bit of data about why they do). Moreover, one of the main strengths of the populist faction is the massive support it gets from their leader charisma: four times that of what any other faction would get.
As for one of your questions: any character with a conviction of less than 20 has a reasonable chance of switching faction, from 20 to 25 is harder, except switching to Mercantile if you give him the governorship he wants, and over 25 is almost impossible AFAIK. As for the faction he could switch, is always Mercantile for governorships and to the faction of the ruling Consul in most of the rest of the cases, although I think there are a handful of positions switching to a fixed conviction.

 

[tuareg109]

Ah, thanks for the link and the info fmurciap.
Trouble is, only 3 Populist senators of the 28 total have a conviction less than 20!
Anyway I'm up to 56% of the senate. It's slow going because Mercantile, Religious, and Civic all have more than 30% bonuses because of "Opposition" (whatever that means).
Funnily enough the Populist leader is imprisoned (and has been for about a year), and so his charisma has no affect on political attraction! They have 0% political attraction! Haha!

 

[deadmeat1471]

Execute him. Be an Autocrat Nicky.