FACTION TYPES
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Specific player Factions are pretty new to the game, and haven't been officially adopted yet. The TTS module I built from, included notes for the now-official four "bot" factions, plus notecards suggesting another four factions; so I worked up the idea that the first senators to team up together would naturally create political parties based on their personal interests, and so create the Players in effect.
The Factions only have positive extra capabilities, not special restrictions. They also create the clockwise player order around the table, based roughly on my guess about when certain factions would emerge and/or how important they'd be to the Republic. Who actually goes first on any round of player actions, is based on which player currently has the highest ranking available officer, so Player One doesn't mean this player goes first. It's only a relative marker to designate play order: player 2 will always be to the left of player 1, and so follow him in play order, etc. (Some action sets however will be simultaneous in effect, and in the case of voting the HRAO totally decides the order of polling players for votes.)
Three of the 8 Factions have been introduced already but I'll recap them here for convenience. Since these are works in progress, I reserve the right to tweak them further for game balance. Where there are ties on criteria, I'll just move on to creating subsequent Factions until I deduct all but one of the tied players, who will then get the Faction you were tied for.
THE ARISTOCRATS will be Player One: this Faction is created by the senator group with the oldest families (lowest family numbers). Their long-standing connections allow them to slowly farm Influence, which is the ultimate scoring factor of the game, and then to consolidate votes in the Senate with their influences. Thus, if a senator in this Faction receives any additional amount of Influence, the Player will receive 1 extra Influence which you can assign, as soon as you wish, to any one of your
other senators. (If you only have 1 senator, he gets the extra point.) Then, so long as the Aristocrats are the faction with the most Influence present in Rome, your senators' knights will bring double extra votes on
any topic, for
or against. This is the most powerful voting buff in the game, but it naturally depends on the player keeping his senators
in Rome rather than off doing other things.
THE MILITARISTS will be Player Two: also known as the Imperialists later in the game. This Faction concentrates on military victories, and is created by the senator group with the highest remaining total Military ratings. Their knights don't get more than the usual 1 extra vote in the Senate, but instead they act more like what
we think of as "knights"! -- they add 1 point each to their senator's military rating. This "Mil" rating represents the senator's organizational and logistic skill in managing legions and fleets, increasing the fighting power of each unit up to the limit of his Mil skill. (So a senator with Mil 4 leading 6 Legions will let 4 of those 6 add another point to the combat.) That's true for every Player's senators, but the Militarist's knights allow your senators to effectively manage more forces in a fight. (So that same senator with 2 knights can buff all 6 Legions, not only 4 of them.) Militarist senators also gain 1 additional Influence and Popularity, beyond the normal amounts, for Victory in a War.
The Militarist player basically farms influence by other Players being a little more willing, especially in military emergencies, to elect your senators to the highest offices (Consuls and Dictator, with their Influence rewards) so that you can go fight wars for the Republic; which you're more likely to win; which earns you Influence and Popularity rewards more often for Victory; plus a little extra Inf and Pop. This also means your senators will be
less likely to be in Rome itself for Senate proceedings, and your knights don't get special voting buffs, so you're more dependent on other players to advance your Faction along. (Which makes trying to bypass the Senate and seize ultimate power for yourself, and for Rome's protection of course, proportionately more tempting.... which other Players will know and so be leery of wanting to give you powerups by siccing you on Rome's enemies.... this game, y'all.

)
Perhaps most importantly, the Militarists are one of the three Last Ditch Factions! As long as a Militarist senator is the Highest Ranking Available Officer, Rome cannot lose from having more than 3 Active Wars still remaining at the end of the turn! -- the idea being that people remain confident when the Militarists still have someone in reserve who can pull Rome's hash out of the fire. But of course, that means keeping an Officer
still in Rome (to be HRAO) rather than off
actually fighting a war. (It also means the other Last Ditch Factions might not be able to use
their safety nets to preserve the Republic in disaster.)
More Faction introductions later.