dessoul: Ok, i try to give you an answer. I put the text out of the handbook:
"While much of the Ccharacter interaction takes place behind the scenes, it may actually be very complex. Factions
develop, and Characters acquire Friends and Rivals, with neither category guaranteed to stay that way. These
relationships are triggered by Events, which may in turn trigger other Events.
Events may result in a Character’s Friends or Rivals aiding or opposing (respectively) his or her efforts in positions
within the government. For example, a Magistrate or Governor may be more or less effective according to the
interactions of their Friends and Rivals.
If one Character revolts, their Friends will be more likely to support them, while Rivals will of course be opposed to each other. Sometimes, there will be series of Events which interlock and interrelate to each other. Some of these Events may lead up to a confrontation between rival Factions, or even Civil War."
The romans have 5 fractions:
Military, Religious, Mercantile, Civic, Populist.
The fraction with the most votes sets the consul in charge and changes some of the benefits you gain.
Every fraction gives different benefits.
All the republics are like this, in the earliest game there are Cartage and Rome which have this. The other countries don´t have fractions, they only have characters, which have friends and enemies.... So i actually don´t know, where they come to 53 playable fractions, maybe if you count all the diverent scenarios together?
But i cannot really advice you to buy the game. When the company paradox was young, they did a lot of mistakes in their games. The old "Heart of Iron" games had a very weak AI. And this game has a lot of problems as well. I give you an example: i play Rome and made war against Cartage. Egypt was making war against them, too. We both were very successful and all of the carthagian areas were conquered. But do you think, that Carthage is giving up, so i can get some areas? No. Since 5 years nothing changes. They don´t give up, even they don´t have any troops any more and all their areas are occupied.
Next one is the missions: i get the mission, to conquer macedonia. But when i try to declare war against them, the diplomacy screen tells me, because i have no reason to lead war against macedonia (!!!) i will loose a lot of stability....
To tell it short: i think the game is shit. At the last point i lost every bit of fun. This kind of bugs doesn´t have to be.
"Dankeschön" for taking your time to write all that down, really appreciate it.
When I readed about the "53 playable factions" I tought that maybe they had implemented every single existant "tribes/regions" from each culture and that you could play them separately. That would have been a mind blowing thing specially with the "celts" because every strategy game that adds those kind of factions usually tend to focus on one of them or generalize the whole culture as it was one (or even do a mixup of everything).
But from what I've seen there is no such thing (unless you mod the game ofc) and I haven't been able to find a propper list no matter how much I search, that, added with your post some sort of lures me away of getting the game.
