You have to hire some commander in chiefs to get the reformer popularity up. You could also try using the descions as well.

Maenthal I've had the same problems. I got like four advisers and the and the Purists still were getting like .25 popularity a day. I ended up just using cheats to bump their popularity to zero so I could complete the focus, and I STILL failed it because they got enough back before the 30 or 40 days or whatever it was was up. So I had to get rid of all of their popularity several times periodically in order to move forward.
It's ridiculous. I'm pretty sure that its a bug or something. Of course, I might just be a horrible HoI player (which I am), but this time around I don't think the problem was caused by my own incompetence. If you keep having problems just use cheats; its no fun to fail over and over

Before the Trouble in Paradise update, reforming was fairly easy if you know what you were doing and allowed for some missteps. After the update, it seems that political power is just scarce enough to remove a lot of the margin for error, or at least noticeably increases the learning curve.

It can be tense early on, and can require some deft juggling of the decisions, but it is doable.

The key is to remove anything which gives the Purists daily support

With the 2.0.17 patch, there is enough political power to make the reformer path feel like how it was prior to the Trouble in Paradise update. I'm really pleased with the update.

Here are some things I do to always get Reformers path in the new update:


1. Get enough pp to acquire the two military staff reformers (yes, it's not just Bors T, but the chief of navy and the top military chief), change military training from navarro vets to anything else ( i picked enclave academy). I don't think getting Boris T is necessary but if you have the pp, do it anyway for that added buffer.

2. Go to war with New Reno asap to get that easy pp and stability choices so you can get those staff changes and crackdowns!

3. Crackdowns. Usually the first justification for a crackdown comes as an event when you get the event that some staff flee or something like that. Then use your pp for that crackdown asap. Now it's okay to have the purists outnumber you so you can get the second crackdown (albeit you'll be wounded and get less PP in the long run for a while, this can be offset by investing in legitimacy as early as you can). Then do the second crackdown. Now get the third crackdown through the focus and voila! Now purists are below 20%!

Note: I'm not sure if crackdowns justifications stack, but to play it safe i just get them sequentially after each crackdown. So for example I wouldn't research a crackdown justification when you're waiting for the purists to do their thing when they outnumber you.

4. Depending on how much stability you still need to demote officers and scientists, invest pp in stability producing decisions. After that it's pretty much game for the reformers.

I managed to get purists down to around 10-12% after this doing this.

Here´s watcha gonna do, go for the speech focus immediately for that 100pp, remove the Navarro Veterans idea from your gov, hide from the ncr for 20, use the next 100pp for a navi or air reformer for that 0.2 daily intellect change. Now youve offset purist rise with your own reform rise in less than a 2-3 months after game start. Now just crackdown or simply use decisions to pummel them back into submission before you remove them entirely. I find it way harder not to have BOS or Rangers also declare war on the ncr while youre taking their ♥♥♥♥ goring borders like never before.