Minor Proposal: Increase the size of Eleutheroi garrisons

[QuintusSertorius]

Something I've done almost routinely since starting with EBII now is using create_unit to boost the garrisons in historically significant/large settlements. Why? To slow the game down and prevent the usual snowballing into a handful of superfactions. Some of the settlements designated rebel are representative of powerful confederations or city states that didn't make the cut due to the faction limit. Yet they're pretty easily brushed aside by the initial forces available to some factions, which also makes things much easier for the human player.

The AI factions really hate the Eleutheroi and will go out of their way to besiege them rather than attack each other. Problem is at the moment, that's the easy option since quite a few places have too-small garrisons making them soft targets. For example, Histria has a tiny garrison and a Getai army starts almost at the gates. I've never seen an unaugmented game where they haven't taken it within 5 turns of the start. There's also an unfortunate tendency for most AI factions to avoid fighting each other until all the rebels in their immediate locality have gone. I wonder if the rebels were tougher that might encourage them to assess their neighbours differently?

I'm thinking both a general increase of 2-4 units depending on the size of settlement, and specific increases for important places. For example: Syrakousai. A powerful city-state that has more than once been suggested as a faction in its own right. That should have a near-full stack to help keep the Romani and Karthadastim at bay. Sinope is another powerful city-state that is taken too easily. Segesta is another one, the Ligurian/Kelto-Ligurian tribes there were so fierce they remained independent for over 150 years into our timeframe, in spite of repeated Roman attempts to subjugate them. The Insubres of Medilanon were another one - there's only about six units in there by default. I've had good results with boosting the garrisons in northern Italy more generally, to encourage AI Romani to go south first, rather than ignore southern Italy/Sicily and launch the Gallic Wars two centuries early, because that direction is so much easier. The Lusotannan have three weakly garrisoned settlements (Ebora, Tole, Brakara) a very short distance from their starting province, which is their springboard to steamrollering all of Iberia. Sweboz always seem to very quickly take the settlements near them.