More "distinct factions" mod?

[Nightmare]

This isn't really a criticism I have of EB, as I know that a main design goal was historical accuracy, and I'm assuming this was pursuant to that goal. However, one thing I've noticed is that an awful lot of factions can recruit an awful lot of other factions' units, leaving very little in the way of exclusive units and "faction originality."

I know how to mod it myself, if necessary. I just wondered if someone else has created a mod where they cut down on the amount of non-faction units a faction can recruit, so that factions have more of a unique flavor. For me, it would be nice to fight a faction that actually looks like a faction for a change, vs. some huge hodgepodge of everybody's units all clumped into an army under the name "Gauls" or [insert faction name here].

Thanks.

[konny]

Well yes, in the vanilla concept of recruiting everyone was able to recruit everything of his faction in every town but no locals. Something EB urgently had to address by adding the governments, disitinctive MICs and AORs. It certainly does have it downsides too, but still some lines had to be drawn.

Take the (pre-Marian) Romans and the Sweboz for example: both have a realy unique roster but only a rather small AOR for factional units (Italy the one, Germany and Scandinavia the other). As soon as they expand, say into France, both have to rely on locals, and that means: Gauls.

The player would certainly use some houserules and rather recruit factional units in his homelands and march them to the front, but the AI has no idea that, say, recruiting stacks full of nothing but Gauls would be "no no" for the Romans or Sweboz. So it does indeed raise what ever it can get its hand on.

In M2TW this could be addressed modding wise by giving the AI the ability to raise factional units much easyer in a much larger AOR than it is allowed for the player (if not unlimited). In Kingdoms we could even use recruit preferences to prevent from Lugoaes becoming the rank and file of every faction's army between Scotland and the Peleponnes.

Things are a bit more difficult in RTW - unless going back to Vanilla where the Romans would be able to raise Principes from a level 3 former Gaul barracks in Scandinavia the turn after conquest. Something you certainly don't want to have in EB?

To have it at least half-way EB-fitting you would need to change around the entire EDB in the way that you would change the way government and recruitment is working:

Governments are not selective buildings but a single complex with several levels. These buildings provide with the respective units, save for those that would be considered "garrisoned professionals" such as Marian Romans, for which we would still have a distinctive barracks buildings.

So we have a building "Romanization" with say 5 levels. The fifth level would be "Roman Homelands" what not is buildable but only existst at game start in the Roman starting provinces, or may be even only in Rome herself. The other four levels would roughly correspond with the current governments.

Each level would have certain boni and mali (also for other factions) and would provide with a changing pool of units, depending on the province. That way we would start building after conquest in each province with the lowest level. This would be something like the old "level 4 government" providing us with the most locals, but no Romans.

Then we would be able to upgrade this building level by level, may be adding some more buildings as requirements in order to show that we are properly Romanzing the province. Each level would reduce the ammount of locals we can recruit but add more and more Romans to the pool, until finally we have reached level 4 and would, for example, no longer be able to recruit Gaeroas and Ioastae in Milan, but Principes and Hastati.

This has of course one problem: because we would be able to recruit already the best locals from the lowest level, we would probably have the best of recruitment options when having freshly conquered the province. In Milan we would, for example, have access to Neitos and Brihentin instantly after conquest - no need for Romans then. This could be addressed by, for example, nerfing the possiblities to recruit high-end foreign units, or by tieing certain advanced building to the existance of a higher level of "Romanization" or by adding unrest etc penalties to the lower level, so that you don't stick to it longer than needed.

Other factions cannot build this structure. They also would not be able to recruit anything from it. It either would do nothing for them or would have certain effects, such as higher trade but higher unrest etc.

[athanaric]

RTR has (had? Haven't played it since I got EB, which was almost four years ago) a system that works like the one you described (Romanization and such).

[konny]

Yes, if I had to make something like EB from scratch I probably would prefer something along this line too: it is a bit more straight foreward, saves building slots and is less restrictive in terms of "what-if". But changing the entire EDB, script, descr_start and whatsnot else of EB only to get it in doesn't pay back the effort.

Most of the factions have a rather large AOR for their basic units, in particular the Hellenic and Celtic factions, so playing one of those wouldn't give a dramatic difference. The Romans have their Marians what can be recruited all over the map, what would leave the question to some factions like the Sweboz, Lusotans, Saba and the like.