Will AI barbarians expand?

Everyone's pretty interested in starting positions of various factions etc, but we all know that's less important than how they grow and expand.

I'd seen it hinted, particularly in the Aedui preview, that when playing as the aedui you will face a significant challenge trying to take the rebel held provinces in the Arveni and Belgii territories. I assume this means there is a significant number of well equipped troops in these areas.
But when I'm playing as Rome, for instance, will the AI be able to handle this? Basically I want to know if the barbarian factions will be able to expand, faced with significantly beefed up Rebel factions around them. If they can expand, doesn't this sortof undermine the fastidious attention to historical accuracy you give to faction starting locations? I mean if you make the British an individual tribe with a small and realistic starting area, but they can take over the rest of Britain inside 15 turns, then it doesn't really matter that much what starting location you give them, because by the time anyone reaches them they will be facing, to all intents and purposes, a united britain.

However, if they cannot expand, then doesn't that sortof weaken the challenge of the game? If you're faced in the entire of Northern Europe by a huge number of strong but static rebel factions who never raid or attack you, and a few poorly equipped proper factions with a couple of towns.

This sounds like quite a conundrum to me, a sortof 'how far are you willing to take realism if it adversely affects gameplay' thing.

I'll play and undoubtedly love the mod no matter which way you've decided to go, I just wondered what your thinking was regarding this issue.

Wait until EB is out before making such comments... ~:cheers:

Well, I can say that you don't have to worry about barb factions staying in one province for the whole game. Some expand a little, some expand a lot, some are wiped out - and it all varies, *but* stays pretty close to what we are wanting and what we are expecting. Lots of tweaking still to do though, since the last units aren't in place for some factions - and they may affect their overall success, so it's hard to counter for them before they get in there.

Mongoose: I wasn't making a comment I was asking a question. It just seems that either option has drawbacks and I was wondering which way they were going.

EDIT: Oh, and thanks Teleklos, that pretty much answers my question :)

Let me just tell you that for the first time in playing RTW I got the "You Lose" message without fighting any actual factions :) (or without freak accidents, like losing all my royal family in first battle)

It's sure that the driest barbarians will expand if you submerge them in water for some hours. ~:)