Rebel Merchants might be cool

Just crossed my mind that some Rebel agents other than Witches and Heretics roaming the map might be fun, such as free traders and such. The problem is, though, that it would easily be exploited by the player. I wouldn't hold it against the game if some roaming harlot stole a general of mine either (or a Don Juan giving vices to/stealing a princess). Maybe if the idea of Guilds is further developed we'll see something like that. Of course always adding features makes it all the more difficult for the AI to handle things.

Does anyone know a good recent merhcant game? I remember there were masses of those in the 90's. After all, Total War does not need to include EVERY aspect of Medieval politics completely.

Well the biggest problem with that is the ongoing problem with rebels in general, ever since STW: it's a catchall faction. This means the rebels in Ireland, and the ones in Antioch, and the ones in Cuba, are all on the same side as the ones in Scandinavia. So for the most part rebels got their ability to develop as a faction nerfed, and were given random spawns to make up for it. If it had strategic cohesion, it would be the largest single faction in the starting game.

I wish every rebel province was treated as a separate faction. Then we could get rid of that "as-soon-as-i'm-at-war-with-the-rebels-i'll-never-be-able-to-make-peace-with-them" thing. I want to see rebels provinces as individual minor factions first. It wouldn't really be a lot of work creating their unit lineups, most would be near clones of the dominant powers in the region, with deletion or substitution or two.

Then we deal with them having strategic units.

It must've been one of those first signs of globalization or something - an inter-European conspiracy or mafia or Illuminati or something... And I did always find it deppressing to see them as "rebels", and it was too bad how passive they were even with strong armies. These days they're just "hordes of barbarians" like in Civilization. Maybe it's a "dark side" thing or something.

But seriously, minor factions has always been a great idea, but I'm not sure if it would work very well in the Rome engine anyway. The big factions tend to overrun the smaller ones, and for me at least it would seem that large will always mean stronger, at least when it comes to the AI. The AI could never manage a one or two province economy/military balance. It would of course add to the diversity and the feel of the era, not to mention to the politics.

Not that the smaller ones fared too well in the original Medieval either (except maybe for Switzerland, but only seldom anything surprising there). Hard to say, as it is not an option right now. I do in some ways like the fact that the factions are "on the same starting line" because of the simplified financial system, but still it doesn't help AI enough. And of course the AI never quite learned to use the agents very well - I've had about a dozen of my diplomats bribed for no apparent reason during the very beginning of my first campaign, and while the assassins run around my territories in their tights they never seem to try to kill anyone. Merchants, on the other hand, actively seem to pester each other.

Even by having the rebels as minor factions would severely limit expansion possibilities specifically the computer ai. In the beginning turns, everyone generally makes alliances and take rebel provinces. If there are no rebels, and everyone has huge alliance chains, the computer will be afraid to attack most factions seeing as how one minor faction may be allied to one normal factions and other 5 minor factions. To the human player though it is less limiting, but could still be tiresome. Picture you there just taking normally rebel states when the Pope suddenly gets pissed at you for just wanting to annex a small piece of land into your empire..

I agree Rebel Merchants would be cool, able to attack yours and be attacked, of course level 10 rebel merchants might be a headache!

I never said they wouldn't still be rebel provinces, they simply wouldn't be one huge collective anymore. They'd still lack Papal protection... and the alliance thing is simply a tweak in the diplomatic AI, nothing more. The diplomacy would be the easiest part to adjust. Tweaking the AI wouldn't be hard. Really, I think it would work best to have them as a second type of faction... more internalized, less aggressive. I would rather them simply follow a "rebel rules set", perhaps with an option under certain circumstances to graduate to the "full set" of AI faction rules.

I think it would be ideal if every 50-100 turns or so a rebel faction got an ego and became a "regular" faction going on the warpath. But it should be rare, and most rebel factions should behave similar to rebel provinces now.