Quote Originally Posted by intifadanyz View Post
As Hayasdan, Faction Leader and Faction Heir must be from House of Yervanduni.
Thanks, I've adopted this rule in my new Hayasdan campaign

A couple of other rules that I'm experimenting with:

"If you're really good, you get to go home": If one of my units gets so much experience that it's unstoppable, despite the fact that I'm using a "reinforce instead of retrain" rule, then it gets retired to garrison duty in the heartlands. From that point on it's strictly defensive, except when a local governor needs the aid of veteran soldiers to fight rebels.

For example, in my Hayasdan campaign my six Scythian horse-archer units retired with double-silver chevrons after fighting off the might of the Seleucids (three heroic-victory markers in the same valley!). They are now death-on-horseback to any rebels foolish enough to appear within my empire, while younger, fresher Scythian riders take the battle to the treacherous Ptolemaioi.

"Remember the Marmertines!": When I raid an enemy city to cripple it rather than conquer it, I leave it in the hands of mercenaries from my conquering army. They destroy all military and economic buildings and as many of the happiness and population buildings as possible while still keeping the population under control (sometimes I need to hire a couple more units to help them do this). They'll probably be besieged and slaughtered within a year, but the enemy will lose forces and time doing so, instead of gaining a garrison if I just let the city rebel. And if the mercenaries can survive long enough to form an allied government, recruit a local leader, and rebuild to where they can recruit a local garrison again, then maybe I'll let them into my empire in a decade or two

This one is really fun to role-play. It has great historical precedent (e.g. the mercenary Marmertines taking over a city on Sicily), and lets you play out a mini-story within your empire (can a bunch of mercs in an isolated unhappy city hold out long enough to survive?). Naturally none of your other armies will come to their aid until they're "civilized", and you'll probably get to fight out at least one heroic victory or doomed last stand on the city square with a bunch of battered mercs.