Quote Originally Posted by Nagnar View Post
Hi there Caravel!
Yeah i know about the nerf, I think the high degree of the nerf is more to do with the strong starting position - constantinople and the reasons discussed earlier in this thread etc than the influence bonus, i was wondering more why the Almohad and Spanish initial rulers weren't nerfed that much despite having very good command stars - The discussion in the thread last year about making battles more dependent on battle map strategy/tactics rather than being predetermined by the campaign map (excessive command stars).
No big deal though as it's just the first ruler and gollum obviously isn't working on the mod anymore.

You should try it out, its good stuff.
Yes, constantinople and the aforementioned bonuses do turn the byz into somewhat of a juggernaut. In my home mod, I change the kats to 20 man units (as with other bodyguards) and this does help tremendously as far as balance is concerned. I reassign AHC to the byz and make alan mercs recruitable to compensate for this and it does help. They also have the byz lancers, byz cav and pr0n cav, so they do ok.

I'm not sure of gollum's specific reasoning behind not reducing the command stars for the Spanish and Almohad rulers, but here's my £0.02 for what it's worth:

Reducing the byz leaders command stars has to be quite drastic as the influence bonus and power of the kat bodyguard units will ensure that they thrive anyway and gain stars quickly.

The Spanish and especially the Almohad factions would be overcome by their neighbours/crusades quite quickly without half decent command stars for starting rulers/heirs/"hero generals". The Spanish in particular are in a strategically weak starting position surrounded by potential enemies. Muslim factions in general in MTW are underpowered.

In STW 0 star generals were quite viable early as almost all units were elite and it was common to build up generals from scratch. In MTW (single player) fielding a 0 star general is almost always suicidal due to the majority of units being non elites - they will simply rout off the field at the first sign of losses.