Quote Originally Posted by Saracen
I am in about year 25 of a game as the Athenians. My income is about 6000 a turn and my support costs are about 3700 a turn. I have accumulated about 30,000 Gc. Trade accounts for about 4800 of the income. I am in every sea area possible. I have attacked mostly rebels and not been attacked by any faction. I have about 7 provinces and basically been left alone to grow as I choose. I think this gives me a good "best case" scenario" of the feel of the economic model I have adopted. Obviously any kind of war where my trade was cut could put me in a negative annual income. I could potentially go from about a +2000 a turn to a -2000 a turn. I see many provinces still with single stacks some with 2 and a few mostly the Eastern armies with 3 or 4 but the quality of their troops is not as good. This is the settings I am using. All regions base income reduced by 50%. All start money is 10% of the original amount. For example 6000 became 600! Tradable goods value cut by 50%. Imports percentage increased from 20% to 40%. This yields the original import value. I am very pleased with the "feel" of the game so far. I am going to continue playing and will advise of any further tweaks. I have it in my mind that I want to reduce the trade further perhaps by as much as an additional 50% which means the tradable goods would be 25% of their original value but I want to play a few more turns in hopes of getting in a big war and seeing if I really struggle which is what I want to do.

Looking at the unit information I would like to see more balance in the armies particularly the Greeks. I have gone back and looked over some historical data and as many of you have mentioned in other threads the proportion of Hoplites is far to much. One of the areas I see as an issue is the support costs. 16 is equal to many of the crap units in the game yet they are among the elite of all units. These units should require more support costs and perhaps take even longer to train. I am going to start working on this issue by doing the following, increasing the build time to 3 years and increasing the support costs to 80. These units are the core of the Greek armies not necessarily the majority in all cases. I am going to go digging in the attic for some source material pertaining to the composition of ancient armies. I will tell you what I find.

Keep up the excellent work!

HTW is by far my favorite mod.

It just needs to be tweaked.

As far as building costs/time to build/income goes, the Viking expansion is a good guide to go by.

Also, ALL starting armies should be reduced to 25% to 40% of current totals.

The Greek hoplites should be expensive and take more time to train.