A couple of suggested "iron man" rules

[screwtype]

I was also thinking about making the ability to train units dependable on cultural penalty, will have to look into that...

That's not a bad list Herakleitos. I think my own variations might be:

NO generals on foreign territory. Conquests made by Captains only. Either that, or mod general's stars out of the game.

Restrictions on mercenaries - no more than one or two merc units per stack.

I also like your idea of recruitment based on cultural penalty. I didn't think of that. I'm not sure if it would be viable because I don't know enough about how the cultural penalties work or how much they can be reduced in foreign cities.

Just a list of my rules I use for RTW.

Hmmm, your rules look a little extreme to me denmj.

[Herakleitos]

I like the merc-rule. Whether or not to use generals is a matter of taste I guess, I want my conquests to be carried out by them for some 'historical flavour'. I believe in BI it's much harder to gain command stars?

Cultural penalty is based on the origin of buildings in a city. For instance a foreign trader gives -5% and if you upgrade it to your own market it will give +10%. There should be an old thread around with accurate details. The governors residence has the most influence I believe, so Kraxis' governor-building rule would in a way still apply. I think a good rule would be that CP has to be down to around 10 - 15% before you could start training units; it's normally around 40% when you conquer a city.

Red Harvest is propagating the 1 unit per boat rule here: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=55976. IMHO he's right about the fact that CA should have built in these type of game mechanics from the start and we shouldn't need to use our own 'iron man' rules. (I noticed last night that I'm continuously tempted to break them... )