BI notes

[symball]

for defending- use forts on bridges/passes with 4-6 peasant units inside. if you seal off the borders you will find most hordes don't bother to attack the fort and just walk on by

[GrimSta]

When i am playing as the Berbers i head to spain and build forts into the only ways to Spain, its a very strong defensive position is Iberia. and i love it for that :P

[teja]

For me all peninsulas in BI rock da house. Spain and Italy are both easy to defend with good income. Those are the prime locations for setteling down your Horde after your purse starts to burst after all the plundered cities around.

[econ21]

Thoughtful initial post - welcome to the Org Rhubarbmisterwellington. But once you've played the game a fair amount you may start to look for ways to make the game more challenging to give it legs and that would imply NOT doing a lot of what you suggest. For example, never retraining units makes campaigns quite interesting - as you can't magically resurrect your veterans.

In BI (at least, as Romans),I find sieges and rivers seem to become important than in RTW vanilla. But the AI often does not seem to be able to cope with them despite a massive numerical edge with a horde. I'm not sure what houserules would be best to try to offset these AI flaws, as to totally forgo river defences and autoresolve sieges sounds a little extreme.