Quote Originally Posted by Mount Suribachi
I think the argument about what units a faction should have available is an interesting one. To my mind there are 2 solutions to the issue of factions that were historically in decline, neither of them mutually exclusive.

1) All factions have the ability to recruit the standard, vanilla unit types throughout the game. eg the Byz and Almohads have no decent anti-cav unit in high and late. So give them the ability to recruit bog-standard Pikemen and Halberdiers, but they don't have access to the unique anti-cav units, such as, say SAPs or JHI (halberd equipped IIRC).

2) The RTW solution using mercenaries. I quite like the way RTW handles this, whereby any faction can recruit mercenaries, provided they are in the right part of the world. So Briton doesn't have cavalry, they need to recruit merc cav.
1) Nah, this will 'kill' the game. The way it is in BI, one of the main things I hate is the fact that all factions (Most of them) have the same/all kind(s) of units, from Cavalry, Infantry, Foot archers to Mounted Archers.. Which is a really annoying thing. And yes, they mostly all of them also have anti-cav units..

2) But still Mercenaries are too expensive, even in R: TW (Right?). I never played a campaign where I used Mercenaries so I'm not sure, though.

A good sollution would be, is to give every faction a specialisation. I find R: TW the best game in this area. Most factions had a fair roster and can kill any other faction. If they manage to make it that way, I'd be satisfied. Surely, they may need to outcast a faction or two, but I hope if they do, those aren't from the same religion/region. So their is still competetion in that religion/region.