It would actually be a huge change (scrapping family members and traits and bios for starting family members and developing new ones, changing scripting placements of some buildings, changing diplomatic alignments, changing descriptions of the faction and of the faction history, dropping scripted forced-wars over Thermon, Sinope, etc., as these wouldn't apply to an Aitolian or Achaean faction), and believe me, we spent a lot of time discussing the potential ways to depict this faction. It all came down to the fact that if we tried to depict an Aitolian or Achaean league, it would bascially remove the faction from being considered as a separate faction in the game. An Achaean league is based mostly inside territory that it is clear Makedonia needs to control. We would have to carve out one small province in the corner of the Peloponnese to let them have a spot at all. Aitolian league would be just one province at Delphi (and wouldn't incorporate any of the big old cities that anyone cares about).

So we are talking about using one city state basically or using a grouping that we have clear information about just a few years later that amounts to an alliance of Sparta and Athens in alliance with Ptolemy (who also is closely supporting and allied with Rhodes) in addition to joint agreements with many other Greeks ("that the friendship and alliance of the Athenians with the Lacedaemonians and the Kings of the Lacedaemonians, and the Eleians and Achaeans and Tegeans and Mantineians and Orchomenians and Phialians and Kaphyans and as many of the Cretans as are in the alliance of the Lacedaemonians and Areus and the rest of the allies, be valid for all [time, the one which] the ambassadors bring with them").

The only problem with all of this is that the Chremonides decree itself (the official document) isn't put into law until a couple of years after our game starts. Current scholarly opinion on the decree is close to this (recent wording from a 2000 book on Aitolia at this time): "The year of the office of the archon, Peithidemos, by which this decree is dated has yet to be established with certainty. Possibilities range from 270 to 265; 268/7 seems the most likely. The exact date of the decree is less important, however, than the information it provides about the issues and actors involved in the conflict... Chremonides' proposal of an alliance between Athens and a group of Peloponnesian states headed by Sparta was only the last in a series of diplomatic moves that led to the creation of a formidable anti-Antigonid coalition on the southern mainland and in the islands sponsored by Ptolemaios II."

So we have many Greek cities including some very famous old ones that were allied with Ptolemaios and officially tied together by 268/7 (but maybe a little earlier than that), and were probably moving this way even a little earlier than that (the agreement didn't fall out of the sky upon them but instead was a reaction to what had been going on for most of the 270's). This is clearly the best option for 272 for us, and the internal vote wasn't even close on this issue. We don't call it the Chremodian Alliance or anything like that - but just an/the "Alliance of the Hellenes".

There is indeed a tiny similarity to the yuezhi issue here, I will admit. But that is an issue of more than a century difference, and here we are talking about the situation of common interests and ties that leads to (within 2 or 4 years) to an officially binding declaration. Even if the decree hasn't been announced yet, these states shared a common interest and did officially allign shortly after this, something which we are sure of. And us deciding to keep them like this isn't just stubornness. We've shown we are willing to scrap an entire faction when the evidence shows this is what we need to do.

(This doesn't even mention the fact that playing as Achaeans (not talking about the bronze age usage of the name as a pan-greek title) or Aitolians doesn't seem very exciting either, but that's just personal taste.)