Quote Originally Posted by Nobunaga
am also concerned about unit and faction balance. And with more than 20 factions and hundreds of units I think balance is not possible due to time constraints. a MP era with its own (one to three max) factions and limited yet diverse units is much easier to balance and is not affected by SP issues.
You're right, but an MP era with a limited unit set and only 3 factions will never happen. We've been asking CA for this for 5 years, and instead we've gotten an ever increasing number of unit types and factions. It's completely out of control now, and has a momentum which keeps things moving in the direction of ever increasing numbers of units and factions. The best you'll be able to do with M2TW MP is to play with player imposed rules to eliminate unbalanced units and factions.

However, we have what you're asking for in Samurai Wars for MTW/VI v2.01. We have 14 units types from which all players choose their army, and this unit set is completely separate from the SP unit set. We balanced those 14 units in such a way that unit purchase rules are unnecessary, upgrades are unnecessary due to adequate morale and the standard money level used ensures that armies aren't composed of mostly elite units. Each basic component of the RPS has two unit types except for the highly defensive naginata unit, so it is possible to field armies strong in one particular component without incuring the cost penalty imposed on more than 4 of one type. In anycase, combined arms is necessary so armies composed of all one unit type wouldn't work well anyway. Color differentiation of armies is outstanding with the sashimo on each man's back, and the men are easily distinguished against the ground textures. Samurai Wars has attracted a small but skilled group of players, and it doesn't cost any money if you already own MTW/VI. We only play on Sundays now, but could expand that if interest increases. Development of this mod is ongoing, but the MP unit stats are probably final now or very close to final, and have been developed and MP tested over the last 2 years with the assistance of many top players from STW/MTW.