Rebel Merchants might be cool

[TevashSzat]

Even by having the rebels as minor factions would severely limit expansion possibilities specifically the computer ai. In the beginning turns, everyone generally makes alliances and take rebel provinces. If there are no rebels, and everyone has huge alliance chains, the computer will be afraid to attack most factions seeing as how one minor faction may be allied to one normal factions and other 5 minor factions. To the human player though it is less limiting, but could still be tiresome. Picture you there just taking normally rebel states when the Pope suddenly gets pissed at you for just wanting to annex a small piece of land into your empire..

[Razor1952]

I agree Rebel Merchants would be cool, able to attack yours and be attacked, of course level 10 rebel merchants might be a headache!

[JCoyote]

I never said they wouldn't still be rebel provinces, they simply wouldn't be one huge collective anymore. They'd still lack Papal protection... and the alliance thing is simply a tweak in the diplomatic AI, nothing more. The diplomacy would be the easiest part to adjust. Tweaking the AI wouldn't be hard. Really, I think it would work best to have them as a second type of faction... more internalized, less aggressive. I would rather them simply follow a "rebel rules set", perhaps with an option under certain circumstances to graduate to the "full set" of AI faction rules.

I think it would be ideal if every 50-100 turns or so a rebel faction got an ego and became a "regular" faction going on the warpath. But it should be rare, and most rebel factions should behave similar to rebel provinces now.