After reordering the AOR it is also proper to start thinking about the colony system we currently have.
As we know, RTW/BI allows only for 3 working religions, limiting our actions quite a bit but not completely.
While we will still have to move under the western/eastern/barbarian system we can at least make it in a way that allows more freedom in faction development and slows down a bit more the snowball effect.
What will allow this is to have an "ethnic" colony system.
Here is a basic overview:
Currently each faction is able to build factional barracks as long as the colony level is sufficient.
When you conquer territories with the same colonies, no matter the culture you can still expand like it was in your homelands, while your expansion would be slowed down somewhat when you met another culture's colonization affecting public order and so on.
With the new colony system this will expand and will be much more dynamic:
When expanding you can still count on the cultural advantages of having the same religion but not on the military side.
If for example you are playing Rome you will have your homelands with native latin population but let's say you want to expand in Greece: what would happen?
When you conquer a settlement the cultural advantages still apply because both factions are western civilized but you won't be allowed to build roman barracks right away because the population is hellenistic and not used to your italic style of war.
Auxiliary barracks will still allow you to recruit a selection of local units but your factional units will have to wait until the locals will be retrained under your culture.
Building a roman colony will make available the first level of your roster troops and provide additional western civilized cultural influence, making the conversion to other cultures harder. Additional colonies will give you a chance to recruit even more factional troops until you get most of your roster available.
What are the advantages of such a system?
- It slows down military development without hurting stability
- It will allow local militia recruitment instead of the factional one
- We will be able to truly show the multicultural nature of some cities
- It will open the way for dynamic AOR and make recruitment more historically accurate
- late game expansion will be much more diverse
Here is a basic scheme of ethnic distribution:
Roman:
Rome, roman rebels
Celto/Germanic:
Gauls
Indipendent Gauls
Germans
Iberian:
Iberian
Punic (will change into lybi-phoenician post marius):
Carthage
Hellenistic:
GCS/IGCS
Macedon
Seleucids
Ptolemies
Baktria
Pontus (Post Marius)
Persian:
Armenia
Pontus (Pre Marius)
Parthia (Post Marius)
Illiro-Getic:
Thrace
Nomadic:
Scythia
Parthia (Pre Marius)
Arabic:
Saba
Special Case:
Eastern kingdoms and rebels won't be able to build any colony and will generate a different religion bonus from the goverment building based on AOR.
What's left to do?
All we need to do is to create the buildings needed and to place the correct native colonies on the map plus some EDB research to find out how much we can stretch the AOR system with the colonies or alternatively we could allow some extra recruitment options through barracks built by other factions (but only if it's true about the unit limit CTD not being present).