I played until the Marian reforms again with Roma (about 215 BCE this time) and then played until about 225 BCE as Macedon (auto-calculating all the battles now for speed).
1) The economy is highly dependent on trade.
Highly dependent. As a result, when you go to war you may find yourself suddenly bringing in 20,000 or more per turn less than before. When I attacked Carthage as Rome, my income plummeted so drastically that I went from having 250,000 gold in the bank after building my armies, to having a 30,000 debt in about two or three years. Even with 15 well-developed integrated cities, it took a long time to recover.
I just had a similar situation with Macedon. I have about 10 highly developed provinces, but a short war with a major trading partner (the Ptolomies stabbed me in the back, then quickly gave me a cease fire and trade agreement when it didn't work out as expected), and suddenly instead of a 15,000 profit per turn, I'm losing 2,000 and it is improving very very slowly. And that is with almost my entire field army demobilized except for 6 Thureophoroi and 4 cavalry.
I've not seen anything quite like this in other mods, and I wonder if
all of my trade decreases when I go to war, not just trade with my enemy. Maybe the mod should emphasize farming and taxes more.
Anyway, I now won't start a war without at least 200,000 in the bank when the first javelin is thrown.
2) I like the pricing of the units from a conceptual standpoint -- maint cost is high, so it pays to demobilize units that you won't be using for a while. Standing armies are very costly.
3) Are the hoplites and Greek light cavalry supposed to be so expensive to purchase?
4) The minor powers of North and Western Europe still do almost nothing for decade after decade.
5) I've played the various versions about 4 times now, always as Rome except this last time, and each time Seleucids collapsed in rebellion in just a few years, leaving everybody else to pick up the pieces, and the Ptolomies did very well.
Thanks again for the mod.