I'v been playing this most of the day (why I havent posted about it until now) and I'd just like to say how pleased I am with it.
I played for a few years as the dal riada and took a few undefended pictish towns (and fought a few of those naked pictish guys) and then decided to try somewhere else.
I played for a while as the isle of man, which was good, but I got my faction leader ambused on ynys mon and he was killed by a massive rebel army, and I sort of lost heart after that, but it's a lovely faction for a challenge because it's so central and yet so isolated.
My main campaign today though, was as Dumnonia. When it said 'ESTIMATED DIFFICULTY: EASY' I was expecting a fairly gentle start to the campaign, so it was a bit of a shock to find I was 24,000 in debt from the start. And it went downhill from there.
I had decided that the best way out of debt was to capture a few of the rebel towns between myself and the saxons, so it was a pleasant surprise when on the first turn the saxons came to me offering a ceasefire. 'Great', I thought, 'this way I can take these towns, downgrade my army a little then wait 6 or 7 turns until my economy sorts itself out before taking on the sais.
HOWEVER, on the 2nd turn I was attacked my my closest ally, Gwent. They laid seige to my northern city with a full stack and it took a last minute rescue by Arthurs cavalry force to save the city. Obviously I was a bit upset, but i had to wait to extract my revenge because Gwent sent another 2 ful stacks that had to be dealt with, then I beseiged Caer Cary and took it (all this without ever being able to retrain any troops, being as Im still more than 10k in debt) I took Caer Cary but then in a small skirmish outside the city against a tiny enemy force, arthur charged a schiltron of enemy spearmen and was killed immediately as the cavalry hit the spears. I won the engagement, but I had sort of been playing the campaign through Arthur and without him my heart wasnt really in it.
Anyhow, I'v messed about with a couple of other factions since then and I have a couple of questions/suggestions.
First of all I was playing with the picts just there now, and its annoying that while the picts are roughly half pagan half christian, and therefore at something of a crossroads, I can't build anything to encourage paganism in my country, which makes it hard to drive out the christianity and become a much more fun crazy pagan kingdom.
The other things are pretty minor too: one is that I take it you don't have sprites? because the game was very very slow in some big battles earlier, and I'v had to turn unit size down to medium to make it playable for me.
I really love the way you've made it quite a hard mod. nothing annoys me more than a mod where you can expand easily at the start and then just mess around with your huge empire later.
I also love the way youve given shildwall formation to so many units. after reading the bernard cornwell series about the period it was brilliant to hear my men shout out 'form shieldwall' and so on.
So yeah, brilliant mod. I wish you all the best with the finishing up of the final touches. One other thing i'd really appreciate is a few more really good custom battle maps, because I enjoy custom battles.