Sorry it took me so long to respond to this thread. I'm going to try and post some more info tomorrow such as a preliminary factions to subcultures list, and ethnic identities of factions. I've also started the DB editing to put the new subcultures into the game.
Well, Macedon will have a nice advantage over its Greek and Thracian neighbors. That's my goal for the balancing. But a lot of those things need to be tweaked once we move on to overhauling the AI diplomacy.Macedon does need an boost from its already weak position, and Athens and Sparta need to be cut down from declaring war. Tylis and other factions should not destroy Macedon at its starting date. Macedon really in the proper sense of RSII should face the Roman threat even more, and its first 20-30 turns should be an easy play because Macedon was fighting Rome at this period. Perhaps script the wars a little bit to really make it feel like the Roman-Macedonian Wars. Magnar did this in his mod with Carthage fighting Rome at 218 bc. The player must build his armies and then defeat Rome in the current wars.
Since it starts in 217, a lot of the major factions will be in the middle or about to start very serious wars. I'd rather avoid scripts as I feel they take away from the sandbox element of the game as well as the strategy. But certain events should be set up so they are likely to trigger in the campaigns early stages. I'm able to do some things with regions that allows us a great deal of flexibility in balancing without having to artificially force the AI to do things. We'll see how it goes.
Three advantages that I can say I'd like to see Macedon have at the start compared to its immediate neighbors:
1. Recruitment slots
2. Upkeep costs for its troops
3. Income. I plan to give Macedon access to mines (which will operate differently in my building scheme and have actual significance). It will be a valuable area to control as it was in real life.
In other areas, I'm able to do very unique garrisons for regions which should allow us to boost major factions and help deal with the issue of smaller AI nations over running them as they are able to concentrate their forces (which larger factions are incapable of).
I'd like to actually reduce the reliance on missions to guide the player and the AI, as well, but that's another thing we'll have to address when we get to it. It leads to some pretty ridiculous scenarios in vanilla.
Another thing I'm glad to say this mod has embraced - realistic starting positions. As in, the actual sort of armies and recruitment options these factions would have had. You aren't going to be starting these campaigns with the same shell army as in vanilla or most starting positions. You will essentially be thrust into taking control of a faction as it stood in June of 217 (a pretty interesting time period that could almost be fairly described as an ancient world war, if people don't mind the hyperbole). So, Athens and Sparta aren't going to have the same forces to start with as Macedon in the name of some ridiculous sense of balance.
but in this case, Rome can spawn out many armies - so even if you landed two or three armies - you would either result in phrryic victories, or you'd really have to put your skills to the test
All of this has to be worked out with Hetairos when we move along (a reoccurring theme here, I know), but I'm also aiming to represent the different types of armies and population in various respects. Again, the flexibility I have from my unique regional chains will help a great deal here. All AI factions won't have the same standard number of recruitment slots, upkeep, movement points, garrisons etc.
I'd like to move away from the arbitrary balancing of AI factions and try to represent the ancient world as closely as possible. I also want this to be a challenging and strategic experience for the player. The high level of specialization I can assign regions is something that will allow us to do that on what I feel will be a new level, to be honest.
I'm confident that this system will greatly help Rome and some of the other major factions without relying on scripts to help the major AI factions cheat. It's just a matter of getting to that point in the development. That should come up after this initial campaign framework when I can devote my time to buildings.
So, Marshall of France, a lot of your ideas are going to be implemented in some fashion. The concepts will be there.
Sanjayraj
Thanks for the contributions, but I'm personally against the idea of adding a Mauryan faction given the scope of the map. It's also a very debatable subject whether the Mauryans had any control over those territories still by 217 BC. I'll stress again that Hetairos makes these calls, but that's where I stand on the issue and I don't see it changing.
The reasons are simple:
1. The legitimate question of how long the Mauryan presence lasted in Afghanistan. Who was the Sophagasenus mentioned by Polybius? We will probably never no. Did Polybius screw up when he said that Antiochus was 'renewing' a prior agreed to treaty with him during his Eastern campaigns and really mean something else? We don't know. He could have been a local ruler, or the Mauryan version of a satrap. What we do know is that after Ashoka's death, the Mauryans declined. Afghanistan, a difficult area to control no matter when you look in history, had already been the site of revolts during his reign when the Indian super state was at its zenith. So, even if the Mauryans still exercised some form of control over the area, I suspect that it was, at best, nominal.
2. The limitations of the map. Unless Hetairos wants to expand it further East, we would be representing a major empire with all of 2-3 regions on the periphery. That doesn't add to immersion, realism, or the strategy involved. I once had an Alexander mod for RTW1 that had a crazy map concept that included all of India and parts of China (with a Yuezhi faction and two Indian). I've always been fascinated by a large scope mod and the inclusion of India. I love that what-if scenario. I'm also a stickler for realism, and there are, unfortunately, limited resources to make all this work.
So, if Hetairos wants to expands his future map concept to the east (when/if we get the hoped for tools to edit it), I'd be open to the idea of a representation of the Mauryans.
The map concept does currently include the Indus area, though, so maybe that is far enough. So, with tools, and that map, it may be a more realistic option.