Rebel Towns

[Hippias]

Rebel towns tend to start with a small settlement, 1500 people or so, and 3 - 5 units (playing MM on BI - XGM). Sorry if this is a stupid question, but if I don't blitz them, and no other faction does, if I was to siege them after 50 - 100 turns might I see a large city with a 10 - 15 unit garrison, or are they alwys going to stay small?

[DimeBagHo]

Rebel towns will grow, especially in terms of population, but with the current set up they wil not hire a lot of new units or engage in a lot of development. The reason is that the slave economy is pretty poor. They have large starting forces to support and no trade with other factions. I can give them more starting money, but that typically just results in a burst of population stripping/junk unit hiring at the start of the campaign. The larger garrisons also slow down the growth of other factions, so I have tended to make the slaves weaker rather than stronger, with the aim of allowing the other factions to expand rapidly.

[Zarax]

Maybe this can be improved a little with the starting script, giving slightly stronger rebels in the area around the player...
BTW, are we going to see the economic add-on included with the next beta?
Latest version is for 3.13 so I think it wouldn't take too much to update it for XGM4 beta.

[Venom]

Is there an estimated release date on a full (non-beta) release of XGM 4?

[Hippias]

In the spirit of slowing the early game down a bit (I HATE blitzing) can certain ( 25% maybe) of the rebel towns be beefed up a bit. every rebel town seems to have 3 max units and it is just routine for the AI or player to siege/auto resolve a conquest in the first few turns). i would like it if some seriously powerful "rebels" (Galatians, Nervii etc) had 8 - 10 good units in their town at the start. As the AI seems to prefer going for the rebels first perhaps this would slow down some of the uber factions so by the time they turn on the players we are 20 years in, and I might have made some money and got a decent army?

[DimeBagHo]

Some selective improvements in rebel garrisons is might be possible. It would have to be done carefully, because making the rebels too strong can stall the AI factions. That means a lot of testing would be required - so it might be a while before it happens.

[Hippias]

fair enough - just looking for a slower start to help the smaller factions. Blitzing just feels a-historical - i want 20 years to get my house in order and then start moving out in the world. So many of my armenian and pontic games end after a 20 year dog fight with 50 cents in the bank and an all sparabara army.