@TheNipper

Thanks for your suggestions, I will have a look at some, but have my answers below:

- Get rid of the Americas. Its location in relation to the rest of the map is absurd. The Carolinas are supposed to be in line with the Strait of Gibraltar, and Fortaleza with the Conga in central Africa. The distance between the Old and New worlds has been massively shortened, and any faction can immediately sail to the Americas. The resource values ($$$) are astronomical, giving the factions closest an unfair advantage. While I know you haven't aimed for historical accuracy, the Americas as you've implemented them just doesn't fit - just as it didn't with the original version. Better to just get rid of it. Same with Iceland. This also affords the opportunity to add in one or two more Old World factions, and to add more regions to the map.
I like the Americas and fits with how I like to play
- Get rid of the resurrection mechanic. While innovative, a faction that has died ought to remain dead. It's more of an annoyance than anything.
Nope, I like ressurections. Keeps the map interesting instead of having rano rebels
- A money sink was implemented to clamp down on the hefty income inflation. If you examine the income statement, the bloat mostly comes from trade. I found that adjusting the Settlement Income Factor (SIF) from 1.0 to 0.2 did the trick - much more balanced, and no need for the money sink. I've seen Venice and Constantinople reach incomes of 30k gold per turn from this trade income bloat.
You are welcome to do a submod
- The Mongols are seriously overpowered. While this fits in with the historical narrative, for this game, it ruins the balance. I found that stripping them of their added money and armies helps to balance things. Also elephants need to be removed, they are simply too powerful and they roll over every other faction. The Mongols still have a very good roster without the elephants.
Could be fixed in a submod, but as you said it fits the narrative
- Descriptions. This requires quite a bit of editing, whether it be the faction descriptions in the selection screen at the start of the game, or for units or the innovative buildings you've added (I really like the effort you've put into creating these, top work). Some of the descriptions are too short, looks like a rush job.
Can you blame me after putting hundreds of hours into this mod that some parts are "rushed"? I am a one-girl-team
- The castle part of the building browser needs fixing. For some reason, it displays all the special buildings available for castles across all factions, although the human faction can't build it. The city part of the building browser doesn't seem to have this issue. Again, some of the descriptions needs fixing i.e. "Arh oh god - do not translate!!!"
Yeah, mostly be true it slipped my quality check
- The money debt function in campaign.txt needs to be removed. Although it is designed to address the problem of a faction essentially freezing when they are bankrupt, continually bailing them out by wiping out a faction's debt leads to serious army bloat - what income they can accrue after being bailed out is simply spent on more troops, which again leads to bankruptcy, and around it goes. I found a solution to this no one else has been able to: freeze a faction's troop recruitment. But there is no way to target a faction's recruitment directly given the lack of scripting functions. Instead, it has to be done by settlement. Yes... That means 30 factions x 197 settlements = almost 6,000 if statements. But it was easy to replicate in Excel and copy and paste into the campaign.txt, and only 30 monitors, so there is no slowdown due to processing. It comes out to 205,000 lines of code, and it works. If the AI treasury is under 5k gold in the first 30 rounds, their recruitment is frozen until their money rises above that amount, then it is unfrozen. If the AI treasury is under 10k gold after 30 rounds thereafter, it is frozen, then unfrozen once they accrue more than 10k gold. I've also found that increasing the rate of mutiny in AI armies also helps with this, as a full stack can cost 4k per turn, so an occasional mutiny (conversion to brigands) helps. The trick is make the variable min_revolt_chance in descr_campaign_db.xml at least 5 to 10.
I am a little bit proud of my simple money script that keeps the AI active. And i have no desire to add quarter a million lines of code and make sure it works with everything else, but no one is stopping someone from making a submod
- Increasing the variable siege_att_str_modifier to 1.0 makes the AI more responsive to attacking rebel settlements and getting into gear. Changing min_turn_keep_rebel_garrison to 1 frees rebel garrisons to wonder about, rather than staying put. This makes rebel settlements easier for the AI to attack and hence they will develop faster. An interesting side-effect of both increasing the mutiny probability and this variable is that there is a much larger brigand problem in the game, which keeps things interesting.
I toyed with that but decided to not do that because that makes rebel settlements easy prey
- Some units that shouldn't be available still are in the late game i.e. peasant archers from castles.
Depends on the faction (which one in particular? could be an oversight)
- Tiny factions such as Ireland, Norway and Armenia seem like filler, squeezed into an already packed map. Perhaps better to remove them.
I like my tinies and they are here to stay. They are something different...
- The Varangian guard need to have its upkeep increased to at least 225 from its current 175. It's too OP to have at this cost.
Will have a look at this one
- Seriously decrease the time for how long Crusades and Jihads can carry on for. The original game had a better balance.
I have not changed anything on the duration... Did not even know that this was possible
- Protestants can only build their churches up to the cathedral level, not huge cathedral.
That could be intentional from me back then...
- Sometimes Catholic churches remain in cities and castles after a faction has converted to Protestantism.
That is a bug, so you habe some conditions where it happened? Or to which faction?
- Consider putting in the great M2TW soundtracks "Lift Thine Eyes" and "We Are All One" into the mod, just as you did Rome 1 for the Byzantines.
I hate sound modding XD... But I might consider it. Aren't those already in the game?
- The Papal States should not be playable. Their Excommunication/Reconciliation mechanic is too powerful in the hands of a human player.
The player does not need to play as the Pope, but if the player likes it, it is possible, so I see no problem with this and I like to keep it.
- For some reason, you give Frankfurt a Jewish building at the beginning, and you can also build another, for two buildings in the one city. Perhaps this was leftover code in campaign.txt from testing.
I will have a look at it. This might be a possible error. or is it just the base building that allows for jewish building chain?
- The Jihad flag is black, rather than the crescent image it needs to be.
As far as I know the jihad symbol was just a plain back flag. I had some discussion about it a long time ago
- Some of the coastline is jagged, like near Corinth.
I will have a look, but coastline jagging is a science in itself... I could just make it worse... XD

Cheers have fun, zumi