So, as I was planning on writing a guide on KH (how bold, in hindsight), I decided to play other Greeks to have a basis of comparison. As I wanted to try the feel of a large faction rather than just doing the early build up I do anyways with KH, I went for one of the successors (which, in hindsight are, like, 80% of the Greek factions?), namely, Ptolemaioi. They're relatively cornered in the map and far from their main enemies, so it makes strategic planning much simpler for me, and after playing many dozen turns, I can say I enjoyed them and plan to try to master them.
However, this leads to my first issue. Governors. While I am used in SSHIP (which I played a lot recently) to having pretty generals at least providing *some* benefit in a governor role, most of my governors here seem to be completely unsalvageable. I have things like a yellow, barely profitable province going green and letting out +200 more income from just moving the 0/1/1/0 governor out of them. I can have Jerusalem or Tarsus going from hell to actually useful by just kicking out the goddamn governor. Considering their loyalty as well, I can't give em armies, so the only thing they will be good for is as overpriced cavalry for my generals that actually don't suck. If I leave them alone they might desert and, quite honestly, it would be better for both of us this way. Even my latest generation of raised generals being educated in the capital with a University don't look too bright to be honest, most of them acquiring Doesn't Tolerate Foreign Gods or whatever, which will certainly make it painful in the near future.
Now, I understand that factions that can build up a lot often have mediocre to bad traits to balance it out compared to short development factions like Barbarians, but if I am objectively better off sending 90% of my staff to a boat to hunt for pirates, either I am doing something very wrong, or something very wrong is happening.
To the second important factional design point, the Machimoi. They are supposed to be overpriced due to their low loyalty, but despite a few comparing poorly to similar Greek troops (Machimoi Spearmen is pretty bad both offensively and defensively compared to Militia Hoplites, except they won't get exhausted too quickly by fighting in the desert I guess?), they actually don't seem to be. They all follow the same formula of upkeep being roughly 1/5 of the recruitment cost that seems to be the norm for pretty much every unit I saw in the mod so far, and the only one that seems to give trouble is the Machimoi Phalangite (which is mostly the same as Light Phalangites, price and attributes wise). Thing is... I only recruited one so far, just to have a higher tier troop in Thebes garrison. They are not much more available than Greek phalangites (in fact seem to have the same cap and replenishment time), which I don't even like anyway, thus making my armies mostly out of Hoplites early on (and having my pools zeroed with the Thureos reform, yay). In fact, considering my armies are still mostly greek, supported by local mercenaries, I see very little point for Foreign Settlements at all. I probably could destroy the settlements in Jerusalem and Thebes, put a poleis and, least that would trigger some sort of rebellion script, end up better anyway, as the economic burden would be smaller.
So yeah, these are my impressions. Am I missing something? I am trying to establish as many poleis as I can as well, as it was a major limiting faction with KH and getting the best faction government wherever I can, plus the colonies, is some sort of uncontrollable urge. Also, I must say, I find the Jewish Garrisons very useful and neat.
Edit: It seems I am having to deal with a lot of hidden stats and non-obvious attributes. Switching generals a lot around. I just carry a stack of them with my main army and try them around until I find one that gets the most out of the settlement income and/or happiness. Not ideal but that whole thing is going to break apart otherwise.