[Sandman]

Some of these would make really good spells or normal abilities, too.

Yeah, I'm just brainstorming.

Sounds good - hard to say how it could improve over time, though.

That's true, Chosen is a nice ability, but not a Hall of Fame one. If I had to choose, I'd probably give it as a reward to human heroes who defeat mighty monsters.

This would also make a good special abiilty for leaders of barbarians, tribal cavalry, and BK Tien Chi.

Absolutely. The Raider ability would make hordes of horsemen something to be feared. It should probably be given to BK, and any Arabic or Ottoman themed nations that turn up.

I'm not sure this would work very well... Giving all troops under the commander a a gradual increase in weapon damage (+1, +2, ... after a long, long time, +3) might be possible, but replacing weapons would wreak havok with 2-handed weapons, mixed troop types, unit icons, and so forth.

True enough, I just wish there was a way to upgrade national troops. Another idea I had (for Ulm) was upgrading their armour as they advance in Construction. At Con-10, their armour would be super-strong, almost weightless and ultra-flexible.

Quite a killer ability! How about this: the commander can position stealthy units under his command over a larger positioning map (the green thing you position troops on) than normal commanders. The higher the ability grows, the bigger the positioning map, such that at a very high level the troop-positioning map encompasses the entire real battlefield.

The way I imagined it was that the guerilla troops would not be placed on the map at all; they'd just be shunted to a kind of nether-zone of upper flank, lower flank or rear. When the battle begins, they're not in a coherent formation, just in a line like wolves summoned with howl. If you give them 'hold' orders, they won't appear on the battlefield until they're ordered to attack or fire or whatever. Their irregular formation creates a realistic limitation for this ability.

Cool... The gold/resource budget could grow with the skill.

It is a cool ability. I like the idea that the gold/resource budget grows. Whilst the troops recruitable (woodsmen, villains, vaetti, satyrs, other rare units) would be limited although still potentially useful, being able to recruit scouts in enemy territory would be very handy. And with spies and assassins you could create an ever-growing, self-sufficient insurgency...although you may have the strange situation of avoiding taking an enemy fort so your partisan can continue to recruit their stealthy units.

This is pretty cool too! Sounds like a good ability for indy Smugglers, recruitable commanders from a level 0 coastal water site, "Smuggler's Cove."

I'd like to see it as part of a revamped CotS Marignon, or a full-on sailing nation in Dom3. It should probably cause a wee bit of unrest. Oh, and spells which prevent sailing would prevent overseas smuggling from working as well.

You could really rake in the cash if you were well set up to exploit this ability. By taking control of an island, you could set it up as a smuggling base, sending smugglers to a dozen or more overseas provinces, with all the loot being siphoned through the island. Such islands would be very valuable... worth fighting over, either to deactivate the smuggling rings permanently, or set up your own.