[atul]

I think the main beef people have with conquered capitols is that it seems silly there suddenly is no mark of previous population at all. Quite genocidal, these religious wars.

On way to make capitols 'remember' what they were while not getting overpowered would be to switch the indy poptype of capital city to correspond the nation. Like, conquer C'tis and you get the indy lizards, i.e. Lizard Warrior and Shamen; conquer Machaka and there are Lion Tribals; with Man a Knight province; Marverni yields some tribals; Sauromatia those water amazons; Ape nation gets the markata indy troops.

Many of the corresponding indy - nation pairs are already there, and you can find them anyway if you're lucky. This would represent conquered capitols yielding new kind of troops, but who don't benefit from the culture of past.