Ok, played this against he AI for 3,5 years, and here's my thoughts.
Nice work! The over-all nation is nice to play. I really like Pirate Lords, you can thug them out very easily. Or instantly, if you get good magic picks, like A1 W1 for mistform and quicken self
. Also, I'm no expert on balance, but this seems balanced enough for me. You should bug Sombre into taking a look at this once you're completely done with it. I'd play the CB version in MP any time.
And some more specific issues;
- The infantry is powerfull, but that's fine. I mean, it's basically the only thing they've got. I like the grappler dudes, they back a bunch but need to be protected. The Blood Guard might need a small gold cost raise (22 or 23 perhaps?). They're very good. 8 of them can easily conquer independent 5 provinces.
- I find the lack of sailing scouts very annoying. You can't excatly use the sailing potential very well now, since you have to attack blindly. Considering that Free Port is a City State of sorts, I wouldn't find some sort of Informant (sailing spy) completely unthematical. I mean that many folk would probably gladly sell information of their own people to pirates in exchange for some of the booty..
- One thing bugs me about Pirate Lords. They're big and bad and that's all right, but why? The current discription implies that they're so big and bad because they "just are so uber". I don't think that this explanation really cuts it. Humans don't get physically bigger with experience. They need somesort of supernatural source for their badassness. Perhaps the Arcanist's imbue some chosen children with raw magic (or something) and have them spend all their life in a ship until they turn 18 or something. The current discription also needs a spell-check.
- About Dread Captains. You know that you can't never sail over more than one water province? That map move 4 doesn't really help about that. Besides it's a bit unthematical that these guys can move through 4 farm lands per turn just because they have fast skeletal ships. Especially when normal undead move 3.
. So I think that they need some other gizmo trick or just downgraded to a basic mage commander. How about this? Change them to undead and give them some holy magic so that they can reanimate. Perhaps there is a lake in free port where former Pirate Lords, Arcanists, Governers and other big shots have been buried. With the coming of a new god some them have received the god's blessing and have came back form the dead to serve Free Port.
- Some more pretender choises would also be cool. I think that Lord of the Waves and Son of the Sea wouldn't be unthematical choices. Some sort of "Uber-Pirate Lord" pretender wouls also be cool.
- If you're making national heroes, I think that some sort of Spy/Assasin/Master Thief/Rogue hero would be cool (he could be spoken as being the "luck's lover", increases luck scale in the province he dwells, along with unrest as angry fathers want to know who wooed their daughters and the folk demand actions on the sudden rise of crime rate
) . Some sort Immortal Pirate lord drawing on the legend of the Flying Dutchman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Dutchman, wold also be cool.