[Gandalf Parker]

To answer Azael from another thread...
Actually one of my many partially done projects was the testing of mid-game mod changes, with an offshoot into what does and does not have to be part in the mod that the player has. (as far as I know Ive finished testing host map vs player map, now on to mods)

So far it appears that for an AI a player side mod (programmers use the term stub-file so I call it stub.dm) must name the nation, assign it a nation slot, and should set the color that the nation uses in the scoreboards. Maybe also set the name and slot of magic sites (not done testing that part). The host stub.dm controls the units that can be recruited, and maybe the features of the site. So it would seem possible so far to do what you want. Have a game where the AI nation would be bare and unfeatured until a certain thing is seen in the game.log such as a number of turns passed or a particular site attacked or a global cast. Then the host can swap in the stub.dm that has the AI as a full featured nation able to recruit.

The nation would be active before that so it would build up gold and possibly gems. But that might be controllable also. It still needs some testing to find out the full capability but the early tests seem to indicate that SOME level is going to be possible.

That also applies to the random AI nation project I was working on. Not the mid-game part but seems to show that the player only needs to download a bare stub.dm file in order to play games over and over on my server where the nations they are playing are completely changed with each game.