[HoneyBadger]

I'm very interested in this particular subject. I've created a handful of units that are specifically meant to be tougher independents, and I plan to continue to do so. There literally must be hundreds of tribes and minor powers in Europe alone that were "washed away" by the spread of the major recogniseable powers we think of as European. Expanding on the concept of the European-style Barbarian alone is enough for a very major mod, let alone fleshing out the concepts of "bear tribe, wolf tribe, deer tribe, lion tribe", etc. There's little if any limit on what can be done to fairly easily improve Independent power, and what I've mentioned is just a tiny percentage of what could be done with historical human tribes.

Just to give you a for-instance: How about a tiger tribe, based on Indians? You could give them some of the enormous range of exotic weaponry that came from the Indian subcontinent, and perhaps a low-level healer unit with access to nature and holy magic. Considering that there's atleast a half-dozen Indian subgroups that were particularly famous for their warrior traditions, it would be an easily expandable idea.

I remember reading Poul Anderson's "The Broken Sword", and in one chapter it discusses the heroes landing on an island where a group of strange gods lived. The gods were starved and had gone insane because all of their worshippers had died out, but they were still extremely dangerous. Coming across such an area where a group of "failed Pretenders" had gathered would be quite an interesting encounter, I think.

Some provinces might have such powerful guardians that they remain difficult to conquer even unto the end of the game. I think having a few of those around, with the mystery and secrets of such places undisturbed but always tempting, would really add to the theme of the game. In a game like Dominions, the power of the concepts of Wilderness and Unknown and Here There Be Dragons should be preserved as much as possible.