Another new theme idea: Renaissance Marignon

[Sandman]

How about a theme for Marignon based upon the Italian Renaissance? Granted, Marignon has a lot of themes already, but another one won't hurt, will it? They're certainly the closest in terms of culture and military to the Italian Renaissance, being kinda based upon Spain of about the same time period.

In this theme, the fanaticism of Marignon has diminished, to be replaced by a culture of innovation and discovery, as well as intrigue and occasional civil strife.

The main perks for this theme are:

Good spies and assassins: Renaissance Italy is famous for its political machinations and backstabbing. One option would be to have a combined spy/assassin; a stealthy operative who is quite capable of getting his hands dirty, although his combat stats are not much better than a regular assassin.

Another interesting idea would be for a second type of assassin; an Undead Hunter. They have the unusual conbination of being assassins with priestly powers, and their equipment and stats are pretty good. Sort of like Van Helsing, Blade or Buffy, really. Would be quite cool.

Well-trained and equipped infantry: Marignon has pretty good infantry already, and the Renaissance has meant that their skills and equipment have become even better. At a cost in gold and resources, obviously. Swordsmanship has become even more popular, and all their elite units (which replace the Man at Arms) use a variety of different sword styles; Great swords, longswords, rapiers, sometimes combined with daggers and bucklers. More advanced crossbows are another possibility; a repeating crossbow that fires two shots every three turns, for example. The Italian Renaissance saw improvements in armour-making as well, and it would be nice to have this, although I recognise that this is stepping into Ulm's territory.

Renaissance Masters: These are the geniuses of the period. Think Leonardo Da Vinci. Whilst their magical skills are somewhat limited, they excel in a variety of different areas. They're excellent researchers, somewhat proficient magical craftsmen (forge bonus 15) and talented siege engineers and castle defenders. They should probably be capital-only.

I'm not sure what magical skills to give them, since their interests were so diverse and widespread. At the moment, I'm thinking of 1 earth, 1 nature, 1 elemental random and one full random. The earth represents their engineering and sculpting skills, whilst the nature represents their interests in biology and the inspiration they got from the natural world. But they could just as easily have magical skills from any of the schools except maybe death and blood. One possiblity would be to have more than one type of Renaissance Master, each with slightly different skills.

Good, but limited priests: The priests of this time would have powerful holy skills (i.e holy-4), but no other abilities, so no fire magic or inquisitor bonus.

Now, the weaknesses:

No truly powerful mages: The Renaissance Masters dominate the lab, but as combat mages they're not particularly good. The fire-astral mage-priests of Marignon are gone, and only a well equipped or lucky with randoms Renaissance Master will be able to match their powers.

Not much blessable stuff: No flagellants, no Knights of the Chalice. There's still the Undead Hunter, which might be worth a bless effect or two, but apart from that, zilch. If people think that this is too crippling a disadvantage, one potential sacred unit could be a unit equivalent of the Undead Hunter, although sacred stealthies are quite common already.

No cavalry: This isn't 'historically' accurate, but with good infantry and ranged units, it'd be tough to justify having cavalry that wasn't also as good. And that would probably be overpowered. Sure, you could hike up the gold cost, but that would just be boring.

I suppose one justification would be that Marignon is now a republic controlled by merchant families as opposed to a traditional nobility.

Starting sites:

The gem sites would probably be a wide mix of stuff, given the versatility of the Renaissance Masters. Gold and resource producing sites may also fit the theme, as would an academy of war.

Now, I may try to create this nation, although I'm terrible at graphics modding, so someone else would have to do it.

As it is, I'd be interested in any comments or criticism people have.