Forge

[HoneyBadger]

You make some good points, Levolun.

The reason I made that statement is because at the time of the Roman Empire, Greece was already a very technologically-advanced empire, so were Egypt and Carthage, for that matter, so Rome didn't happen in a test-tube. It had a lot of role-models and a broad base of military and technical know-how to draw from. England at the time was still barbarian backwoods, with only the remnants of the fringes of the Celts to look to for any real "civilization" in the, ironically, Roman/Western sense, and it took the advent of a conquering Rome to help the situation.

Forest regions do get better resources, because they have all that readily available wood. Wood's good by itself, but it's also good for smelting and forging metals because it can be made into charcoal. Owning a forest province doesn't make you Greece though, it just means you have a nice stand of timber you can lumber off. It shouldn't affect your gold-cost though.

Now we're getting into the heart of the matter. Ok, you compare humans to trolls. Your Celtic humans are a great example because some are equipped with chainmail while others are bare-chested. That's fine as per the purposes of the game, without Forging, but suppose you wanted to arm your Celts with some of the advanced weapons the Celts and Saxons and Gauls and Scottish and Irish and etc. actually invented? You could equip them with the Seax or the Falcata or the Irish longspear or the Scottish claymore or the dirk (perhaps a little anachronistically, but still...) or even a harpoon (to represent the Gae Bolga). The possibilities go on and on, but still you're talking one human with one weapon. You shouldn't have to invent a whole new nation just because you want the Irish to represent. But, advances like the Falcata SHOULD cost more to equip your units, and that cost is technology and resources. That's what the Forge represents, a determined effort to improve your nation via the application of technology and infrastructure. Now you might say "well one broadsword is as good as any other, why do we need seven different colors of the same thing when we already have a few types of generic sword in the game?" Well, because we already have the Falchion. And the falchion is a different breed of sword from a broadsword, so why limit ourselves and the game to one curious type of specialization?

Now, consider the Trolls. Trolls get a bad rep: they're stupid, ugly, and they eat gold like you and I would split a pizza. But they are crafty, and sneaky, and mercenary, and mean, and some of them more than others. Smart trolls (who grow up to be Troll Kings) are out there, and maybe some of them decide that they want to use technology too. Well, clever or not, they're lazier than humans, that's why they live under bridges instead of staying at the Ritz.
So when they invent, they think bigger, and spikier, and smashier versions of what us humans have already invented. Troll smiths come up with something like the Troll-sized 3 headed flanged iron mace. Great for smashing, carbon-graphite shaft, has a nice sweet spot. And because Troll-sized is Jotun-sized, they turn around and sell it to the Jotuns, and then the Jotuns start inventing, or more probably, they've been inventing all along, coming up with things like "axe" and "boot" and "war" while us humans were still dangling from the trees eating lice off of each other (until God told us not to, for those Christian creationists out there). Now Troll arms are far more expensive than human arms, because they're 5 sizes larger and because they can sell new designs to the Jotuns for a fortune (and Jotuns always want exclusive rights). They're also cruder, because as stated before, Trolls are lazy, and they're mostly just in it to make a buck. If you got a human or a jotun master smith to make you a triple-headed, flanged, iron mace, it's going to be a work of deadly loving beauty, and it's going to work great. If you get a troll to do it, it's going to be a hulking rusty monstrosity, and it just won't work as well. Att and Def will be reduced. Damage might even be a little tiny bit lower because all the flanges aren't individually aligned to maximal aerodynamic brains-on-the-slaughterhouse-floor angle. It'll still smash 'em up good though.

The Forge, however, doesn't take on balancing issues by itself. It's up to whoever uses the Forge application to resolve that, and hopefully that person will have some sense. Some nations just get more out of the Forge than others, and that's a good indicator of a population's overall intelligence, creativity, determination, and-most importantly of all-ability to steal ideas from their neighbors.