Two very good ideas!(i promise)

[HoneyBadger]

Here's an idea for a Pretender ability. It's similar to Pretenders who summon units in battle (Lord of Serpents, Lord of the Night, etc) and ones that produce units (Vampire Queen), but instead of these two abilities, you could choose a Pretender who allows you to *recruit* a special kind of unit-or a small group of related units-with gold and resources, as you would your Nation-specific units, in the same province as your Pretender is in (similar to Capital-only). Only, instead of Nation-specific units, they'd be *Pretender*-specific units.

You could then choose a Pretender who allowed you to recruit a unit that would compliment the nation you're playing with-for instance a Mountain King dwarf Pretender who allowed you to recruit dwarf warriors to support your Niefel giants or a Lady of Coral that allowed your land-based nation to recruit Shamblers right off the bat.

There's lots of possibilities-a Dragon Queen that allowed you to recruit drakes, a Lord of the Flies that let you buy imps, a Tyrant Lord that let you recruit Villains, or a Divine Huntress that allowed you to recruit archers equipped with longbows.

Balancing probably would be easier than with Pretenders that simply produce units, since you still have to pay for the special unit with resources.

[Gandalf Parker]

Interesting. Im not sure how easy it would be to do but it could be thematic. Might be hard to balance though since the pros and cons of the nations were hard to balance out and this will shift that quite abit.
But I like the idea

[HoneyBadger]

Thanks Gandalf. I realize it might become a balance-headache. I think most of these types of Pretenders would be immobile, though, for one thing. Then again, I don't think the situation we're presently in (unless it was fixed in the last patch) can be correctly expressed as "perfectly balanced Pretenders". Mostly, I find current Pretenders too weak, more than not, as well as some troop-types redundant or unnecessary. Many nations-in my opinion-could use a revamped and reassessed military, and that includes looking at the way things are balanced. This *would* ofcourse throw another monkey-wrench into the stew, as it were, but I think the effect on the end-result would be good. It might even serve as a catalyst to change, to get more of a "useful variety" of troops *within* the national armies.

For instance, I'd really like to see Jotuns and Agarthans using more appropriate weapons (like maces and flails for the Jotuns-and maybe they don't have the physical bodytype to use slings appropriately, but certainly-if they can throw a spear, they can use an atlatl!-and spiked armor/gloves, for the Agarthans, to take advantage of their near-sightedness).

I realize the Developers are understandably a bit caught up in the whole "Jotuns are Norse and use Viking-weapons!" concept, but the Vikings weren't stupid by any means. They were inventors and if they were handicapped in one direction "as a race of people", they would have realized it and gone in another direction. Aside from that, Jotuns *aren't* Vikings, they're infact the antithesis, the traditional worst enemies of the Norse gods, so why should they dress and fight like exactly the things they hate the most?