What does Sturgia need changed in order to not suck? Is it its geography that's the fundamental problem or something else?
From the beginning it was clear (at least I thought) that both geography and army composition(less horses) where mayor factors for the less than stellar performance of Sturgia.
I still think the early attempts of stopping the khuzait snowball, by giving every faction more horses, was wrong. Makes all the battles more or less similar. It addressed the problems with speed benefits on the campaign map(ai only having to fight winnable battles) and cavalry bonuses to autocalc by levelling the playing field.
A way of making sturgia more resilient could be by increasing the snow penalty for other factions, movement speed and food consumption.
In addition Sturgia could get a fighting in snow bonus in autocalc.
A more different approach could be: reducing Sturgian party sizes but also give them more parties. This would give them the opportunity to avoid bad matchups on snow, because of the movement speed on snow and smaller size. While also retaining the ability to unite in big enough armies to take settlements.
This all would keep the Sturgian core lands safer, while preventing them to expand easily below the snow line.
Another nice feature would be for more aggressive raiding during winter times.
This all would adress some of the problems while keeping the factions unique (I hope)
