Indy 9 expansion rate

[Psycho]

I never played a game with the indy 9 setting. Can someone experienced say what is a good number of provinces at the end of first year.

[Sombre]

Shouldn't make that much difference. You still want 12+

[Makinus]

On a related note: is there any way to change the number of indy troops beyond strenght 9? I want to make indy provinces much more tougher to conquer than the 9 setting does...

[Sombre]

Best way is with map settings. There's also semirand which can make for stronger indies.

[13lackGu4rd]

I never played a game with the indy 9 setting. Can someone experienced say what is a good number of provinces at the end of first year.

I guess it depends on your nation. if using say a bless rush nation or an awake SC pretender, than it shouldn't matter what the indy strength is, you still take out any indies easily with those. if on the other hand you rely on regular armies than indy9 will severely slow you down.

[Humakty]

You have to be extra warry of heavy cavalry/knights, as critical numbers of them lay quite a smash.

[Makinus]

(double post)

[Gandalf Parker]

On a related note: is there any way to change the number of indy troops beyond strenght 9? I want to make indy provinces much more tougher to conquer than the 9 setting does...
I do it in the Chaos games.
http://game.dom3minions.com/bin/Chaos_chk.cgi

But I do it by throwing random units into every province. Hence the "chaos" part. Doing it in a way which matches what is already there is much more complicated.

SemiRand will try to do it more logically but you usually dont want it to try and do it to every province on the map. Just scattered.

[Edi]

Indies at 9 will also significantly slow down the AI, actually making SP games easier. I've found indies 7 to be a better balance, because you still need to pay attention and the AI bonuses allow impossible AIs to expand fairly quickly.

[LDiCesare]

You still want 12+
Unless graphs are on, in which case you want no more than the others, in which case you are going to be ganged upon.