[HoneyBadger]

It seems to me the thing to do here wouldn't be to make the Independent nation 23 view itself as a single nation-because you then end up with the aforementioned "Amazon-cavemen-knights-riding draconians-and dropping hoburgs on their enemies" problem.

The thing to do would be to make all the special unconquered, independent provinces their *own* nation, as in, a Capital with a Fortress and a Temple (no lab, normally), with the ability to build Capital-only troops (Capital-only troops that could then be produced by a player/AI nation). One Caveman nation, one Draconian nation, one of each of the Amazon nations, one tougher than average Hoburg pigknights-and-crossbows nation, etc.

And then give them the ability to move troops to the less exotic independents, so that you get a certain amount of flow going on-but!-DON'T incur a combat when they do so, or give them the advantages that harder difficulty settings normally gives to standard AI nations, and make them defensive-minded to the best of your ability, so they can get stronger, the longer they go without being attacked.

Some independent nations would thusly have the potential to become fairly formidable, to a lesser degree than the AI nations in an SP or mixed game.

Finally, the independents could draw from the same pool of "independent-nation" spells, maybe in the process removing ones that would only hinder an AI, and from the same pool of heroes, but in this case, the "heroes" could infact be a big set of powerful, custom-built, SC monsters on the loose.

The small chance of running into a fully armed poison golem or vampire queen or whatever, where you'd never expect it, would make independents-and the gameworld itself-a whole lot more interesting.

The independent nations would still *stay* independent-independent in province A isn't going to get mad at you if you annex province B, even if they share the same race/culture-that's what real nations are for, but they would be able to move troops from one province to another, for attack/defense, to suppliment the provincial troops already existing there.

So you might see a lion tribe province backed up by caveman irregulars, or a group of knights being led by a green dragon hero. It's all good.