Summary
Populum (latin for People) mod's goal is to link all the classes together in a thematic story-like fashion based on French and Raven's Five Forms of Power and systems of government connecting to social, political, and economic attributes. Populum increases the depth of the economy management and expands the early and late game of the classes by introducing new options. You will find that many commander units especially spell-casters will have some ritual powers and in some circumstances may be able to change into other classes or units.
The classes have been re-flavoured based on government types. Most of the classes can be thought of as paths branching away from the Monarchy(Baron), Republic(Senator), Minarchy(Witch) and other secondary classes pathing into even more niche variants. In some instances there may not be a path back from some classes without capturing a terrain tile that gives a corresponding garrison. Traditional class recruitment is removed in Populum except for NPC classes, recruitment is now through various terrain based garrisons and some units have "Court" powers to recruit heroes. Not every class has been expanded and connected and is a work in progress.
Populum is designed for Player vs. Player gameplay, some classes are meant for the AI only and are tagged with an "(NPC)" at the end of the class name. I would not recommend using these NPC classes because they are designed to be played by the AI with significant bonuses. These classes include: Goblin Emperor, Slave King, Independent Town, Bandit King, and the boss class may only have one of each (e.g. Blood Tide). These classes were designed with the intent to be difficult early game enemies and mere nuisance to late-game players. The NPC classes are useful to quickly add flavor to a generated map. The NPC classes have their recommended difficulty built into the class name and are designed for the largest map size (enormous or custom larger). You may want to decrease an NPCs difficulty by one for 1-2 map size class reductions. For example the Goblin Emperor on enormous+ is played on Emperor difficulty; reduce to King for a Huge map, Duke for Large, Marquis for Medium, and anything smaller set to Count.
A short list of some changes:
- About 1000 new rituals.
- Over 500 new units / variants.
- Redesigned economy with unit upkeep and scaled income by ekistics (population).
- Redesigned and rebalanced combat mechanics, e.g.: large and huge weapons with reach and differentiated bows with longer range.
- Craft nearly every item (unit dependent).
- Less inherent vision, more use for scouting and stealth.
- More options to traverse water (sailing) and faster water movement. Many water units will change into a watershape that floats on water allowing faster movement.
- More immortality options.
- Other mass rebalances; for example some units such as undead are immune to decay effects in Populum, most mounted units will lose their mount after taking damage.