So at the very beginning of the scenario, Ghengis Khan rides by, gives you a quick pep talk, then is on his way never to be seen again.
not really a good use of a player slot IMO. Don’t worry, we aren’t going to get rid of him.
in Ismail 5, no spoilers, but there’s an intro scene that executes this idea better. The “scene units” are your faction, you just don’t have control over them. scene plays out and scenario starts in earnest. No player slot was wasted.
You could do the same with ghengis khan and his horde. They’re all your faction, but you have no control of those units and they ride away. If the yellow slot was available, there could be another tribe to convince and another objective to perform.
Aaaaaand if you needed just a smidge of nostalgia to convince you, this extra slot could be used to add the merkids, who were in the horde rides west (ghengis khan 4) in the original aoc/hd version, but were (rightfully) replaced with the cumans in DE.
My only concern, is where would you add their base? There are some open areas between the ungirrads and the uyghurs, but I kinda like that open space. I remeber playing this when I was younger, that sense of discovery, not know what you were going to find anywhere. Some places empty, some places there was a camp. I think having that openness helps the map feel varied.
So even tho it’s a touched cramped, I think the optimal spot would be the extreme south corner of the map.
So what’d be the objective? Something different that the rest so let’s help them establish a trade route with either the uighurs or the ungirrads. Give the uighurs a market, but that trade route is blocked but the kara-khitai camp on the east edge of the map. Also place a trade cart in the kara-khitai camp north-east of the ungirrads that when captured can be unpacked and converted into a market. So you can choose to either completely destroy the kara-khitai camp to the east, or steal the cart from the better defended camp in the middle of the map.
Unrelated to the above, but I think there’s no good reason to attack the naimans over the taychi’uds since the naiman also have towers, and there’s no good reason not to leave that objective to the end. sooooo, in addition to the above, I think if you side with the taychi’uds and defeat the naiman, then in addition to extra troops, the naiman should be able to somehow weaken one of the five kara-khitai camps, not destroy entirely, just weaken. IDK what the justification would be, but for some reason the Taychi’uds could.
So if you defeat the naimans then you can select one of the kara khitai camps to weaken thus making that objective a little easier. And because the new merkid objective, all five kara-khitai camps are related to an objective,
So not only is the choice between the naimans and the taychi’uds more interesting, but there’s some advantage to not doing that objective last AND instead doing the merkid, ungirrad, or kereyid objective last.
I know it’s basically sacrilege to change an AoK scenario, but I think these changes would not only increase the amount of things that can be done, but also increase re-playability.
And maybe for some extra ludo-narrative spice, add a bit of dialogue from Kushluk. If you defeat the Naimans he runs away, if you defeat the Taychi’uds maybe have him say he’s betraying you and have them switch to enemy as the scenario ends. Might be weird though that kushluk isn’t mentioned in the outro but only in the intro to the next scenario.