Arabs and Carthaginians
The game already has Phoenicians. Phoenician culture is so heavily intertwined with greek culture that it's hard to distinguish the two - greek letters are actually phoenician, as are greek naval techinques, at least originally. Furthermore, following the conquest of the levant by Alexander, the phoenician city states Hellenized almost completely. Now, given that ME Arco has elephants (which you ride over the Alps to attack Ermor), as well as Sirrush, it covers both. Thumbs up to Kristoffer.
Arabs, on the other hand, are different, and are not well covered. Furthermore, the Phoenicians (Greeks too) were definitely a maritime culture.
Also, it turns out this didn't actually happen, but there's an urban legend that Rome salted the soil around Carthage so that nothing would grow there again. A mid era nation where the land was cursed with death magic by the Ermorians would be pretty cool.
So, how is this for a national arc -
In every era:
Lots of cheap light cavalry (like the T'ien Ch'i horseman).
Sailing.
In the early era, has no blood magic directly, but has priests who can perform blood sacrifices and a douse bonus (I need to check if douse bonuses work on a unit with blood magic 0), and has national spells that conjure blood mages. No sacred warriors, but powerful and diverse magic off of cheap national summons.
In the middle era, has been cursed by Ermor. Maxage on all units is 20, your units are cheap, but old. Nation struggles to survive, should somehow reward you for taking the Death scale. Sacred warriors are child-cavalry (size 3, resource size 1, hoburg profile). Cannot recruit mages, but gets a crazy good deal when summoning them - summoned mages slowly free others from the curse (have a domsummon ability that makes units who aren't dying,) and are immortal.
In the late era, muslim arabs. Religion is universalist - so you have sacred versions of literally every unit you can recruit, and you make most of them everywhere. Sacred units benefit from Sakina - they are all Morale 30. Other units -
* Dervish. Capital only berserking sacred.
* Ainsarii. Capital only stealthy sacred.
* Murshid. A priest/mage, H1. WSN plus 100% from WSN plus 10% from WSN. Capital only, berserker (like Dervishes.) You get a hero version who is bigger.
* Hashshasin. A priest/assassin/mage, H1. Capital only, has DN, is crazy bad-***.
* Imam. A priest/general, mounted, H3, has a standard, large leadership. Capital only. You get a hero version who is H4.
* Ulema. A priest/philosopher, H2, makes research.
* Mufti. A priest/judge, H2, has a patrol bonus. Capital only, maybe has a chance of death magic?
* Qadi. A priest/judge, H1, has a patrol bonus.
* Alchemist. A mage. FED, 100% FED, 10% FED. You get a hero version who also has blood and astral - he's eeeeevil.
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If you read his speech at Rice, all his arguments for going to the moon work equally well as arguments for blowing up the moon, sending cloned dinosaurs into space, or constructing a towering *****-shaped obelisk on Mars. --Randall Munroe
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