I couldn't find an old thread on this topic so I'm creating a new one to discuss it.
I was playing around with the Campaign Creator and noticed that I can set a city to have a non-Chinese nationality (e.g., Viet), but then still allow a player to build at that city by assigning it as the player's city in the mission settings. (Yes, I know you may be thinking "why would you want to do that?" and my answer is: I want to try to simulate building a non-Chinese city that I would then interact with in later missions on the Empire map using the non-Chinese empire map settings.)
So far the only limitation I've seen for this is that the very first city set for the player in mission 1 must be a Chinese city. After that, it seems you can assign non-Chinese nationalities. I did notice the buildings, resources, etc, all use the Chinese model when play actually starts at that city (which is to be expected). The icon for the player's city on the empire map will switch to the 'Chinese city' icon for the duration of the mission, then it switches back to the non-Chinese nationality when a player moves on to another city in subsequent missions.
So far I have only tested this using the 'I win again' cheat to jump through several missions and observe basic behavior. In future days/weeks I plan to test this more fully and find out exactly how the game engine handles this. For example, if I am invaded from one of these cities in a subsequent mission, I am assuming it will send the soldiers of the non-Chinese nationality, but I am not sure. We already know that the game engine doesn't handle this consistently by nationality, for example if you request military aid from the Mongols, they won't send Mongol troops to help you, instead they will send Chinese troops. So it will be interesting to see how invasions from these cities materialize. (Right now I'm betting on non-Chinese soldiers showing up in the invasion, but I could be wrong.)
Expand your fun by downloading free custom campaigns for Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom.
Visit Zeus Heaven to expand your knowledge of Zeus and Poseidon.
I was playing around with the Campaign Creator and noticed that I can set a city to have a non-Chinese nationality (e.g., Viet), but then still allow a player to build at that city by assigning it as the player's city in the mission settings. (Yes, I know you may be thinking "why would you want to do that?" and my answer is: I want to try to simulate building a non-Chinese city that I would then interact with in later missions on the Empire map using the non-Chinese empire map settings.)
So far the only limitation I've seen for this is that the very first city set for the player in mission 1 must be a Chinese city. After that, it seems you can assign non-Chinese nationalities. I did notice the buildings, resources, etc, all use the Chinese model when play actually starts at that city (which is to be expected). The icon for the player's city on the empire map will switch to the 'Chinese city' icon for the duration of the mission, then it switches back to the non-Chinese nationality when a player moves on to another city in subsequent missions.
So far I have only tested this using the 'I win again' cheat to jump through several missions and observe basic behavior. In future days/weeks I plan to test this more fully and find out exactly how the game engine handles this. For example, if I am invaded from one of these cities in a subsequent mission, I am assuming it will send the soldiers of the non-Chinese nationality, but I am not sure. We already know that the game engine doesn't handle this consistently by nationality, for example if you request military aid from the Mongols, they won't send Mongol troops to help you, instead they will send Chinese troops. So it will be interesting to see how invasions from these cities materialize. (Right now I'm betting on non-Chinese soldiers showing up in the invasion, but I could be wrong.)
Expand your fun by downloading free custom campaigns for Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom.
Visit Zeus Heaven to expand your knowledge of Zeus and Poseidon.
[This message has been edited by Gweilo (edited 10-16-2017 @ 07:57 PM).]