The original is ἀκοντισταί which translates as javelin-throwers. We can name the javelineers as Malian rather than slingers, and keep the slingers as gymnetes. I just wanted to offer a local name which may sound better than a generic class.

I’m glad this mod is finally easy to find. I’d grab it from your GitLab for now, and if you ever update it for newer versions, I’d love to try those too.

Yeah, maybe I should have continued the discussion there, but it slowly re-emerged here after that link. What you criticise is not what I’ve proposed, since nothing would be “completely different after a single phase-up”. Regarding Coalitions, I proposed a choice tree of more alike tribes, to avoid what you say and to enhance the strategies being chosen from the start (with some flexibility, while keeping the main characteristics of either Britons, Gauls, Germans and Iberians, it’s just choosing details of exactly what to have, among the possibilities each civ would have). Regarding Leagues, the original civs (Athens, Sparta, Macedonia, and hopefully in the future, Thebes) would set the main strategy, and then some advanced Treasury building could give choices of who would join the League, giving the player some quirky thing (like what I said about Corinth) that, again, shouldn’t change the general strategy of the civ actually being played. To make it even easier for the adversary to prepare, there could be a message stating “X joined Y’s Coalition/League”, and while a very few tribes in a Coalition are necessary, more than that or even a small League should be cost prohibitive for competitive MP, I see it more as SP content, and to solve the “which tribe to choose” and “which Hellenes to ignore” problems.

Given the “darter” mention, I searched, and in another part of History of the Peloponnesian War, Tuchydides writes: “Athenian and allied; a large number of darters, Hellenic and barbarian, and slingers and archers and everything else upon a corresponding scale”, which reminds me that this and most games don’t take darters into account :p   Regarding your proposal, it makes sense, and there’s another instance I can find to support it: Diodorus Siculus, writing about the Battle of Mantinea (of 362 BC) says “the Thebans had three times as many slingers and javelin-throwers sent them from the regions about Thessaly”, and the Malian Gulf would be the region “about Thessaly” (at the time, it would be considered part of Thessaly a couple of centuries later) closer to the battle. He also writes that “Epameinondas, without resting the entire night, covered the distance at top speed and at daybreak attacked Sparta”, which could maybe justify a speed bonus.   I leave you with his epic account of the death of Epaminondas: As for the Lacedemonians, when they saw that Epameinondas in the fury of battle was pressing forward too eagerly, they charged him in a body. As missiles flew thick and fast about him, he dodged some, others he fended off, still others he pulled from his body and used to ward off his attackers. But while struggling heroically for the victory, he received a mortal wound in the chest. As the spear broke and the iron point was left in his body, he fell of a sudden, his strength sapped by the wound. About his body a rivalry ensued in which many were slain on both sides, but at last with difficulty by their superiority in bodily strength, the Thebans wore the Lacedemonians out. (...) Epameinondas, however, was carried back to camp still living, and the physicians were summoned, but when they declared that undoubtedly as soon as the spear-point should be drawn from his chest, death would ensue, with supreme courage he met his end. For first summoning his armour-bearer he asked him if he had saved his shield. On his replying yes and placing it before his eyes, he again asked, which side was victorious. At the boy's answer that the Boeotians were victorious, he said, “It is time to die,” and directed them to withdraw the spear point. His friends press cried out in protest, and one of them said: “You die childless, Epameinondas,” and burst into tears. To this he replied, “No, by Zeus, on the contrary I leave behind two daughters, Leuctra and Mantineia, my victories.” Then when the spear point was withdrawn, without any commotion he breathed his last.

said the Macedonian officer after Gaugamela