Fun Gameplay Restrictions

I love this game. The ambiance is unmatched, it just had the greatest vibe. I’ve played this game too many times over the years and naturally you try and find easy to make it interesting. I’ve played the below scenarios in varying combinations to keep things interesting.

• no save and reload. (given)

• no taking other cities or city buildings

This if real fun. It means that enemies can only be controlled not defeated and the threat is always there. Makes friendships more valuable

• no taking other temples

• no taking your own temple

This was really really fun. No city and no followers. I had to slowly build up resources and trade for units. Holding mines. I did save and reload with this constraint otherwise the loss of units was too harsh. Ended up with a hodgepodge stack that I had traded from friendlies to defeat balkoth. Super fun but hard to hold mines when you go exploring. Getting a massive resource stack was super necessary late game by stealing with my thief and then bodying the deficit while on campaign.

• no training up your units

This is cool, the reality is once you can churn out level 5 units and level 10 heroes the game is dull and over. The win condition basically becomes just get your guilds maxed. When you only have access to level 1 units, the option to take on fantastical creatures is much more attractive. It becomes much harder to venture out and you need to be more careful with your experienced units and cater your strategy to be purposefully sacrificial.

• no upgrading the city, buildings, etc. no taking other cities.

Village life becomes the focal point of this scenario where you can only hire from villages. Was kinda fun but still pretty easy.

So does anyone have ideas for any others? Also who is the least powered start for a challenge?