Tuckles,
I hate to say it, but... no. Obviously, you don't know the story I'm planning on, but Arcos' bloodline is absolutely
vital to the story as I plan it. It would be
possible to create "multiple ASLOWs", you might say, for characters of different backgrounds, but with 4+ story paths to write already, I don't want to commit to anything like that...
zjhann,
Much of the Middle Easternness is due to my low art budget (i.e., "what I can scrounge").

If you're at all familiar with Hayao Miyazaki, I envision the Honseli looking more like the civilization of
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind than anything -- and that film gave me quite a shock, to discover that someone had already sort of arrived at the same place in world design...

(Edit: But thinking about it further, I don't think
Nausicaa is the best of analogies -- some of the setting and especially costume design is a little simple-minded, and, of course, there won't be quite so many giant insects or proto-chocobos. That, and the Honseli proper are
small, physically speaking, not really physically imposing -- one of several effects (their preference for heavy clothing being another) of living in a New England-type climate for a very long period of time...)
Don't worry at all about the spellings; I'm not exactly satisfied with the names, partially because they're evidently infernally hard to spell.

(Sivas is due for a rename sometime soon, too; I'm sure my Turkish players would be able to tell you why.

)
The similarity of equipment is very intentional, though, based on the similarity of cultures; Sivas, Lun, and Ajaria are all the same sort of civilization, and thus have more or less the same... "aesthetics," you might say -- like how it would be hard to tell the nationalities apart in the Hundred Years' War mod or the Lombard Leagues (if said mod's ever released, which I'm rooting for).
The Soltalline civs are a similar story, except that one of them uses a lot more horses than the other. You do get the "civilizational difference" between Soltallines and Honseli, but not within each of the two; M&B Native, and for that matter mods like Holy War, have an easier time in this regard because they're depicting a "clash of civilizations" of sorts -- the factions and cultures more or less correspond.
However, if I had a concept artist (or ideas and drawing skills) and modding skills and/or volunteer modders, there'd be much more systematic art and a lot more differences. The Ajarines have diverged from the "normal" type of Honseli civilization just in being landbound versus seafaring; Sivas sees some really heavy Galine influences (in fact, all the Honseli civs depicted in ASLOW have a lot of Galine blood -- notice all the blonds -- and culture); and Lun intrigues me just because quasi-nomadism was something I would never in a million years have envisioned for this particular civ/race...
(And as a disclaimer, if you're now wondering where to track down the novels/games/movies/role-playing sourcebooks/whatever that will give you more detail on this stuff, don't -- none of it exists yet.
Yet...

)
Papa Lazarou,
Sounds like a good idea. I can't promise when, but I'll do that. (Alarm level, FWIW, is the amount of money that a city would
like to spend -- as opposed to the amount it can spend -- on military ventures at the moment.)
Cirdan, on sieges,
Regarding duels, you're obviously not a Honseli.

Espionage won't even be an option in sieges -- there'll be no way to find out how strong your enemy is, apart from the fact that if he deploys fewer than thirty men in a sally, he's probably got less than thirty fighters left in his castle.

You also won't be informed of when your enemies run out of food... but then again, maybe you should. "Sieges in the dark" might be a little excessive -- all this needs more thought.
Don't worry, city troop hiring is under control again now. I should probably do a bugfix release...
Satyr,
7500 rallen? Sounds like it might be a bug... ... No, it's just that I don't start the player very hostile to anyone -- the starting situation is more a suggestion for how to play, I guess. I'll fix that...
I'm planning on implementing towns 'feeding in' to cities; one of these will be fairly significant in the opening game. Unfortunately, that'll involve a
lot of level design. Don't hold your breath, but it is in the pipeline.
Remember that what you're playing isn't the full game -- I plan on getting the engine up to a good level, then overlaying the storyline (introduced in the opening menus) upon it. I should probably actually mention that somewhere...

I agree that starting the game is pretty ticklish. It'll be better with the storyline, but that may be a little while... perhaps I should start the player pumped up a little. Yeah, I'll do that.
Yes, your choices in chargen affect your starting stats. Spoiler coming something like soon...
Merentha, regarding the tutorial suggestion,
That clinches it -- I'm doing a tutorial.
Rover109,
Satyr, and
Merentha, regarding economics,
I had debated that at the beginning of conceptualization of the mod, but rejected it. From the beginning, I hadn't wanted this to be a game concerned with economics. The desire for player control and the lack of historical consciousness combine in many games of this sort to make the player more than half a tycoon and less than half a warrior; here, though, I decided to abstract out all fiscal matters, and give the player no more influence, or interest, than would be realistic for a culture about like this. Ensuring that a city's tax collectors make it back home will slowly increase the city's economic strength, but that's about it for money...
And besides, this is a pretty nearly subsistence sort of place anyways. I don't see much trade occuring here to begin with -- not too much of a surplus to trade...
(Food will be a concern only during sieges. When else, barring famines,
would it tend to be a concern...?)