If you've coded them all as one nationality "neutral" then yeah you're stuck doing manual edits. You could do it as a 25 player variant but then you have to bump it up to Realworld, RP doesnt support that many.

Not true, Michael. My 1648 Realpolitik module has 38 countries. Works just fine. Yet they're all designated as "M Flood White", which means that for victory purposes Realpolitik lumps the minor powers all together (which is why I coded the victory criterion as being 58 SCs (i.e. the total) rather than the actual 18 SC (now soon 15 SC) threshold.

Why did I designate them all as "M Flood White"? Well, I all wanted my custom unit icons to bear the label "M" for "Minor Power". "Flood White" means that their controlled SC provinces are entirely filled with white colour.

Note here that I chose to define the SC provinces as ONLY being the actual SC dots. Which means only the SC dots are colour-filled rather than the whole territory of that province. I'm not aware that's been done in any other modules other than my own, but find the result aesthetically more pleasing. A nifty trick.

That being said, it does mean that when entering orders, you need to click on an SC provinces SC dot since Realpolitik believes they alone make up those provinces territory.

Now, for my 1926 variant I unfortunately had to resort to Realworld rather than Realpolitik. That's because Spain's a triple-coast variant in that game and hence goes beyond the limitations of Realpolitik.

I also used a different approach to the minor powers in that one. I wanted them all to have the same white flooded SC dots (as with 164 and the same basic white unit icons I had designed. But I also wanted them to all have a small flag icon for their country for that extra visual interest.

Now, I couldn't actually integrate such a flag onto the unit icon as such. For all the countries were designated as being "White" (since I wanted the same fill effect for the SC dots). The trick is that I every minor power a special letter rather than the uniform "M" for minor power (as in 164. Having 29 powers in 1926, I exhausted the alphabet and then had to resort to numbers for the few remaining ones.

The trick then it that I redesigned each letter's icon file. So what used to look like a "G" for Germany is now actually a small black-red-gold flag. And rather than centred in the units middle as the default Realpolitik letter icons are, I shifted that icon into the upper left corner of the unit. Unsuspecting souls might think those flags are part of the actual unit icon. They're not (and cannot be because all minor powers are designated as "white" and hence have to use the same unit icon). I must confess I was pretty pleased to arrive at the visual effect of all minor powers' unit icons (on the face of it) looking different despite them all being coded as "white".

OK, here the maps as a point of reference:

1648 (note that only the SC dots are colour-filled. All minor power SCs are filled white):



1926 (note that all minor powers use white SC fill and white unit icons, but their labels (made to look like flags) all look differently:



But to return to the original issue:

Does Realpolitik support 25+ different powers. It certainly does as my 1648 variant sports 38 different ones. Though the bulk of those are all coded as "M Flood White", which blurs the issue a bit. Realpolitik does consider the minor powers as separate powers for all purposes save victory determination.

I learnt that by getting messages after the first year that Algiers had won. Somehow Realpolitik lumped all "M Flood White" powers together for victory determination purposes. Since the minor powers total 30 SCs at game-start and probably will hold still 18 by the end of the first year, you had there immediate fulfillment of the victory criterion. That's why I told Realpolitik the victory criterion was 58 (which is actually not the case). Problem solved.

Ah well, thoughts I might relate some of my own challenges I had to overcome in the Realpolitik/Realworld trenches... In the end, I think it was worth the many hours of work involved.

BTW, there's no rule that RP-modules need to look ugly. Personally I find the typical RP look pretty off-putting and welcome some modules aesthetically departing from that dour look.

Charles