Recruitment Remastered – Bretonnia

Uploaded · Published August 3, 2018 · Updated November 25, 2018

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Last revision: 13 Nov, 2018 at 16:28 UTC

File size: 937.98 KB

Description:

This mod streamlines the recruitment and building progression for Bretonnian factions. Gone are nonsensical redundancies and filler requirements like a tier 4 barracks for Foot Squires and similar padding/bloat. With these changes, you will be able to field a more diverse and tactically interesting army sooner. Also included are minor tweaks to building bonuses and to faction elements like the Green Knight.

If you are interested in the rationales for the listed changes, visit the pinned thead!

More standardized and logical recruitment requirements, which leads to slightly faster access to essential units and slightly slower access to more elite units.

No smithy required for Men-at-Arms units with shields.
No workshop is required for Pox and Fire peasant bowmen.
Knight Errants, Knights of the Realm and Foot Squires have been moved down a tier.
Blessed field trebuchets can be recruited earlier but requires a grail shrine.
Halberds and all higher tier, non-flying cavalry requires a smithy (same as the Empire)

The vanilla building trees reeks of desperate padding. I can give cynical explanations to what end this serves but regardless the amount of building progression bloating has been heavily toned down.

The redundant fourth tier for Barracks has been removed.
The Siege Workshop can be constructed at settlement level 3 instead of 5.
The Workshops offers minor but noticable city development bonuses.
Worship is integral to Bretonnian life, so the initial Grail Shrine is now T1 (reduced garrison/cost).
The Grail Abbey landmark provides a 100% chance to remove negative traits.

The mod’s scope includes elements that affect how you recruit/field armies but only two were of interest: 1) Your knights come with the Knight’s Vow skill for self-explained reasons 2) Higher chivalry levels progressively increase the charges for The Green Knight to combat Too Awesome To Use syndrome.[tvtropes.org]

There are some economic savings with the streamlined building tree but these are drops in the ocean that is Bretonnia’s construction costs. Bretonnian peasantry is more readily available and varied with the tweaked restrictions on shields and special ammunition. The Knights Errants is now a defining early game cavalry unit and if you pay the premium for it you don’t have to be stuck in the Yeoman-swamp. Expect this to vastly improve the dynamics and fun of early game battles. The Knights of the Realm now better serve their role as meat and potatoes of Bretonnian cavalry since they are not awkwardly skipped over due to being so adjacent to Grail Knights.

Remember that all these changes apply to the AI so expect Bretonnian factions to be a more well-oiled machinery. All-in-all, the Bretonnia fans who have tested this mod happily reported it improved both the pace and fun of Bretonnian campaigns. If you have feedback or thoughts about these changes, be sure to drop by the pinned thead to discuss it with me and the community.

Highly compatible with vast majority of mods.

Mods that overhaul Bretonnian units (SFO & C&C) may overwrite my changes to building requirements for units as this component shares the same tables as unit costs/size. Additionally, if you run a mod that puts custom units on the vanilla T4 barracks, you won’t be able to recruit them.