DeReMilitari

De Re Militari is a troop overhaul mod that aims to better reflect how medieval armies were often a mixture of levies, professional men-at-arms, and the noble elite, while aiming to ensure none of the three become obsolete over the course of a game.

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Introduction
As a TL;DR, De Re Militari is a troop overhaul mod that aims to strip out the elite armies typical of Mount & Blade and create a greater sense of the mixed quality that medieval armies had in their composition, highlighted with these four points:

1) To better reflect the historical levies and part-time irregulars that made up the bulk of medieval armies, while also allowing the professional regulars and noble elite to stand out without obsoleting any of them.
2) To give each faction a more distinct identity within this framework, creating a thematic asymmetry of unit quality between factions.
3) To avoid overloading the player with excessive options or stages that add nothing but additional clutter to building and assessing army strength.
4) To still give players some choice in their troop upgrades even with the limitations of the smaller trees, while maintaining the above.

Module Requirements
De Re Militari relies on Adonnay’s Troop Changer[www.nexusmods.com] (ATC) to implement its recruitment scheme, and ATC is a REQUIRED download.

Realistic Battle Module[www.nexusmods.com] (RBM), specifically the Combat Module, is also a requirement due to some units making use of shoulder pavises or RBM ammunition. You can technically play with the Combat Module disabled once RBM is installed, but units will be missing munitions or pavise shields without the Combat Module.

https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/5150]Better Pikes is a Soft Requirement for DRM, meaning that you can play without it if you do not want to.

Settings for both are listed below.

Compatibility
This mod modifies the spculture and partyTemplate XML files to ensure that none of the vanilla units* show up in-game during normal gameplay. Note that certain quests may spawn particular units from vanilla, but these have been left in-game to maximize compatibility as Bannerlord is still in early access.
*Except conspiracy quest units, see the FAQ for why.

Because this is a full-scale troop overhaul, other troop mods are not intended to be used in conjunction with DRM. That said as long as they do not touch the culture or party templates of the main factions, it should be compatible. Mods that change bandits or the main faction party templates will likely not be compatible and I did not design DRM with that in mind, but you are free to give it a try.

Overview

A persistent problem in Mount & Blade is that after a certain point the first few tiers become irrelevant other than as a stepping stone to more elite troops. In turn, this furthered a snowball effect as the losers were stuck with hopelessly outclassed recruits and levies against coat-of-plates or lamellar armor wearing murderblenders. The introduction of Common and Noble recruits did little to change this as common troops still became high-quality Tier V units while the noble troops only got one tier over them. Especially for the player, a mob of peasants with pitchforks would become a very well armed and armored fighting force capable of mauling through the enemy quite quickly.

De Re Militari – abbreviated as DRM below – is an attempt to rectify that, taking full advantage of Adonnay’s Troop Changer to enable multiple smaller troop trees that reflect different kinds of troops. In turn, these trees have hard limits based on how reasonable it would be for the irregulars to get their hands on such equipment. These smaller troop trees ensure that players can still upgrade their troops and get some choice in composition, without having to path every unit from the humble peasant as in Warband.

Broadly speaking, the common troop tree is broken up between an Irregular and a Regular tree. The Irregular tree contains various levies, conscripts, and other moderately equipped part-time soldiers, who usually end at Tier III, and make up the bulk of common recruits. Regulars are the actual career fighters of an army, beginning at Tier II or III and ending at Tier V. Finally, Nobles begin at Tier III and end at Tier VI, following the same rules as elite recruits normally do. Some factions play with this, or have further dynamics to their spread of troops.

These different troop trees also serve to allow different cultures to stand out in their strengths, while adding further depth to army composition. While every culture has at the very least a bulk infantry option in their irregulars and one foot archer somewhere in their common trees, everything else is fair game. This should encourage more differences in play style depending on your army, and also further emphasize the thematic strengths of the factions and limit how much they play the same.

Overall, this mod should provide a considerably different experience from the vanilla game simply in how armies are composed and how you handle recruitment as now you must think harder on whether you want to just fill the slot now or wait for a better recruit to be available.

ATC and RBM Settings
Adonnay’s Troop Changer Settings:
Note that ATC requires you to launch a campaign to install its files. The next campaign you launch after will have ATC functional. Please observe all ATC installation instructions on its page.

With the Steam download, ATC’s settings XML file is. located at ProgramDataMount and Blade II BannerlordATC
If you are having trouble finding it, you should be able to do a search for ATC.settings.xml in order to find the file location.

— The first setting to change for DRM’s intended functionality is to set <EnableCustomTemplates> to False – this is necessary for the Minor Faction parties to spawn with their proper DRM party compositions instead of a mixture.
— Second, you must set EliteOnlyInCastleVillages from ‘True’ to ‘False’. If this is set to true, then elites will always be available in castle-bound villages regardless of Notable Power. This will vastly increase the number of regulars and upper nobles available to recruit, so I would recommend disabling it. If you wish to play with this enabled, however, just be aware that this will massively increase the number of higher quality units on the battlefield.
— Third, I would recommend setting <LevelRecruitsUpToTier> from 3 to 1. Otherwise, all units will spawn as T3 units at minimum.
Other settings may be tweaked to the values that suit your enjoyment of the game best.

Realistic Battle Mod Settings
From RBM, you are only required to enable the Combat Module and within that Shoulder Shields as DRM relies on the combat module for balance and some items. All other settings, including whether you even use the AI Module, are up to the individual player.
Yes, this includes Reload Speed as that setting only affects the player – the AI always uses Realistic reload speed.

Frequently Asked Questions & Known Issues
Before reporting a bug or asking a question, please check the two pinned discussions for these. It may be a question that has been frequently asked and has a posted answer or it may be an issue that DRM is unable to get around.

Additional information may be found at the the DRM Nexus Mods page[www.nexusmods.com], including manuals under the Articles section which should provide you with an insight into how the factions have been modeled and some of the lore intentions behind the factions and units.