Recruitment Tiers, or Better AI Armies
Makes the AI recruitment better, so more challenging, faction-appropriate army.
Dunno if you have noticed, but the AI is kinda ♥♥♥♥ at recruiting armies… Always has been, it’s a Total War tradition coming from the days of Med2, wherein the army would recruit missile, or artillery doomstacks instead of a real army. Attila largely suffers from the same jarring issue: It’s either a lot of missiles (which get destroyed by cavalry), or 7 billion spearmen. This is because CA locked the best units behind the recruitment branches (which also require technology), while not correctly equipping the AI to pursue those buildings.
This mod solves that by sidestepping the whole recruitment building thing: Instead, you (and the AI) recruit armies from the main building in the settlements. Tier 1 gives access to tier 1 troops, tier 2 to tier 2 troops, tier 3, tier 3 troops.
Furthermore, AI’s recruitment priorities have been altered in a per-faction basis. Romans go for more infantry, sassanids for more cavalry, more raider cavalry for celtic factions, etc.
This idea is not mine, it is instead a reconstruction of a mod that used to work in a similar manner, that was taken off the Workshop circa september 2022.
Best used with
Regional Area of Recruitment Units -> Adds cool Area of Recruitment units that the roman AI loves to use! They’re also balanced and very solid.
Ultra Aggresive and Smart AI -> Makes the AI actually a threat.
Better Economy and Military AI -> Increases the likelihood of better AI cities (since us modders can’t force the AI to do nothin’, just suggest stuff)
Made possible by
Better AI recruitment / Recruiting units without buildings-> Excellent work, albeit a bit unbalanced, and swinging the balance too much in favor of the romans. I took the table from this and fragmented it to suit my idea.
Better AI Recruitment and Army Composition-> I do not like this mod very much, as it accentuates the issue with the 7 billion spearmen. However, I do recognize its merit. I also ran tweaks with one of its base tables (cdir_military_generator_template_ratios) until satisfied.
Limitations:
- Both you and the AI can recruit everything from the city, which might make military buildings irrelevant (except for quickly raising an army/better garrison)
- Removed Wardogs: The AI (both vanilla/modded) had a horrible tendency to recruit armies made from 16-18 wardogs. I believe this is a small price to pay for a more engaging campaign
- Intentional side effect of making vassals and tributaries worthwhile, since you can access an important part of their roster, instead of a measly two units.
Please feel free to tweak this to your preferences! Thanks for using my mod!
