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Cost-based Army Caps

TWW2 is no longer getting patches or DLC, so my mods are also considered final and will not receive any more updates. Therefore I disabled comments on all of them to avoid constantly getting notifications for the same dumb questions that have been answered a thousand times already. Any comments or announcements I might make in the future will be posted under my collection here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1766089433

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Limits the number of elite and powerful units per army, so that pure elite doomstacks become impossible and cheaper units remain viable throughout the campaign. The mod doesn't limit specific unit types, rather every unit simply counts towards a funds limit per army, just like in multiplayer or custom battles. NEW: Can optionally also UPGRADE units, so that the AI will actually have armies that are close to their army limit.


MAJOR UPDATE AUG 2021: Upgraded AI Armies, AI lord autoleveling, overhauled replacement logic

The AI will now not only downgrade units to stay under their current limit, they will also do the opposite: Upgrade their units to fully utilize their army limit, when before they would usually stay far below their limit. This leads to MUCH stronger and more interesting AI armies to fight. The feature is disabled by default - for now - to not interfere with ongoing campaigns. Using the mod with current default settings should be the same as before the update. Switching on the new features during a campaign may be very disruptive - but doesn't hurt to try, just make a save before.

Also AI lords will now autolevel based on the player's progress, so that they don't suffer from the low limits in the mid and end game.

Details on how the upgrading works: Armies are only eligible for unit upgrades if
-the army has already 'naturally' recruited at least 18 units (so small, partial stacks will not be touched)
-faction must have the gold to afford it (their upgrades don't come for free)
-units can only be upgraded if the chosen better unit is actually recruitable by the faction somewhere in their empire (so they will never gain elite units they couldn't normally recruit yet)
-the army is at least 1500 away from the current limit (so that the mod does not upgrade units only to have to downgrade them again next turn)
-only a certain number of units can be upgraded per turn (depends on turn number and how much gold the faction has; we don't want to bankrupt them)
-upgrades are blocked if the faction is at war with the player and the army is in a region owned by the player or in close range to a player army (so basically it should never happen that an army you just wanted to attack suddenly upgrades units before your nose)

So if you see weak armies that are far under their limit, these are possible reasons:
-faction is too poor to afford upgrades
-army is too small
-they don't have access to better units
-they started upgrading but didn't have enough time


HOW IT WORKS

Every unit in an army counts towards the army's total point cost. If the total point cost of the army exceeds the limit, it will cost 3x the normal upkeep and will be unable to replenish until it is again under the cost limit.

The point cost of a unit is identical to its (base) gold cost in multiplayer or custom battles, NOT its campaign cost. The cost never changes from campaign bonuses to recruitment costs, promotions or anything else. The only exception is lords or heroes changing mounts, because a lord or hero on a mount technically becomes a different unit.

Limits can be dynamic, so that high-level lords can have more expensive armies than low-level lords. The same is true for the AI!


IMPROVED SUPPLY LINES (optional)

This adds cost-based supply lines. Every army will count for supply lines (additional unit upkeep) according to its current cost. An army that has a point cost lower than 25%, 50% or 75% contributes to the supply line upkeep penalty not like a full army. So if you have for example four armies but each of them costs less than 25% of its cost limit, then they all together count as only one army and you don't get any Supply Lines penalty. If you only have almost full armies (that cost 75% or more of their limit), the additional upkeep will be the same as with the Vanilla Supply Lines feature. IMPORTANT: Use the new submod to remove the normal Supply Lines, or you will have the normal penalties PLUS the ones from this mod!


UPGRADE AI ARMIES (optional)

Rather than just ensuring that the AI does not exceed their cost limits, which they rarely did anyway, the mod can now also work in the opposite direction: Upgrade the armies of the AI so that they actually operate close to their army limits rather than staying far below it most of the time. This leads to *much* stronger and more interesting AI armies on average, especially in the early and mid game.


AUTOLEVEL AI LORDS

With the current default settings, the AI now has only a small bonus to their army limits, so unless the AI lords are of a higher level, their armies will be very weak in the mid and late game. While the AI will naturally have a few higher-level lords in the late game, they still have plenty of level 1 lords because their lords die all the time. So it is highly recommended to activate the auto-level feature that will ensure all AI lords have a certain minimum level, based on the progress of the player. (Note that this feature can and should be used even when my other mods are also used that have a similar feature, they work slightly differently and won't interfere with each other.)


DETAILS

You can set different values for everything with the Mod Configuration Tool. You can choose your own player limit, AI limit, level interval for lords to increase their limit and by how much. You can also use it without the MCT, then the default values will be in effect.

BUT it is highly recommended to stay close to the default settings. Very low or very high limits lead to ugly, boring, repetitive armies, that are either full of the cheapest chaff units or have only a few types of very expensive units. A range of 17-25k gold cost yields the best results for full armies. (As an example, if the limit is set to 40k, every unit needs to cost 2k gold, most races have only 2-4 units in that price range.)

The current point value of armies, and the allowed limit, are displayed when mousing over the zoom button of the army panel (see screenshot). If the army is currently recruiting, the projected point value of the army is also displayed so you always know whether you will stay under the limit with your current recruitment choices. If an army is over the limit, or will be after completing recruitment, the text is displayed in red so you can see at a glance that there is a problem.

All normal units (excluding Lords and Heroes) also show the point cost behind their name, so you can see it when mousing over recruitment options or buildings that unlock the unit and can plan ahead without remembering all the unit costs.

Lords, heroes and Regiments of Renown also have a cost that is part of the army cost, just like regular units, so you cannot circumvent the limit by having multiple heroes or lots of ROR's in your army!

The point value of garrisons is displayed as tooltip of the info button in the settlement panel, see screenshot.

The AI never actually gets a penalty but tries its best to stay under their limit. Exceptions are garrisons and quest battle armies, which are not changed by this mod - but are all far under the default limit anyway. Even the strongest garrisons in the game are below 20k.