Subscribe to download
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.

====
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.
Be aware that you need to run a 'dummy' campaign to load ATC's files. Start one campaign, exit it, then start the campaign you want to play. ATC settings are set by a DRM configuration file now, so you do not need to go digging for ProgramData.

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.
You may use whatever RBM settings you wish, though I would recommend turning shoulder shields on for the few units that make use of them.

Better Pikes[www.nexusmods.com] is a Soft Requirement for DRM, but if you want to play without it I would suggest editing the troop XMLs for pike units to remove their sidearms.


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.

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.