The AI will recruit slightly less melee/spear infantry and slightly more cavalry units.

Improved recruitment patterns for all factions

A long-standing issue my mod had was that some armies the AI recruited contained more cavalry and missile units than optimal, causing fights against them to be rather awkward. The solution I found for this update was to re-adjust the recruitment templates towards more melee/spear infantry-focused units.
This means that the bulk of AI armies will now primarily consist of beefy infantry units, coupled with a few missile and cavalry units.

Bandit factions no longer recruit generic Bandit units

Generic Bandit units (Bandit Marauder, Bandit Raider, Bandit Warrior, Bandit Hunter and Bandit Gang) are all inferior to their Han counterparts, so recruiting them leaves the AI at a huge disadvantage. To combat this issue I increased the cost for the mentioned units and added new options for them to recruit right from the start of the campaign.

- Bandit Marauders have been replaced with White Wave Horsemen
- Bandit Raiders have been replaced with Xiongnu Cavalry
- Bandit Warriors have been replaced with White Wave Veterans
- Bandit Hunters have been replaced with Black Mountain Hunters
- Bandit Gang has been replaced with Reclaimers

As a consequence, Bandit armies will now be stronger. Player factions won't be affected by the increased cost but will have the new recruitment options aswell.

Reworked Nanman garrisons

Back when I first introduced my improved Nanman garrisons I wasn't aware that units with throwable weapons would be so powerful. After playing a few campaigns I noticed that they outperformed all other units the Nanman factions have to offer. Consequently, I've shifted the mentioned throwing units to be in later garrison levels.

- Fixed the increased militia recruitment cost for human players. That was an oversight caused by a tick mark in the wrong place.

This small update fixes the recruitment of fullstacks with only cavalry and missile units by expanding the recruitment pool for Vanguards, Commanders and Strategists.

Vanguards:
- can now recruit Axe Band, Jian Swordguards and Spear Guards

Commanders:
- can now recruit Axe Band and Jian Swordguards

Strategists:
- can now recruit Spear Guards

The above mentioned changes also apply to human players.

Additionally, Mounted Lancer Militia are no longer considered "militia units" in the mod, which enables the AI to recruit them again.

Explanation:
Update 1.4. caused the unintended side effect of factions recruiting certain units exclusively, because they were left without any options. For example, Vanguard heroes were not able to recruit any units whatsover due to all the units in their starting recruitment pool being militia units. This led to the recruitment of only faction-unique units, as it happened with Ma Teng and Gongsun Zan, who were running around with fullstack cavalry armies. Or Kong Rong exclusively using his unique crossbow units..
Another issue were army builds with Vanguard+Vanguard+Strategist, which only fieled cavalry and missiles without any infantry.
While certainly interesting to look at, the excessive recruitment of one or two unit types isnt going to make an effective army.
The expansion of the recruitment pool is the only solution I've found to fix this. Unfortunately its not possible to tell the AI which general compositions and units it should recruit for every army. It has to weigh a lot of factors when fielding units, for example the available generals in the court, recruitment costs and threat level. As a consequence, setting up recruitment patterns is to no avail. It literally recruits what it wants..

The opening up of the recruitment pool will lead to overall balanced armies with infantries, cavalry, missiles and siege weapons alike, independent of the general composition.

The focus of this update, which has been the most work-intensive so far, is to prevent the AI from using generals with Milita and Peasant units.

When I launched version 1.0 of the mod, I approached the recruitment issue by making the above mentioned unit classes unappealing to the AI with an increasement of the recruitment cost and adjustments to the perceived quality of the units.
Those two main branches proved effective, but didn't solve the issue of generals spawning with Milita units at the start of a campaign. They would be disbanded after some time and never recruited again, but they were still present in the armies. To prevent them from being in any army or as part of a general's retinue to begin with, I've started working on the startpos(es) of each campaign.

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Every general doesn't start with Militia and Peasant units anymore.

All available factions leaders, their court characters, aswell as newly spawned generals have had their initial units changed to be stronger units. Instead of spawning with Militas and Peasants, they'll now start with a more capable substitude unit. This change applies to the 190, the 182, and the Eight Princes start dates for both romance and records mode.
The following units have been replaced:

Han generals:
Ji Militia -> Replaced with Spear Guards
Archer Militia -> Replaced with Crossbowmen
Sabre Militia -> Replaced with Sabre Infantry
Mounted Lancer Militia & Peasant Raiders & Raider Cavalry -> Replaced with Lance Cavalry
Mounted Saber Milita -> Replaced with Sabre Cavalry

Yellow Turban generals:
Peasant Warriors & Peasant Volunteers -> Replaced with Yellow Turban Warriors (190] / Redeemed Outlaws (182)
Peasant Spearmen & Ji Defectors -> Replaced with Yellow Turban Spearmen (190] / Spearmen Gang (190)
Peasant Archers & Archer Defectors & Poachers -> Replaced with Yellow Turban Archers (190) / Archer Gang (182)

Bandit generals:
Bandit Warriors -> Replaced with White Wave Veterans
Peasant Band -> Replaced with Reclaimers
Bandit Hunters -> Replaced with Crossbowmen

This change will have the following consequences:

- First battle at the start of the campaign will be more difficult.
- All settlement garrisons will spawn with their adjusted units right away.
- Recruitment of a general into any of your armies will most likely cost more coins, because some of them may come with more expensive units.
- A handful of factions might start with negative income due to the replaced units costing more upkeep than the previous ones.

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There are also five smaller adjustments to the settlement garrisons:

All Yellow Turban factions have had their settlement garrisons reworked.

They now work similarily to Han settlement garrisons, with the level 4 and level 5 upgrades having two full retinues. The units used in the garrisons vary depending on the settlement type (e.g. Water / Metal units in Water resource settlements).
The garrisons for 190 and 182 Yellow Turbans also exclusively use units that are available in their campaign.


Tao Qians garrisons have been reworked.

In the vanilla game, Tao Qians garrisons only have one retinue in level 3, level 4 and level 5 resource settlements, despite all other Han factions having two of them. This issue has been fixed.


The Tao Temple in Pengcheng garrison receives elite retinue.

The temple has received a better garrisons for Han factions and Yellow Turbans across the 190, 182 and Eight Princes start date. It now uses two retinues instead of one, and the units have been changed to strong elite units.

AI recruitment cost for Milita and Peasant units has been changed to be 3000% higher than in the vanilla build.

This change includes Ji Militia, Sabre Milita, Archer Militia, Mounted Lancer Militia, Mounted Sabre Militia, Peasant Raiders, Raider Cavalry, Peasant Warriors, Peasant Volunteers, Peasant Spearmen, Peasant Archers, Archer Defectors, Ji Defectors, Peasant Band and Poachers.

Literally any other unit, including the most pricy cavalry units, are now cheaper than them.
This should completely prevent them from being recruited.


Steam workshop showcase screenshots have been updated.

This was done to reflect the updated state of the mod.

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Known issues:
- A few generals might still have militia units as their retinue. I either didn't find the entry in the startpos file, or I just missed them.. (I literally edited approximately 5000 entries in these slow-ass startpos files by hand). I have a list with details on which faction and character is assigned to the entry numbers, so I'll probably be able to find wrong entries when I play.

- Some factions (e.g. Ma Teng, Gongsun Zan) have the unhealthy habit of recruiting armies with a lot of bow cavalries. This happens because certain general types (Vanguards and Commanders) can only recruit militia units at the start of a game. Better cavalry units are usually not unlocked yet, so they are forced to recruit the faction-unique units that their faction offers. While it doesn't become an issue with the majority of factions, it results in those two general types only recruiting the bow cavalry units in Ma Teng's and Gongsun Zan's faction, as they are the cheapest (and therefore only available) option. I'll work on a fix for this.

And for those wanting an update on my campaign progress:
I finished all 182 campaigns last summer, with the last one being a THIS IS TOTAL WAR Zhang Bao Legendary/Legendary one with my two mods [sadly didn't get the achievement, not sure why :(]

Bought the Nanman expansion pack afterwards and felt compelled to play all the remaining DLC
campaigns in the 190 startdate (Nanman factions, Liu Chong and Shi Xie). Currently halfway through with that. The plan is to get to the 194 startdate after I'm done with that. :)

Update 1.3

An issue that my mod had for a while were the Imperial units in the tier 5 building garrisons. They didn't replenish as quickly as all the other units in the retinue, so it was often beneficial to keep the building level on 4.
This became an issue in the face of fully upgrading a building being quite effective from an economical perspective, but not from the military point of things.
To fix this issue, I've tried my best to remove all the Imperial units from garrisons and replace them with equally strong (mostly faction unique) units. Here are the details:

- Imperial Crossbowmen have been replaced with Chen Royal Guards (Liu Chongs unique crossbow unit). While they are falling behind in melee combat and fire rate, they sport nice good armor and crossbow stats, aswell as a shield for extra protection.

- Imperial Gate Guards have been replaced with Protectors of Heaven (who are almost identical in performance as frontline glaive units) and Defenders of the Empire (Lu Zhi's unique spear unit). I've chosen the latter mainly for their great defensive prowess and unbreakable moral.

- Imperial Sword Guards have been replaced with Imperial Guards (Sima Liang's unique sword unit), as they are in the same sturdy frontline niche as their imperial counterpart.

- Imperial Lancer Cavalry has been replaced with the Heavy Xiliang Cavalry (Dong Zhuo's unique shock cavalry unit). There were a lot of good units that I could have chosen from, but I settled on them as they have not been present in my mod, despite being a good and heavy-hitting hit-and-run unit.

- Imperial Household Cavalry has been replaced by Chen Peacekeepers (Liu Chong's melee cavalry). They are very sturdy close combat and charge units and come close to the optimum of what a melee cavalry should be able to achieve.


Additionally, some units didn't perform as well as I thought they would be, so I replaced them with a slightly stronger version of them. This also includes a small redesign of the unit structure in the Han Gate Passes and Han Temple building.

- Heavy Crossbowmen have been replaced with Ye Vanguard Crossbowmen (Yuan Shao's unique shielded crossbow unit). I haven't played much with them, but after discovering them again by coincidence I wondered why I didn't put them in the garrisons in the first place. They do everything the Heavy Crossbowmen do, but have shields, a mixed formation and can hold their ground in melee combat.

- The units in the unique temple building were all too weak across the board, so I changed them again. Now they have units that would be equivalent to a level 5 resource building in terms of unit quality.

- Jian Swordguard Cavalry has largely been replaced in favor of the more aggressive and fatigue-immune Qiang Raiders. The Jian units lacked prowess in close combat and were only mediocre in charging enemy lines, so the more agile and heavy-hitting Qiang Raiders should perform better in their particular set of tasks.

- The units in the Han Gate Passes have been slightly altered in structure. The biggest change is that Ye Vanguard Spearmen (Yuan Shao's unique spear and shield unit) have been added to replace the Heavy Spear Guard as more versatile unit in the earlier stages of the pass.

Update 1.2

- The entire mod now works in Records Mode for the 190, Eight Princes and MoH campaigns.

- Garrison units for the main han factions have been slightly altered to feature less Yellow Dragons and Imperial units. The former had only limited defensive prowess, and the imperial units suffered from low replenishment rates.

- Eight Princes garrisons have also seen minor changes to feature more of the unique units the start date provides.

- The garrison for the unique temple building in Pengcheng commandery has been improved across all supported start dates because it felt too weak.

Update 1.1

Added support for the Mandate of Heaven DLC.

MoH - inspired units have been added to the Yellow Turban Garrisons and all AI MoH factions will sport healthier unit compositions.