@SQUISHY!
I've fixed it. Just an oversight on my part. Sorry for that.
Thank you for pointing it out! :)

this is affecting the players militia costs too idk why

Hello everyone, the small Update 1.4.1 has been released.

It fixes fullstack armies with only cavalry / bow units by opening up the recruitment pool for Vanguards, Commanders and Strategists to include key early-game units.
As a consequence, AI army builds will be more well-rounded indepentent of the generals used.

@Sporctaco
Yeah, I know about Liu Bei going into minus after taking the settlement. Sign a trade agreement and NAP with Tao Qian to gain more per-turn money, or disband units.
..And the mod is all about not being able to delegate every settlement battle... so just fight it out? Close defeats can be turned around easily.

The idea is nice, but with some factions it is unplayable, having removed the initial militia, playing with LIU BEI's FACTION you go into the red by 800 after the first turn, and if you replace to take the militia, you are no longer able to conquer anything because the garrisons are too OP L4 cities with Dragon units

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3200688961 , guys I highly recommend this. you will be surprised by how it makes the ai more aggressive ! (I use it with some other mods which help the ai with money & supply as well!)

@PandaBlackOps
No, there is not.

Is there a version of this mod that only affect garrison and not army template?

@Chill Dude
Heya! It doesn't work in the 194 start at the moment, no. I can't tell you when exactly I'll have an update supporting it ready, but I'll work on one in the future :)

Hello author! Does this mod supports the 194 start date? Thnx

@think you :)

@maxime : https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3044423386
this was supposed to be a private mod for me only but it is public now :D

@Very Bad Bishop
Most top-tier or "late-game" units are already on par or better compared to the faction-unique units for the AI, but they become available much later into the game, so they will be picked less.

I'll think of something to fix those bow cav full stacks ^^

@Very Bad Bishop

I can't find the mod you mention "AI free money"...
Can you give a link ?

@Dakophyntix , how about making " top units" And faction-unique units "EQUALLY" interesting to the ai? this way they wont spam an army full of bow cavs! I honestly feel the mod is 9.5/10 right now. solve this problem & make it 10/10 !

@Dante , the mod I am going to recommend is called " AI Free Money" , it gives the ai (only) a reasonable amount of cash as gift every turn, it completely removes the "supply" from the game (for the ai) , and it removes the "march" stance for both player & the ai. the vanilla ai is too dumb with both the supply thing & the march stance ( the ai thinks it has a retreat option while on march, while they removed it after the game was in markets) . that mod + better garrisons will help your campaigns a lot.

@Dante Son of Sparta
I haven't played with those two other mods yet. Judging from their descriptions and pictures they have a few of things in common with my mod. That is a sign that my mod and the other two mods might not work together very well. If the same table is changed in both of them, then only the changes from the mod that is listed first in the boot list will have its changes applied.

@Dante Son of Sparta
I think you need to describe in more detail what you need.

Not wanting to advertise unnecessarily, but my other mod Give Everyone A Chance increases the military spending and aggressiveness of all unique factions in the 190 and MoH start date. Might be worth a look if you need the AI to be more of a challenge. Note that you need to put the Garrison mod above the other one for everything to work properly.

could I ask both you for an optional AI behavior mod for me to use with this mod? Do I need Dynasty Warlords' Armies or Better AI Template ?

Im really looking forward to it, waiting for you to give me an update & I see a vanguard with 6 good cav units & a strategist with 6 proper ranged units in every single army ! yay!
on difficulty level: bring it on! vanilla is (unfortunately) disgustingly easy & I am using 6 more ai improving mods alongside with yours lol.

@Very Bad Bishop
Ah yes, that makes perfect sense with the fire damage and the morale drop!

Regarding the difficulty, I think I'm more on the "very tough" side. I personally find Legendary/Legendary to be kinda easy, so I'm increasing the difficulty to give me a challenge. I'll try to find a good balance though. :p

on mounted bows: it is mainly about the power of fire (setting jungles & woods on fire & causing indirect casualties) not the direct kills, however, gongsun's bow cavs are good enough in a melee, BUT spamming them as always is a bad idea. spamming anything is a bad idea basically.
=====
on "improving" the bandit & nanman garrisons: keep in mind the game must remain playable & enjoyable. at this moment & time & as the things stand , the garrisons are beatable , despite being really good. making them even better might make the game impossible or too (unnecessarily) hard.
======
on my play hour time, I have +3100 hours , records only, and I think it is fair to say that more than 500 hours of it has been with your mod :D

@Very Bad Bishop
4 - Oh.. I forgot about the ammunition bonus that Cunning provides. Yeah that is probably not a good idea.

@Very Bad Bishop
2 & 3: Yeah, I agree with that assessment. I'll see if I can find a way to implement it.
Also.. holy moly.. 500 hours? Thats a lot of campaigns ^^

@Very Bad Bishop
1 - Interesting to hear that mounted bows are good units in Records mode. I only play Romance, and there they are very tough to use effectively due to generals easily being able to shoo them away. They are not strong enough to defend themselves against them.
And regarding the Bandit garrisons: I'm not satiesfied with them, nor am I am happy with the Nanman garrisons. I'll improve them.

4- on " making top spears available to strategists" and stuff like that, I must tell you that this is what the mod must AVOID. it is simply a waste of slot for the strategists. they increase the ammo for units & having 1 out 6 units of them have NO MISSILES is a bad idea. it is like when you see archer militia on vanguards in vanilla, it is laughable. forcing each general to stick to the units of the same color as his own,in my opinion is the solution & will give us the best results.

3- in my opinion (I am a records player who has thousands of hours on previous historical titles) each army needs one vanguard and one strategist. the third general for the core of the melee can be changed, but it is up to you as the author. I am a regular here & a big fan of the mod & can safely say I have more than 500 hours already with your mod. I trust your judgment on this, whatever you do about this final problem, I am sure it will be the best. eagerly looking forward to your update !

2- as for the ideas to make the ai armies more balanced, forcing the generals to stick to their "same-color" units and then forcing the ai to only recruit one type of general in each army can be a solution. I have played against Dong Zhuo armies with too many shock cavs or full bow cav nonsense of Gongsun Zan. (I have another mod which gives the ai (and ai only) free money each turn so my ai is capable of recruiting everything , it is fun but the unbalanced armies bother the eye.

alright so 1- as for the logic behind Yellow Turbans having fewer numbers is that : they had the quality instead. they would get mounted & archer units in that one retinue while the han factions had to just stick with spear & archers (open field resources) or sword & cav ( jade mines & tool makers) etc... the mod has been very very generous to the bandits by giving them all sort of good stuff (nanman units & protectors & ....) but still it will not stop a traditional army to _easily_ beat the garrison. so I dont mind if it is your decision to double the numbers for YT as well. anything that makes the game harder & more serious is always welcome, I use 6 other mods along with yours to make the game MUCH HARDER.

@Very Bad Bishop
Additionally, the AI recruits unfortunate general compositions. An army with three strategists, which of course are only going to have Crossbowmen and Trebuchets, is not going to win battles.
That would be perfectly fine combined with a Vanguard and a Champion.. but no..

I see two ways to fix this:

1) Force the AI into recruiting in "templates", so they can't recruit two Strategists or two Vanguards into the same army anymore.

2) Increase the available units to recruit from (e.g. Water generals can also recruit Spear Guards instead of only Ji Milita.).

I'll look into it going forward. Thank you for the feedback :)

@Very Bad Bishop
2 - Yes, I agree this is an issue. I don't like seeing Gongsun Zan with 12 White Horse Raiders or Liu Bei with 12 Yi Archers running around either. The reasons why they are mostly being picked are:

a) They are the only affordable unit, because with this mod they are cheaper than Militia and Peasant units.
b) The mod tells the AI that faction unique units are worth more than normal units.
c) There is no other unit available, especially at the start of the campaign, when only Militias and one or two faction-unique units are unlocked.

@Very Bad Bishop
1 - The previous iteration of the mod did the exact thing you described. Same garrison size, but units were better. Whenever I played the YT I ran into the issue of not being able to defend my resource settlements, because even six top-tier units can't win against a full-stack army + 3 generals. I would lose settlements often because of it.
On the other hand, all Han garrisons have two full retinues starting at level 4, so I couldn't see CA's logic to give the YT only one retinue.

@Cao Cao Mengde Thank you!

two points :
1- as for the Yellow Turbans, I dont mind doubling their retinues, but perhaps just keeping the numbers & increasing the tier & strength of the units could be considered. I have finished a number of legendary campaigns with the mod & I can simply say without this mod, the game is almost not playable.
2- the only problem in my opinion is how the factions treat their "unique" units, Gongsun Zan for instance, spams the bow cavs, they are interesting to play against, but they will most definitely lose any offensive siege & the ai overestimates their power all the time & this makes the faction do very questionable stuff. it is better to keep a balance like 30% melee, 30% ranged & 30% cav in all forces (the remaining 10% can be anything) .

You're a hero. Love this.

Hello everyone, Update 1.4 has been released.

The following changes have been made:

- Militia and Peasant units have been completely removed from the starting retinues of all generals and replaced with stronger units.

- Found a way to make the updated garrisons fully appear at the start of a campaign.

- All Yellow Turban resource settlement garrisons have been reworked. They now get two retinues on level 3, 4, and 5.

- Tao Temple in Pengcheng has received a new elite garrison with two retinues.

- Tao Qian resource settlement garrisons have been reworked. He has two retinues on level 3, 4, and 5 now.

- AI recruitment cost for Militia and Peasant units has been increased to 3000% more than the vanilla cost (from 900%). This change was made because some peasant units were still cheaper than some high-tier shock cavalry units.

Thats all for this update. Check the update log for the exact details if you are interested.

Cheers,
Dako

@Very Bad Bishop Thank you! :)

update , a review for legendary players: I disabled the other similar " improve ai " mods & tested this mod alone. and I am 100% satisfied. the armies look decent and the upgraded garrisons are just fantastic. the mod doesnt change the base stats of units , so we dont have to learn a new game and we can play our old 3k in peace of mind. buildings , reforms & everything are the same as vanilla's. the mod also doesnt turn minor factions into aggressive major factions, which is just another plus.
in a nutshell : this is the mod for you , if you are a legendary player who wants a more challenging campaign. playing multiplayer head to head on this mod must be a great idea... :p

AI still recruit lots of shitty units even they're rich. Wondering if it's caused by army limit. AI may try to expand to the army limit using lots of cheap units

@Emptyheart Yes, the AI can disband units and recruit new ones. It depends on a lot of factors though. Availability of money plays a big role for certain, but they are also likely to change the units when they summon the general on the field.

And no, you don't need the reforms for the units to unlock the garrison units.

BTW, do the elite garrison needs tech update like dragon army? Otherwise it is odd if you can have dragon army at turn 20 just because you have a large villiage

It it possible to make AI upgrate the existing militia they already recruited?

@Very Bad Bishop
I know about this issue, but it can't be fixed, as the default garrisons are "hard-coded" into the game, meaning that they can't be altered with a modding tool (to my knowledge).

They need to be refreshed in-game, either by upgrading/downgrading the settlement until the garrison level changes, or by conquering/losing the settlement.

Awesome. glad to hear that. you have found the final solution for FORCING the AI to recruit better units. I turned " expert AI " off to see what effects your mod alone does to the game , and there were no full stacks everywhere :D the combination of "expert ai " and yours makes the game as if every faction is being played by a legendary player!! the game is a "survival " game now , not "just press W and kill them all " which was the case before finding this golden combo.
I noticed that in some cases the rebellion's garrisons are still like the vanilla. this means for instance , Ma Teng has an easy job capturing Wudu, but with Dong Zhuo I faced a proper garrison in Anding's toolmaker. maybe this can be fixed in the next update?

@Very Bad Bishop
Yeah, since the YT general classes are hybrids they have a lot of valuable units to choose from. I have set things up in a way that peasant units are considered extremly poor in quality compared to pretty much all other units. Maybe that wasn't enough. One thing I did with the Han units was to apply an increase in recruitment cost for the militia units (by 900%), so they would be super expensive to buy compared to any other unit. Maybe I can find a solution to make it work for the YT aswell, but I haven't found one yet.
I'll keep playing the game on a regular basis - I want to play every campaign in every start date. Considering that I'm just about to wrap up the 184 start date, I still have a long way before me. So don't worry about updates - more will come as I progress through the campaigns :D

2/so maybe the best idea is just to tell yellow turban leaders to give up on " peasant" units as they are garbage and gone by one single charge of any cav unit ( at least in the records) , only to make it more fair to them. now that the AI doesnt recruit stupid militia units , it is only just & fair to teach it to do the same with the yellow turbans as well.
other than this , there is nothing else that comes to my mind , at least for now. I UNDERSTAND that some people might not like your idea of using special yuan shu & liu bei units for garrisons of random settlements , but I like it. they are strong & respectable units and I dont see why not :D overall, I am very happy with the mod and I wish you best of luck and PLEASE KEEP IT UPDATED
8)

1/ Had to do more tests with a faction closer to Huang Shao , as the region was no more visible to us (as Dong Zhuo , thanks to Han Empire losing all the settlements) , so I played with Cao Cao , and in turn number 20 , Huang Shao had 4 full stacks and a couple of smaller forces fooling around , and I could examine their armies. I felt like the AI doesnt understand that veterans are somehow "strategists" of YT , and was randomizing the unit recruitment a little bit, but on the other hand , YT factions are tricky anyway , as any class of generals has access to good melee, good cav & good ranged units.

@Very Bad Bishop
Interesting that the YT are still recruiting that many peasants. In my own campaigns I found them using their better units quite often. Might be fluctuation or them deciding not to call back their initial retinues. Many generic character spawn with militia / peasant units, and sometimes the AI doesn't disband those units but rather keeps them. Thinking about it though, that is an easy fix for a coming update

I also checked Expert AI, and it seems to be a very good mod aswell. A lot of good stuff in there, might give it a try in my next campaign!

Regarding Dong Zhuo, this is also how I like to test my mods. :D

Cheers, Dako!

Thank you ! I am testing the mod RIGHT NOW. seems to me like the YT factions are still okay with recruiting peasants which doesnt help them at all , at least in the battles that will be fought manually. other than that , what I am seeing here is a masterpiece of balanced armies, with proper crossbows & artillery instead of the disgusting archer militia. (worth mentioning: I am using your mod AND a mod called "expert AI " , yours is on top of the list . I am playing as Dong Zhuo which is the best option for testing mods and having a visibility on every detail that is happening. and so far so good and satisfying ! thank you again and I will make more comments since I see you are read & respond ! :D

@Very Bad Bishop
That's nice to hear! Thank you! :)