Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Fallacies with this:
1. Assumes that the AI does not recruit at castle because it recruited an indy commander.
2. The AI would have to spend precious turns with castle recruitable commanders picking up scattered good indy troops.
3. Minimizing commander count is not good. I can't count how many battles I have lost because I only used one commander and he was slain.
4. The AI can spend turns recruiting mages at castle instead of mundane troop commanders. (I do not know AI commander recruiting priorities, but if nothing else the probablity is better for a mage.)
5. Mundane indy military comanders have respectable to good stats.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

While an interesting thought, that'd also affect them in battles.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Good thinking Endo. The units will still be available to indy provinces.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Ah, damn. Invisible attacking hordes that spit javelins and become briefly visible when they attack. Though I might try that one just for kicks to see what it looks like... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Ah, poo.

Re: Mod: Better Independents v2.0
 

Just found out that Better Independents 2.0 has conflicts with Worthy Heroes 1.8 and later, because WH uses the Golden Naga unit (334) as a Patala hero. The current BI mod copies light acavalry 26 to the 334 slot and uses it to replace the national recruitment light cavalries.

I've attached an updated version to the opening post that removes this conflict. The fixed version uses #1454 instead, the Unused Ancient One. Full changelog added to the OP.

Re: Better Independents v2.1
 

I've made sure the attachment is updated to the latest spec. The version number is not changed, but the mod now shows up as the correct version in the list. The Golden Naga conflict with Worthy Heroes has also been checked to be fixed.

Re: Better Independents v2.1
 

Got a big financial problem here: It's not as bad as the militia but it ran my expenses up to 25k/turn (I have Gift of Nature's Bounty up, I could just barely afford it) before I figured it out.

I haven't pinned down the offending unit yet but I suspect it's a knight. I was using an army of seraphs to take some provinces the AI had lost to indie monsters. Seraph = S4 mage = Enslave. I ended up with some of the random event monsters in my army.

I am not sure that that's the only culprit as I'm still at 18k and trying to drown as many pests as I can. (I am at peace in that part of the world, I can't just suicide them against the neighbors.)

Re: Better Independents v2.1
 

And that's why I use the Resource-Only version of the mod. Edi made three versions available with the mod. One version leaves gold cost alone, but it increases the resource cost of all "junk" indy units by 800. That way, the AI won't ever recruit the junk ... but I won't go into bankruptcy because of a lucky Charm spell or some other occurrence.

As far as I can tell, the Resource-Only version of the mod works great. I'm fighting against national troops, reinforced by the occasional indy missile troop. (The AI really seems to like tribal archers.) It's made the game a lot more interesting ... and a bit more challenging.

Re: Better Independents v2.1
 

The event militia aren't cost altered. Most chaff indies are. Knights are normal price, but the worst of the three heavy cavalry costs a lot. If you have any non-archer tribals, any light cav, those are bad. Check the mod file to see what's modified, then check all the indies the seraph got for you.

The resource version was made specifically to address astral nations and Enslave Mind so the spell can be used without instant bankruptcy.