Gandalf, I know it is a well-meaning thread. My previous post might seem a bit harsh, but it is not meant to be hostile, just to express how and why this thread turned out the way it did.
That said, I will also comment on the subject of these prospective AI boost mods: Making them, one for each nation, is a horrendously time-consuming task if you want to keep intact anything like the variety the game normally has. This is another reason why there are few people interested in the subject. It's a project on the order of the CBM mods, except perhaps even more difficult unless one wants to use the suggested quick and dirty methods of neutering independents.
On further reflection, the quick and dirty method of putting ridiculous resource costs on the indies does have a lot going for it, though, with some pretty decent advantages over a NI map:
- AI will not recruit indies
- If indie commanders and select other indie units are not modded, it will be possible to avoid all the hordes of chaff, while the national AI troops will be boosted by relatively small numbers of high quality troops (such as the plate cuirass crossbowmen, possibly decent heavy cavalry/cataphracts etc)
- Players will still have access to indie mages recruitable from poptypes, allowing branching out if they do not have those types of magic
- AI will also use these mages, at least some of the time.
This type of mod would not be at all difficult to do, and the idea itself is intriguing enough that I might actually do one just for the hell of it. After all, there are not that many independent units and I have the full list of poptypes to boot.