[MaxWilson]

Okay, my assessment after playing with v2.0 for a week or so and spying on the AI armies fighting each other:

I think allowing archer indies improves AI armies significantly, precisely because missile troops scale well. I just watched EA R'lyeh attack MA Jotunheim, for instance, and get smeared because there were about 70 deer tribe archers mixed in with the Jotun PD + troops. At the same time, you don't see armies composed ENTIRELY of deer tribe archers--the nationals are used where they make sense, and EA Ulm doesn't really use indies at all (preferring the Ulmish archer-maidens instead). So yeah, I think this improves the AI further.

I don't know if it's necessarily more *challenging* because allowing archer recruitment helps me out significantly too. I may (or may not) go back to No Independents on thematic grounds[1]. However, BI was conceived as an AI booster and on that level v2.0 is a definite improvement. Nice work!

-Max

[1] I have mixed feelings about having squads of Woodsmen and Deer Tribe archers mixed in among my Human Slingers and Bashanites. On the one hand, I *did* conquer those lands and conscript the inhabitants, and arguably that's more logical than me building a castle there and suddenly having a pool of Rephaim to conscript in that province. On the other hand, it papers over a weakness in the nation that I should perhaps have to live with (slingers have poor range and have a nasty habit of advancing practically into melee range of one or another enemy group if you leave them scripted to anything but "fire closest").