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Unit and Mercenary Rework

Skirmishers (and equivalents)
One thing that has always bothered me about Rome Total War has been skirmishers. Despite historically often being used by professional armies, in game they are about as useful as peasants and become obsolete as soon as any other ranged unit is unlocked. This stems from not only much smaller range and ammunition capacity of a skrimisher, but also smaller damage. To rectify this, I have greatly increased the damage caused by skirmisher javelins(for context, pilla of hastati does 11 damage + is AP), given them even more bonus damage against elephants and chariots(in case You are mad enough to try), and also added an additional javelin to throw. I have done a lot of testing to not make the unit overpowered and settled on keeping javelins without AP damage

Greatly increased attack: 6 / 14 (16)
Increased ammunition: 6 / 7 (8)
More bonus damage: 6 / 10 (15)
The value in brackets represents heavy peltasts, light auxilia and illyrian mercenaries

Head Hurlers
In base game this unit is about as powerful as my improved skirmishers, however it also has AP damage. I decided to make the head hurlers a tiny bit more powerful stat-wise as well

Increased attack: 17 / 18
Increased ammunition: 6 / 8

Gothic Cavalry
Added the Warcry ability to make 2 turn recruitment worthwhile

Chariots
Historically, maintaining and building new chariots was expensive and time consuming, to reflect this and also improve gameplay balance I have increased their production time to 2 turns

Sythian Noble Archers & Persian Cavalry
I personally find the ability to every turn recruit a unit of horse archers that can beat in melee any unit which has a slight chance of catching them way too overpowered. For this reason I increased recruitment time to 2 turns

Town Militia & Town Watch
Increased the size of town militia and town watch units by 25% to make them actually useful for their designed purpose

Triarii & Auxilia
For historical accuracy, triarii now fight in a phalanx. After the Marian reforms, to avoid players clinging onto obsolete units that can no longer be repaired, I have made auxilia serve the same role.

Cilician Pirates
No longer use the ‘horde’ formation and can now Warcry

Iberian Infantry, Bastarnae & Thracian/Sarmatian/Spanish Mercenaries
Added the Warcry ability to represent their barbarian roots

Bull Warriors & Scutarii
Decreased recruitment time – now only 1 turn; added the Warcry ability. This should allow Spain to stand up to tough foes

Numidian Legionaries, Armenian Legionaries, Silver Shield Legionaries
All non-roman legionaries can now be recruited in a single turn just like the roman ones. Numidian Legionaries still can’t make a testudo and I don’t intend to change that because the game says they shouldn’t be able to; however, to buff Numidia, whose unit roster is pretty limited, I have given them Warcry.

Gladiators
All roman factions now have access to all gladiators; these units are now 50% larger and have access to Warcry. They also no longer use the ‘horde’ formation. These units, considering they have 2 hitpoints, are pretty powerful, for this reason I kept the 2 turn recruitment time; think of them as an improved version of Bastarnae

Arcani
A unit that should not exist in the first place but in case someone intends to use them, they now contain 25% more soldiers

Decere
Recruitment time changed from 3 turns to 2, now it actually feels like an improvement to Quinquiremes and Corvus Quinquiremes

Other units, now with 1 turn recruitment time:
• Forester Warband, Pharaoh's Bowmen – devs intended for these factions to have good archers, two turn recruitment argueably made them worse than their other barbarian counterparts
• Woad Warriors, Naked Fanatics, Night Raiders – its an inferior unit to Chosen Swordsmen so there should be no reason why it takes longer to recruit
• Druids – situational usefulness + long recruitment time = limited use
• Roman Wardogs, Warhounds – basically the same problem as for druids
• Sythian Nobles, Head Hunting Maidens, Nile Cavalry – considering that the stats of these three units are close to that of Barbarian Noble Cavalry, I saw no reason to have a 2 turn recruitment cost
• Poeni Infantry, Sacred Band, Bronze Shields, Pharaoh's Guards, Royal Pikemen, Silver Shield Pikemen – good mid-late game units that should have a recruitment time of 1 turn. Most non-roman factions have units like these that are about as strong as legionary cohorts but unlike legionary cohorts, have a 2 turn recruitment time. This is why in the base game romans steamroll more advanced foes
• Heavy Onagers, Repeating Ballistas – considering the heavy technological investment required, as well as the decreased movement and situational use of siege weapons, I personally do not think their recruitment should be further discouraged by a two turn production time

Compatibility
Should be compatible with mods that edit unit models as long as they do not edit stats as well. For now, only edits a single file; probably won't work with mods that add new units

Future Plans
• Expand to include BI
• Tweak mercenary recruitment - done; check out my Mercenary Recruitment Rework
• Divide mercenary recruitment areas and create new ones - done; check out my Mercenary Recruitment Rework