Right now it is adjusted based on building & unit type.

Unless the building recruiting is mostly disabled (Which I did in my immersive bretonnia mod), the rank requirement needs to be in-line with building level.

If the requirement is too high (was the case before last week's update), player will rarely use it as it is better to recruit directly.

There are balance issues, yes, like Infantry takes much longer time to lv up than archer & cavalry; certain factions can pile up rank buff and rank up more easily (like Cathay). Will continue to adjust and nerf or buff some requirement.

Warrior of chaos has no building to recruit, in that case any lv is fine :-)

Then many complains they cannot lose one army in late game. And I have had similar complains in my bretonnia mod, so have to add various late-game buff to mitigate that.

Strong disagree with this. Why should my battle hardened veterans drop to rank 1 when I upgrade their equipment while back in my capital I can recruit fresh units at tier 6 or 9?
XP should represent veterancy ONLY, it doesn't effect armour, range or damage values at all, just attack/defence/leadership/reload - mental & skill based stats. These shouldn't be lost just because you get a better weapon or a new set of armour.
My ideal balancing for the warband system would be:
- Only upgrade when garrisoned.
- Only upgrade to units that you can recruit.
- No XP loss for upgrading, but much slower XP gain for units across the board, so that each level felt much more significant.

But that's all idle speculation and not anything I actually hope to see implemented, love the mod as it is!

Originally posted by FadedJem:

Strong disagree with this. Why should my battle hardened veterans drop to rank 1 when I upgrade their equipment while back in my capital I can recruit fresh units at tier 6 or 9?
XP should represent veterancy ONLY, it doesn't effect armour, range or damage values at all, just attack/defence/leadership/reload - mental & skill based stats. These shouldn't be lost just because you get a better weapon or a new set of armour.

Most high tier unit represents veteran elite troops of the faction's roster. Chosen are not just generic chaos warriors who fortunately obtained high quality armors. Greatswords are not Empire swordman with big sword (they are actually elite bodyguards for electors, FYI). Temple guards are not saurus warrior who happened to have fancy gears.

Originally posted by Mustard Jelly:

Originally posted by FadedJem:

Strong disagree with this. Why should my battle hardened veterans drop to rank 1 when I upgrade their equipment while back in my capital I can recruit fresh units at tier 6 or 9?
XP should represent veterancy ONLY, it doesn't effect armour, range or damage values at all, just attack/defence/leadership/reload - mental & skill based stats. These shouldn't be lost just because you get a better weapon or a new set of armour.

Most high tier unit represents veteran elite troops of the faction's roster. Chosen are not just generic chaos warriors who fortunately obtained high quality armors. Greatswords are not Empire swordman with big sword (they are actually elite bodyguards for electors, FYI). Temple guards are not saurus warrior who happened to have fancy gears.

It's funny, I remember how I wanted to write the same thing but I was too lazy ...

Personal opinion about the mod, just rubbish, purely technically, nothing personal! I'll explain why! I checked it on the example of the empire and Karl Franz, in short, I created units of different tiers and upgraded them to level 3, calculated the number of moves and the costs for them, it turned out that it was all useless, it’s easier to buy another unit. And most importantly, in order for the musketeers to become combat wagons, you just need a level 3 unit, but !!! The wagons themselves are made on t3, you need to reach level t3, then put the building on the wagons and spend more than 7k gold, with this mod without having anything, even the building for this unit, I just upgraded it to combat wagons after level 3 and moreover, each unit can at the request of the wizard at any time become different! Using the example of a swordsman with a shield, my level 3 swordsman will upgrade to many options and let's say when he becomes a level 2 spearman, he is worse in every way besides defense! And so with all units, imbalance!

There are some cases where the system is very imbalanced between the races. Cathay for example can easily recruit their peasants at rank 9 which allows them do immediately upgrade them to Celestial Dragon Guards or Longma Riders. High Elves can do similar things.

While I understand the argument of not reducing ranks too much, some factions are ridiculously strong with this, so I wish there was an alternative version that works similar to the original OP, Deviant, suggested it should work.