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Raise the Levies!

Raise the Levies is a Baron overhaul mod that aims to address the class's weak points, rebalance many of the existing units and build upon basic framework Illwinter laid in place for it. I did my best to not stray too far from what the Baron is intended to be and how he is meant to be played, almost everything in Raise the Levies is an extension of what was already there, aside from a handful of minor additions of my own. Many circumstances the Baron struggled to handle have been addressed and there are several quality of life improvements included to make using his mechanics more enjoyable.

Starting a new game will feel fairly similar to playing the vanilla Baron at first but the further into it you get the more you will see the difference.

The mod has been extensively tested almost exclusively on the following settings and is intended to be played on them as a baseline:

Map Size: Enormous
Era: Monarchy
# of AI: 8-16
AI Difficulty: Knight
Wilder: Enabled
Multiplayer: Co-op (optional) [Never Tested in Versus, YMMV]

[Note: This mod is almost exclusively focused on the Baron and does little to affect the King. You do not need to play on Monarchy/become the King to get the most out of this mod.]



Summary

60+ New Units
- 8 New Commanders
- Upgraded versions of nearly all of the basic units
- Revised Raise Levies units
- Rangers and Knights of El
- Mounted Scouts
- Rebalanced existing units
- Special Yearly Conscription Units
- Easter Egg units - can you find them?

4 New Terrains
- Fishing Village/Lake Town
- Ranger Outposts/Woodland Fortresses

59 New Rituals
- 8 New High Lord/Baron Rituals
- 8 New Monk/Abbott Rituals
- Completely New Ranger Ritual Tree focused on utility in the woods and jungles of Elysium
- Marshal Rituals to improve the infrastructure and defenses of your realm
- Captain Promotions
- Send Knights on Errantry Quests


Raise Levies System
Completely new Raise the Levies! ritual to replace the old one. Now when raising levies in a human settlement, alongside the regular levies you will receive extra units dependent on the type of location the ritual has been cast in. In fortified terrains Men-at-Arms will supplement the levies, and in all locations you will also receive Community Pillars, the types of which vary based on the level of the settlement. These are noteworthy locals living in the settlement who will add to the defenses and/or provide extra bonuses to the player, whether they be nobles, knights, priests, merchants, farmers or even the town drunks!

Buffed Vassal Knights
Tired of your Vassals running off with their entire army, leaving their motte & bailey almost entirely undefended save for the nearly useless levies left to defend it? Well no more, now Vassals will passively spawn Yeomen Archers to defend their home while they are away - additionally levies can now be upgraded to Men-at-Arms to further aid in holding onto the Baron's lands.

Enhanced Yearly Conscription
The Baron's yearly conscription has been made vastly more important. The existing conscription has not been changed in any way, but now many locations that did not previously provide anything do; towns and cities for example. There are many locations that provide new and sometimes even unique or difficult to acquire units to the Baron's forces that he otherwise does not have any other way to get. To ensure it doesn't clutter up the player's Manor each year, as well as to ensure a greater spread of forces to defend your expanding territory, all of these new units spawn in the location that provides them; towns will produce knights, spearmen and archers, ports will provide pirates, cities will provide special variations of units dependent upon the type of city, and many other locations now provide a reliable source of units. So get out there and capture everything you can, you never know what you might get for it.

Blessing System
It always seemed somewhat unfulfilling that while the Baron had the Monk/Abbott with Prayers magic his bless was effectively stuck at the almost useless +1 morale. With this new system, performing various actions will provide opportunities for your blessing to be increased. Found churches and monasteries, assign priests to shepherd your settlements, make donations to the church, give alms to the poor, have your Knights take the vows to join the ranks of the Knights of El and bless their weapons to strike down the vile forces of Hades and the Inferno. Show your dedication to El and perhaps you will be rewarded for it.

Woodland Forces
Taking and defending Ancient Forests has always been a pain for the Baron, particularly when he has to compete with classes like the Druid or Dryad Queen for them. Ranger Outposts can be built throughout the forests, these will spawn wandering Foresters to hunt down the independents that plague the woods. The Baron's own Rangers deal with the greater threats posed by forest based classes. Ranger Captains have a number of different rituals to deal with many of the problems the forests and animals can pose (like destroying spider thickets and ant hills) and Trappers can be employed to capture animals for taming. Build up the Outposts into Woodland Fortresses and employ the Elite Rangers, a force that is a match for the mightiest of foes. The Unicorn Knights have been buffed and prove a great reward for focusing on claiming the woodland realms.

Captain Upgrades
Captains can now be upgraded into four different commanders: Marshal, Mercenary, Castle Guard and Ranger. Marshals are the leaders of the Baron's armies and improve the infrastructure and defenses of the land, possessing multiple rituals that can alter terrain. Mercenary Captains form a relatively cheap but very durable unit of mercenaries to defend key locations like mines and ancient forests. Castle Guard Captains train a unit of castle guardsmen to defend a castle as well as periodically training free Men-at-Arms. See Ranger Captains in the Woodland Forces section for what they do.

Improved Armoury
The Baron's basic units are functional enough as they are but the later the game goes the more and more useless they tend to become, between endless conscriptions of pointless spearmen and knight spam effectively making anything that isn't a tower guard or longbowman obsolete they just don't really have much of a place in the unit roster. Several of them have been buffed so as to not be redundant, but more importantly all but the Cavalryman can now be upgraded by an Armourer. The upgraded basic units remain viable throughout the game and can at times even serve as some of your heaviest fighting forces. The Armourer can even turn those useless spearmen into archers now so you don't have to spend all of your gold on longbowmen to support your armies anymore.

A Note on Kings
As stated above this mod has very little to do with the King. Currently the only new thing added for the King is that he can now promote High Lords into Barons. I plan on doing a future content update to add more for the King but as of right now while he is still helpful to get he is entirely non-essential to enjoying the mod.


The mod should be compatible with the majority of other mods although it is almost certainly incompatible with any other mod that affects the Baron.

Several existing terrains were slightly edited - bridges and fords had their names altered and the ancient temple has been given the ziggurat's battle map.

If there is a compatibility issue it is probably related to conflicting numbers being used, if that is the case simply find the conflicting numbers and alter them in the c5m of this or the other mod. The following are the relevant numbers used in the mod:

Custom Terrains 870 to 873
Terrain Groups -1066 to -1080
Variables 7777