so I'm missing some of the challenge of the constant waves of enemy troops on every front that was Phillip.

I was wondering if there was a simply way to:

1) Increase recuit spawn rates (either accross the board, or if possibly differentially for just the computers--if you cntl-F "recruitment" there seems to be some faction modifiers, but cant find spawn rates).

2) Increase the food cap on cities.

3) How to mod the campaign specific files... there are XML files which are easily moddable, but then these "FI File". The game pulls the FI file and a mod to the XML file does not appear to alter the FI file. Deleting an FI file does not autmoatically generate a new one from the XML.

my understanding is that the difficutly "Expert" maximises spawn rates and enemy aggression, up to the maximum that the re-enforcement rate allows. simply put, they cant respawn troops that they dont have.

both of these settings have variables that can be tweaked and are in the "globals.xnt" file (Program Files\Longbow Digital Arts\Hegemony Gold\Resources\Data). Theyre all in a block entitled <!-- AI constants -->

<aidifficulty level="expert">
<mindefensivethreatratio>2.0</mindefensivethreatratio>
<raidthreatratio>2.0</raidthreatratio>
<maxmanagedgoals>10</maxmanagedgoals>
<threatraiddeterrence>15.0</threatraiddeterrence> <!-- lower values mean fewer units are necessary to deter a raid -->
<managedgoalthresholddropperday>0.2</managedgoalthresholddropperday> <!-- shorter delay between attacks -->
<managedgoalthreatweight>80</managedgoalthreatweight> <!-- level of active threat that deters additional attacks, lower value means fewer simultaneous attacks -->
<playerrecruitingbias>0.0</playerrecruitingbias>
</aidifficulty>

<!-- recruitment levels -->
<recruitment level="off">0.0</recruitment>
<recruitment level="normal">0.0275</recruitment>
<recruitment level="high">0.10</recruitment>

"<playerrecruitingbias>0.0</playerrecruitingbias>" looks interesting. on easy its "0.25". it may accept a negative figure for expert if u wanted to give the AI more than yourself. by comparing all the variables in the different difficulty settings you should be able to tweak Expert to your liking, combined with increased recruitment i would imagine you could get back to the feel of PoM.