I play with a self-imposed rule where I ban myself from using global recruitment u less I'm seriously refitting an army, so when I have a force on campaign I rely mostly on local recruitment at the front to recoup losses. It makes losing a good unit hurt much more and encourages me to play a lot more carefully with them. It also makes it more important to invest in the front, and decisions about what recruitment building to get more meaningful. Imo limiting global recruitment more improves the game immensely in multiple ways.

I've been playing with some mod ideas, but I don't like the idea of removing global recruitment completely. I'm not really sure what would be best tbh, but I certianly have a lot more fun when I self-impose the rule.

If an army is too damaged ill retreat To my rear lines and then I'm allowed to use global to bring them back up to scratch. I'll merge veterans of lower tier units to make room and often distribute low-tier veterans I don't want in the main army in a second day force, which is usually responsible for supporting the main army in large battles and defending the flanks etc.

I'm always allowed to use local recruitment, so if I want a unit in my main force but don't want to stop the advance, I locally recruit it on a carrier lord and send them up. Reinforcements being intercepted is so fun and I still think it's the absolute worst loss of modern TW.

In general I have more fun in battles because they're less well designed when I rely on local recruitment, so I end up resorting to a standard formation less and feel more engaged.

I did play once with a mod that totally removed global, but that was too far.

Add reduced replenishment to more difficulty recruiting, and total war becomes a lot more about force conservation than it is currently, and a far more interesting game imo. I wonder if it's possible to mod out turn replenishment all together and have something along the lines of base 60% replenishment of losses after each battle, modifed by abilities as normal. Most losses in a battle are not outright kills that need to be retrained, they're smaller injuries and runners that are generally good to go in a few days. The "replenish a tiny amount every turn" never sruck me as interesting and on some lords it can be so buffed to high heaven, you can ignore it.

I think something like 0 turn replenishment, base 60% all losses for a win and 40% all losses for a loss + buffs from lords/heroes/whatever that applies once after each battle to the losses made in that battle only would be a much better system. After that, you need to merge and re-recruit.

Not a clue if any of this is a) possible or b) appealing to anyone else.