As I see it, if the horde problem is “fixed,” it will create a whole new problem that will need fixing. If the AI can’t assemble huge armies, it will stop creating units and have nothing but archers and ashigaru. That is certainly no challenge. The key to fixing the horde is to have the AI first spread out its units to more than one or two central provinces, and second, start disbanding old out-of-date units. Maybe there could be a reasonable cap on the number of men in a province, like 4,000.
The new Warlords edition will include a provision for eliminating, or disbanding, weak units. If the AI could be tweaked sufficiently, it could use this new feature to eliminate its crappy units so instead of facing the horde, we would be facing a smaller high quality army. That would be challenging.
