Main problem with 0 turn recruitment is that elites are not 9 times stronger than your 0-turn units. It is more effective to just spam and swamp the enemy. The game is much more balanced with 1 turn recruitment.

Also, not sure how this would work out, but I know the AI gets a population boost to counter what it loses when it recruits a unit. This is set for large or huge size I think. Playing on anything less than that may see a population explosion in AI cities and may make them unable for the AI to hold them due to public order penalties.

Although increasing the turns on the elites is a valid idea. If you don't want to affect the AI you could mod each faction individually and just swap the files around depending on who you want to play as. I do this for a few of my self mods that give bonuses to computer factions while keeping it normal for me. Only takes a few seconds of copy and paste and renaming at the begining of each play session.