I used your mod and worked hard, and now the result:
- all hireable troops can upgrade to better troops (except ultimate rank)
- modified items for some troops
- re-balanced items as to damage, accuracy, speed and cost using math functions
____-bows have less accuracy (but increasing up to 99 (highest) for hand-crafted) but greater damage
____-arrows have damages that vary disproportional to ammount and proportional to cost. the worthless arrows are depleatable but extremely cheap (what the hell, 15 arrows in my body and then i die?, no! about 4 would suffice they consume 15 :) )
____-pistols have the least accuracy amongst firearms in order to be used close-ranged but have greater reload speed
(imagine a 10.0 difficultty headshot from the other side of the map! daaaang, about 20 feet would do just fine)
____-carabines have accuracy, reload speed and damage somewhere between pistols and muskets
____-muskets more differenciated damages and accuracies but in the same range
____-grenades are no longer depleatable (they cost too much and if a troop has it, it depleets them in the first fight and they mostly kill the ground :) )
____-melee items are modified to be more suited in fights because an armored rider used to kill 5 musketeers and 5 pikemen before dieing (if), but only improved weapons to use against them (pikes, spears)
____-unlocked special items in order to be bought, and also reduced the price (who would buy a 100k musket? make it 20k!)
____-gatling pistol is awesome but when i fired 30 bullets i hit once and did 14 damage, so i improved accuracy and damage, and now i kill 20 (what the hell, u pay 40k!)
- fixed tutorial where cuirassiers do not mount (a missplaced '1' or something like that)
- fixed grenades and added some to some troops (mostly musketeers) (light and homemade grenades used to show a mesh error with something about multiplayer bot spawn... but i copy-paste from small grenade)
- it may not work properly in multiplayer (didn't test and didn't modify multiplayer troops)

i used the mod from (thumbs up dude)
and modified with http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?topic=117997.0 (up top dude/s! but please make filter for factions edit-troops list in the VBA application and upload)

thank you all for my raw material and i hope you guys will further improve my modifications.