Hm. I just noticed I always had about 40% unrest. Which is particularly because my city had +25% unrest from being a level 3 Fortress and I didn't build the bell tower.

And nope, no other mods installed. Except the DLCs.

Oh also the Guard ability. It just gives -1% unrest. I don't think that is enough. That would only grant a max. of 9% unrest reduction. Maybe make it 2% or 3%? I saw that ability but didn't bother with it.

Yes unrest increases when city gains new levels. The lower level - the less unrest. So, high level cities need unrest reducing buildings.

About guards - any unit in garrison reduses unrest by 2. Then 1 is added from trait. So 9x3=27. Then add city defenders, they also reduce unrest. Good governors should also not be forgotten. Their bonuses are global, no need for a hero to sit in a city.

Hello!

Just wanted to drop a few lines after playing with your modifications for some hours. I like it, in general, these remarks are just for your considerations of future improvements.

About stability and performance, I got no problems. I am playing a huge random map with 14 opponents, of which 3 are my custom sovereigns I crated a long ago and are just hanging in the roster for fun. AI and world are on normal difficulty, since I haven't played for months before this. They are all Beast Lords - one kingdom and 2 empire side. I've played about 100 turns now with a newly created custom kingdom faction and sovereign - again a Beast Lord. BTW, your mods made me not to care about taming bug, as the tamed critters are no longer essential, just fun.

And now some remarks how things have been:

1. Two my old school custom sovereigns have been annihilated by now. And the Dead too. Other AI did most of the dirty work, I just declared war on them when they were already weak and  made them surrender so I got them all as vassals. I personally destroyed a custom created empire sovereign by annexing 1 of it's 2 cities. It was a very tough fight, only my sovereign made it while all 6 of his armies were killed. After that i beat the roaming stragglers and then made it surrender.

2. I am still in war with 2 of the weakest empire kingdoms, them being Ceresa and my other custom created sovereign. I was with war with mediocre Umber too for a while, they smacked my vassal Morrigan a couple of times before offering peace.

3. Capitar, Magnar and Yithril are strong, in that order. They are all above me on the scoreboard, which is refreshing. Every remaining AI outclasses me in technology, resources and prolly in number of units. I bribed Capitar and Magnar to fight each other to ensure them leaving me alone, but Yithril keeps threatening me. So far no enemy unit has attacked any of my 7 cities, the weak factions I have war with I have managed to keep at bay and intercept their armies. Capitar, Magnar and Yithril have more cities than me. All of them have expansionist behavior, which seems to live to it's idea. Other remaining AI's have 2-7 cities each.

4. Umber is rather weak still, but for my enjoyment, they are in war with Magnar and have even conquered a couple of cities from them - Magnar being way more powerful. This is great! Magnar has the most cities, I believe the count is about 11 now.

5. When I met Capitar about turn 40 or 50, they already were vastly more powerful than me. They had double the points, 9 cities, most of the available technology I guess and so far the only really dismaying thing in this mod I have encountered - they already had a premium level 15 here with dragon mount that is way too powerful, even as cool as it is. On turn 100, I only have 200 fame and I'm still far away from heroes of that class. My own sovereign is level 14 now. Why do they have so much fame?

6. I am beginning to think the AI gets too much resource advantage in the start. Or does it need to be so to make them competitive?

7. Using gold to build city improvements works fine, in general. The gold balance seems ok. Building any structures feels to take ages - maybe AI gets the advantage with this as they may rush everything? Most of their core cities are well developed when I get to see them.

8. Mana is scarce, I have never enough to do everything I want, be it enchanting cities or heroes, summoning or using mana in combat. This, too, is great!

9. When trading with any of the AI, their technological superiority is obvious. Take Capitar now at turn 100, for example: I have researched about 40% of the available technologies, and they got about 600 units of research in their trading pool. And they got 10 times more the resources I have. So they are not really interested in trading.

10. Archer troops are dangerous and potentially very powerful. On the other hand, every unit has "da moves with dem oil hips", so dodging an attack is quite common. Random bashes, backswings and mauls from melee units are a nice addition. In the early game my sovereign got beaten to the ground by a mauling Mite Mob, lol! All in all combat is exciting, more unpredictable and quite fun.

That's what I recall now, use this info with your future balancing if you want. Thanks for the mod anyway, you made better adjustments to the game than Stardock in more than 2 years!

Few things that don't really work well for me in this mod - I'd consider first two points to be most annoying by far. Not sure about number 3 - is it a feature? Seems pretty weird, but maybe...

1. Infinite maul loop. With some weapons providing both bash and maul, it's possible to get your uber unit killed by a random trash, chiping away 1 damage for ages. While it doesn't happen very often, it's pretty annoying. Sure it can work in your favor, too, but still... I removed it for myself and never really missed it.

2. Refined Training... ouch. If you get behind on research and AI invest heavily in this, combat becomes highly annoying, with enemy troops and heroes that are basically unhittable and never miss. It felt to me that it broke the idea behind this mod and forced me to rely on magic far too heavily in later parts. Extremely annoying. Sure, in theory, it can be countered by your own research, but I have yet to win the tech race on higher difficulties. I think I'll just remove the "infinite" part to keep myself sane.

3. Is workshop supposed to be so expensive? It costs 100 + 10 gold, which is WAY more than any other building at that stage of the game... Hell, it's barely cheaper than faction/world unique buildings and the benefit it offers is NOWHERE near worth that price early on, especially since further building from that line seem to have normal prices (20/45/110).

4. Summons seem pretty weak overall. This might be because both heroes and troops have been improved by *a lot*, while these remained largely unchanged. Upper part of mage trait line has some really nice bonuses now, but summons are the same as they always were. It's also connected to point #8

5. Fame could use some rework... especially those huge one time bonuses, like the one from Warrior trait line. AI seems to get that insanely overpowered dragonrider hero quite early - I assume it's thanks to this. Then again, that's probably the issue with 100+ fire breath which can annihilate entire army instantly.

6. Counterattack damage seems pretty low. Even early game units can hit for 30+ with lucky strikes, but only get countered for 5 at most. Doesn't matter if it's your average trash monster, or high end uber hero who can casually crit for 100+. Counter doesn't do anything. (then again, I haven't played the unmodded game for ages, so maybe it's normal)

7. Seems to me that crystals/metal are extremely rare resources, while AI has zero issues building troops using those. I know this was tweaked on purpose, but right now it's a struggle to build some resource heavy units.

8. Monster difficulty seems pretty low, even when playing at +4/double monster levels. Starting militia + spearman combo can kill a ton of enemies without any issues - add a commander and/or defender and it's a breeze until some really high end monsters. You gain levels insanely fast, so those basic troops become really strong -helps that they are decently designed already. Now, sure, mobs should be weaker than AI troops, but not to this extent.

Despite all that, it's still pretty amazing piece of work.

Yeah, I'm using it, works fine. It's just more visible with this mod, since bash and maul are pretty common abilities.

Well, after some digging of my own - it seems that counter damage is set to 10%. I assume this was done on purpose (default seems to be 50%?), as it does slow down the combat quite a bit. Still, this makes it laughably weak and negates both the main advantage from "cannot be countered" skills/weapons and counterattack abilities themselves.

Edit: Also, as for mana comment above - I had huge issues for in the beginning, barely able to stay afloat - between enchants, blessings, combat spells. However, it took me a while to realize the strength of that mana generating unit trait. Combine it with unrest reduction and you get extremely cheap "police" unit, who can fuel your magic for quite a while. They even pay for themselves - station a few of those in cities and you can crank up the taxes even higher. There is a cap, of course - after all, it's only 3% reduction, but it helps quite a bit.

Another thing - do units/champions actually gain accuracy with levels? It's supposed to be 0.5-0.75 dodge and 1 acc per level, but the latter seem to be missing, both from champions and from normal units. It's a pretty funny thing, I haven't noticed it and it didn't bother me much in previous games... I had 5-20% less accuracy than I should and it still played fairly well... However, I did utilize Commanders pretty heavily, so that's a bonus of 12%. Between this, training facilities and unit traits, dodge could be nearly negated, with the exception of heavy magical buffs. Also, I played Mancers a lot and their vanilla accuracy bonus was working fine, so ... yeah.

It might not be such a big thing in the long run, but there is some discrepancy in combat results that way.

E: Wait, spell resistance/mastery bonus also isn't there. So either the description is outdated, or you missed it.

Here is the mod for pure v.1.5. (It's not compatible with complete Patchwork mod). Could you please test it and give feedback?

www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/mods/1892/

You may also try just parts of Patchwork mod. All these files may be used separately and are compatible with any mod. For example:

CoreShards and CoreWorldResources - gives comfort starting locations
CoreDifficultyLevels - gives better Intelligence (more time to analyse strategic situation)
Treaties - prevents from signing treaties while player who is not in good terms with AI
CoreAIDefs - this shifts AI priorities to construction and war
AIMilitaryStrategyTypes - this shifts AI to train more mounted units
CoreUnitStats - this makes combat more intensive (units have more dodge, critical chances, counterattacks, backswings, mauls)

Update for the Unique Unit's Mod (maybe a new thread should be made??):

As I am beginning to suspect, the addition of these unique units makes city defense very strong.

- When a city reaches lvl 2, it usually receives +1 City Militia and +1 City Archer. Is it possible to remove one of the +1 City Militia from the level up without needing to modify the core files?

- When I am in the City Details screen, I am not receiving any information on the city defenders when I hover my cursor over the icons....nor can I select the icons to bring up unit details. Is this normal?

- I just got my first look at the City Mage from a level 2 Conclave. It appears to be a very strong unit....much stronger than the City Militia and City Archer. Equipped with Soldier's Boots, Soldier's Gloves, Braided Belt, Amulet of Haste, Belt of Precognition, Ice Staff, Leather Cuirass, Leather Greaves, Leather Helm, and Artic Wolf Cloak.....not to mention his attributes of Discipline, Balance, Precision, and Fast ... wow....this unit is a tank. (I listed all the equipment in case some of it is coming from Parrotmath's mod. Let me know if it is.) It seems like half of the abilities and equipment could be stripped off and it would still be a decent defender. (Haven't seen the Knight or Crossbowman yet....but I presume they are similarly decked out?)

- Perhaps, (if I understand your mod correctly) instead of adding a unit each level up of the city, keep the bonus unit to 1 and simply increase it's equipment and attributes each level up instead. or a mix...

An example:

• Level 1 - Starts with 2 City Militia
• Level 2 - receive +1 City Archer as well as +1 Unique Unit. The UU has 1 attribute and 3 pieces of equipment.
• Level 3 - The UU improves gaining an additional 1 attribute and 1 piece of equipment.
• Level 4 - receive +1 unique unit with the stats of level 3 UU's.
• Level 5 - The 2 UUs improve, gaining third 1 attribute and finish his build of with 2 pieces of equipment.

Obviously up to you how you want your mod.....but imo AI and monsters need to stand some chance to conquer one of your cities...

Keep in mind the other ways of adding city defenders as well....the statue....catapults (with my mod)...and the regular troops.

I'll continue playing and see what other stuff comes up....let me know if my thoughts are diverging from your intensions though....not much sense in me putting too much time into game balancing suggestions if that is not your intent.

- Getting my first look at the City Crossbowman now...as I suspected...decked out similar to that of the City Mage. The unit seems to be making animations like that of a clubber....so it looks a little weird when it fires it's crossbow. Is there a better animation?

- And finally now getting my first look at the City Knight. In line with the other two from what I'm viewing. Really tough unit.

Final thoughts: I think as the cities level up, they are going to become even harder for someone to overtake. Having 3 of any of these unique units is going to stem off almost any assault. The essential need to train you own troops is greatly reduced by the existence of these units. I understand, you originally meant for these city defender units to be part of a much larger package, including all sorts of very strong units to be trained...,and that most likely balances out much of the thoughts I've had....as I've not played with the rest of your mod.

Out of curiosity, what did you do to make the Dead actually work under the AI?

Quoting aerowreck, reply 569. When trading with any of the AI, their technological superiority is obvious. Take Capitar now at turn 100, for example: I have researched about 40% of the available technologies, and they got about 600 units of research in their trading pool. And they got 10 times more the resources I have. So they are not really interested in trading.

AIs should not be superior in techs. I gave them no research bonuses.
 [/quote]

I have to disagree on that. I always play on huge random maps and experienced that every AI i encounter is far in front of me, no matter how much effort i put in research, aggressively founding cities wherever i find the smallest place available and using the research spell on every city.

Just to give you an example. I just started a new game as Pariden on a random huge map with every original souverain in, and teaming up with Tarth just to see how the AI acts. I put every AI on beginners difficulty just to make sure that i dont lose just for my own incompetence.

Well, after 27 Turns, i have 3 cities, with the Inspiration Spell on each one of them, still i have only 4 technology knowledge points in civilization, my ally has 7 in civ and 7 in warfare, which is quite surprising, since Tarth just founded its first city and has still to complete its first building in it.

And i dont understand either why Tarth has wargs and horses without any resource beeing available near its only city.

So, enough grumbling, the mod is awesome overall. I cannot thank you enough for creating it. It brings so much to the game that its amazing.

Good night!

All races have +1growth. Undead also have this bonus. Also Undead have growth bonuses +2, +3, +4 from their racial buildings that add graves. Graves are source of growth for Undead now.

Yes, it should be overwritten, because this mod not ony adds new units, but also removes some old ones.

I gave NO research bonuses to AI and even reduced priority of building studies in comparison with original. Perhaps Tarth has researched more cheap knowledges?

Tremble humble human! You even don't perceive basics of AI economy!

Perhaps you don't train troops. AI trains more and more troops and this matters highly for overall rating. You need many troops to compete.

No AI gets no research bonuses. It just gets some resource bonuses, but not research. May be you have big unrest in your cities and this lowers your research? AI pays more attention to reduce unrest and increase production. AI also trains more troops, this seriouslyincreases his overall rating.

There are only 50 default heroes for each alignment. This means that thare are ~10 for 1 level, ~10 for 3 level and so on. If you are playing with more that 10 players of the same alignment then you have problems. Also if you are near the fame milestone and get a significant fame bonus, e.g. 100 or more, then you may skip to the next milestone and receive only next hero. Also, in my mod milestones require a little bit less fame.

I didn't find yet how to add defenders to AI and take them away from player. Yet I think this is impossible.