COW: Beginning of The End Times - Balance Mod

[Derngar]

After awhile of playing this submod, i came across the idea to balance in a different way, as for me Clanrats defeating two empire spearmen units is kind of unfitting and thus i wanted to change the stats to my own and few of my friend's liking and i hope you may try it yourself as well.


-Empire state troops are over all buffed, as even the greatsword had tough time beating basic clan rats and Empire Swordsman even lost against skaven slaves at some point.


-Empire Knights have 2 hit points to make them more valuable in your army and that is one of the few powers of the empire, which is the powerful knightly orders.

-All of the Empire Knightly Orders are a bit more unique, for example the Knights of the White Wolf had 14 charge even though they carried no lances, instead now they do 4 charge but do way more damage in a melee fight, while Reiksguard absolutely annahilated anything on charge.

-Demigryph Knights now use their lances way more effectively.

-Bretonnian Foot Infantry are way weaker now but instead Bretonnian cavalry is one of the best if not the best cavalry force in the mod for the mankind.



-Chaos Factions are slightly revisited, such as the Axethrowers no longer delivering INCREDIBLE amount of damage, now they are less op but they are able to throw from a longer distance and thus they are more of a skirmisher unit than machine-gun axethrower unit. Every Chaos God is a bit more unique, for example, Warriors from Slaanesh are way faster, while Warriors of Nurgle are very slow but tough as nails, Tzeentch is a bit more armoured as the lord of change likes magic and Khorne does a lot of damage for the blood god.
These are one of the few examples of the changes. All of the factions in the mod are revisited, such as Lizardmen whom are a bit more tougher to compensate for their lack of heavily armoured units, fast cavalry or ranged units and now they are a rush army able to run very quick and almost hide anywhere, such as Temple Guard whom have 2 hitpoints instead of one making them way tougher and the Saurus are faster now they are able to catch normal units by surprise with their feral charge, making them more effective then ever before and giving them a chance to catch the agile enemy which their ranged units clearly can't.

Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ktd533zkjn...stats.rar?dl=0
http://www.mediafire.com/download/to.../the+stats.rar

Feel free to correct me if i have done something wrong in your opinion or if something is left out or not balanced.
(and take this with a grain of salt, this is not an insult to anybody, the mod is absolutely awesome and without them our dreams wouldn't be true.. I wouldn't have my fat Ogres with eating disorders or my ravenous lizardmen horde of Lustria, it is just the way i wanted)

[ There is a backup in the rar's if you tried it and disliked it ]

[WhiffOfGrapeshot]

Sounds like you have some great ideas. I haven't tested this out yet, but it sounds very well thought out and implemented. +rep

[Carl Jung was right]

I applaud you for the effort. However don't take this as criticism, I have some questions about certain unit stats.

-Many elite cavalry have 2 HP. Since Cavalry in Med II is already obscenely overpowered (to speak nothing of Call of Warhammer!), what exactly is the purpose of this kind of balancing approach? Sure it helps the AI (since it doesn't know how to charge worth a damn) but doesn't it also unequivocally benefit the player? The 2hp-ing of most human knights puts them in the same range, or even better than Chaos horsemen, thus removing much of the distinction that I feel the way Chaos roster plays out compared with other factions' elite cavalry rosters. I always envisioned Chaos cavalry as extremely tough and durable, but balanced out with its mediocre speed and charge, and thus functioning mostly as a straight damage dealer than an "outflank and charge" unit suited for hammer and anvil tactics. So bottom line Chaos - slow and fightey, and Empire, etc - fast and chargey.

-Bizarrely some Chaos balance tweaks seem incomplete or I am missing something? Chaos Nurgle Chosen Knights (16 def, 2 HP) appear worse than regular knights of chaos (23/2)! What reason is there to train them at all? Khorne Chosen Knights on the other hand, only have 1 HP, in contrast to most other top tier cavalry. Although their 16 attack justifies it somewhat, what sense is there to give them 1 HP when most elite knight units have 2 or more? Personally I would prefer it if they were tweaked upward in cost rather downward in stats.

-Bloodcrusher bodyguard. This is something that bothered me in base CoW as well. They have the same stats as Khorne Chosen Knights. Wouldn't it make sense to just give Khorne generals Khorne Chosen Knights as a bodyguard? Alternatively one can give them the admittedly overpowered bloodcrusher stat line, but with a seriously reduced unit size.

[Panzerblitz]

Hmm, I don't quite like what you've done with Bretonnia. Knights of the Realm are completely useless, there's no reason to field them. Questing Knights become available at the same time, with the same availability and are superior is every conceivable way. Questing Knights have a higher base attack value, have the same charge bonus despite not having lances, have higher armor and defense skill, have the same shield value despite not having one, have the same hitpoints, cost the same to recruit, and cost the same to upkeep.

The Questing Knights should not have a shield value (but that's a mistake in the vanilla mod too), should have a lower charge bonus (a lance should always have the best charge bonus on cavalry), and both Questing Knights and Knights of the Realm should go back down to 2 HP.

You also buffed the Grail Knights, but also reduced their numbers. Questing Knights still beat out the use of Grail Knights in my opinion. Reducing QK and KotR HP back to 1, taking away QK shield value, reducing QK charge bonus to 8 or even 6, and increase the GK units back up to 63 and I feel this would balance their roster better and provide more variety. Adjusting unit pools would help in these matters too.

[Panzerblitz]

both Questing Knights and Knights of the Realm should go back down to 2 HP

Whoops, I meant 1 HP

[Julianus Flavius]

dammit, I installed this and I think it broke my save I was really close to the lategame too, and the backups aren't fixing the problem. Any idea why?
EDIT: Reloaded an even earlier save that I had never tried to load with this submod installed and it works. I like the stat changes though, a shame they wouldn't work for my campaign, and I only lost a single battle (I save before each one in case of crashes) so all good on that front)

[WhiffOfGrapeshot]

As a general rule, submods, sub-submods, patches, etc. aren't going to be fully save game compatible. Even if they load and play fine, there's a good chance you'll have some kind of unintended consequences.

[Julianus Flavius]

Yeah. I just thught this one would be fine as all I thought it did was change around some unit stats which are generally save game compatable so long as you don't go changing the numbers of men in a unit etc.
Well at least I managed to set it right, and have 5 turns till steam tanks haha glad I didn't lose the campaign entirely