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Unnatural Selection Ultimate

I do not currently keep my mods updated. That said, most of my mods basically never need actual updating after patches. So this mod will very likely still work, just not affect recently added content.


The popular mod from WH2 is back for WH3 Immortal Empires. With this mod you can apply a buff or debuff to almost every AI-controlled faction in the game that will increase their chances to do well against other AI, and also affect their economy, upkeep costs and other bonuses. Battles against the human player are unaffected.

• via the Mod Configuration Tool (MCT), you set buffs or debuffs to individual AI factions
  
• these modifiers adjusts the faction's "faction potential", a value that determines their bonuses/cheats as well as their autoresolve odds against other AI factions (but not against the player)
  
• the buffs can also be randomized to get a fresh and unpredictable campaign experience
  
• setting a buff to -4 will kill the faction and remove them from the map
  
• with the parameter for personality switch threshold you can give minor factions the personality of a major faction

• buff levels 1-3 should be enough to ensure that the buffed factions do much better
  
• stronger buffs may lead to very unrealistic outcomes, like small garrisons wiping out full elite AI stacks
  
• the settings for randomization can only be used on the first turn of a campaign, they have no effect afterwards
  
• killing factions by setting them to -4 also only works on the first turn
  
• if randomization is active, the buffs for eligible factions are set randomly according to your settings after the first turn, you can manually adjust individual faction buffs at any time afterwards
  
• a few factions are not on the map on turn 1 (hordes), so they can't be killed or randomized, you can only set their buffs manually

Although it looks the same and mostly still does the same thing, the mod works completely differently internally since the patch 2.3. Thanks to fellow modder Agemouk who made me aware of a post by a CA dev in a random Discord conversation where he described two undocumented functions, I now know how to manipulate the faction potential directly. So now the mod does that instead of going the more complicated and less effective way of applying stat bonuses to AI armies.

This also allows to effectively debuff factions instead of only buffing them.

A side effect however is that buffed factions will also generally have bigger AI cheats, so they will have more money and lower upkeep costs. If you buff a lot of hostile factions, you effectively raise the difficulty of your campaign. Conversely, if you debuffed every faction with -3 setting, you would effectively play on Easy even if you chose VH campaign difficulty. In a typical randomization setup, I'd recommend to distribute a mix of debuffs and buffs so that factions fall between -1 and +2.

Because debuffs now exist, the value to kill off a faction is no longer -1, but -4!

• Savegame compatible: Yes
  
• Multiplayer: Now that MCT supports MP, it may work
  
• SFO, Radious: Yes
  
• Other mods: Will conflict with any mod that adjusts faction potential via script

Before reporting issues, make sure that you have the current version of the mod. Steam quite often fails to actually pull the newest version after a mod has gotten an update. To make certain that you have the current version, unsub from the mod, then wait a few seconds. Steam will then delete the mod file from your hard drive. Then resub to the mod and Steam will download the current version to your hard drive.

• Make sure to use the newest MCT. The 0.9 beta is much better than the previous version that is now called "Legacy"
  
• If you are a long-time user of this mod, you may think it doesn't work anymore because you don't see the effect on AI armies. That is not the case, in the current version there are no visible effects on anything, the mod still works. It affects the AI factions directly, so the effect is not visible except by the result, them being stronger and more successful