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Vengence of the Shadow Realm - Alith Anar Expanded

Introduction

This mod adds a new progression system to Alith Anar’s faction which unlocks new units and skills for those units. The system and units are thematically appropriate for Alith Anar, but I don’t know the details of the lore so if you want something lore friendly this is not it! I just made a mod I think is cool, I hope you like it 😊.

Details

Adds horde mechanic to Alith Anar with new main building chain (Shadow Altar) providing access to new units at each level and raising the unit caps.

Horde growth can only be achieved by completing Anar’s ‘Marked for Death’ assassination missions, each kill will get you 1 development point. N.B. the Black Citadel in Tor Anlec will also provide a small amount of horde growth.

New Trophie buildings for Anar’s horde which unlock skills, buffs or abilities for the new units.

Shadow Walkers are the main units of Anar’s new Shadow Army and get some new skills and abilities from the buildings. They are also now limited in number, with the level cap increased by the main building chain up to a max of 10.

Changed the Moonbow so that it occupies the Arcane Item slot rather than weapon so that Anar can have the Moonbow and the Sword of Khaine at the same time (also allows Anar to equip Arcane items, but most of them won’t be much use as he doesn’t have spells).

Changed the main UI colour to be more ‘shadowy’ rather than High Elf sky blue.

New units:
o Shadow Cats – fast, stealthy anti-large units

o Shadow Riders – missile cavalry which are also very good in melee, particularly anti-infantry

o Shadow Phoenix Assassin – a Shadow Walker riding a Shadow Phoenix with excellent range damage and all the melee competence of any Phoenix

o Shadow Dragon – Only available via an army ability unlocked by a Trophie building

o Hand of the Shadow Crown – The CA unit is now recruitable in campaign not just custom battle or as an agent and gets some abilities and buffs from Trophie buildings

Gameplay

Depending on how efficient you are at completing the Marked for Death missions the upgrade path is somewhat longer than the main game upgrade path. Where you will probably have maxed out the vanilla building chains and units after 100-150 turns it will probably take 200-250 turns to max out this upgrade path. You may want to adjust the endgame crisis dates accordingly (you may not, up to you).

Tips

• Anar gets some buffs to movement range from Trophie buildings which can help getting around the map to kill the marks.
• You will likely have your main force away chasing marks so your homeland is more vulnerable and income might be tight providing an army for protection, raiding and sacking with Anar can help sustain your economy.
• The ritual of Morai Heg is your friend!

Balance

The Shadow Walkers have had their range increase from 180 to 190 but otherwise are vanilla stats
The Hand of the Shadow Crown has vanilla stats
The Shadow Cats will tear through cavalry and do OK against missile infantry, but struggle against infantry, lords and heroes
The Shadow riders are probably a bit OP, they will lose to top tier cavalry in strict melee but they then have missile weapon too, and eat up infantry.
The Shadow Phoenix Assassin is OP, its basically untouchable whilst flying and has excellent range damage, its melee stats are the same as a flamespyre phoenix. The idea is its an assassin unit to take out lords and high value monsters from the air.
The Shadow dragon has the stats of a Star dragon.

The buffs and abilities provided by the buildings make the units stronger but mostly through use of the abilities encouraging you to play the battles.

As Anar will likely be alone in enemy territory chasing marks the army needs to be strong. If you play on hard I think it works ok.


Future Plans (maybe)

• Make the Hand of the Shadow Crown a full agent unit with skill tree etc
• Add unique (purple) armour item for Anar gained by defeating Malaketh, so that Anar has a complete purple item set.

Compatibility

This mod should be compatible with most other mods, but does make changes to the vanilla script file wh2_dlc10_alith_anar.lua so any mods that also change that would cause problems (this seems very unlikely unless they are also messing with the Marked for Death mission system).

P.S. I have been modding total war since Medieval II but only for my own use and amusement, this is the first time I have published a mod (inspired by a friend) so please let me know what you think. I’ll consider any suggestions if I think they sound cool and in keeping with the mod, but make no guarantees.