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Living World: A Dynamic, Loreful World State Overhaul [DEPRECIATED]

Inspired by "True World" mod and other map editing mods, this mod changes the locations and starting diplomatic relations of over 100 factions to create the most lore accurate, engaging, and challenging TW:WH3 experience possible.

Experience brand new campaigns that push your skills to the limit, without adding cheats to the AI. Experience a world that is constantly on the brink of chaos and order, with every faction facing potential destruction from a multitude of forces, right from turn 1! Experience a Warhammer world with dozens and dozens of moving parts and plots, just like it is in the lore! No more will parts of the map be pointless empty space. Legendary Lords will not die before minor factions do, and not because of cheats. Expand your Empire from minor to major threats organically and enjoy a huge world.

Bring your Warhammer campaign to life with a Living Warhammer World! No two games will ever be the same, but it will never feel random!


================================NEWS======================================

Update 9/24/24: I no longer update this mod, but it still works for the most part. I'm only fully updating Living World Expanded now.

Update 12/1/23: Living World Expanded is ready!
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3102783940

Update 9/6/23: Updated for Patch 4.0 and Shadows of Change DLC.

Update 5/31/23: Purpa drink update, check change notes for details.

Update 4/23/23: Major update to badlands, Chorfs. Radical rework of Zhatan. Much harder chorf campaigns. Also numerous small changes across the world, establishing missing trade agreements, tweaking AI of certain factions so they actually attack their loreful enemies, etc. Full change log will be announced when it is ready.

Change note sections has more detail. Will update complete changelog in discussion section soon. I also have more ideas on improving the Bad Lands for future updates!


=============================WHAT THIS MOD DOES============================

Starting positions for many races are changed and upddated from WH1 and WH2 to better fit into a larger WH3 map and make better use of the space, all while doing so with a loreful interpretation. You will have a complete grand campaign experience that will be interesting all the way to turn 400 with Living World.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND turning OFF disasters (same goes for dynamic disasters), or simply limiting them to starting only when a long victory objective is completed. Otherwise, most disasters just ruin the map by spamming the map with 50 armies of a single faction in the middle of the game, which means the rest of your campaign will be fighting the same faction over and over again. Additionally, by turn 100, things will be getting extremely interesting and a full World War will be developing, and then it all gets ruined by hundreds of armies that spawn across the map and delete everything. It's super lame and unfun to have a dynamic disaster happen too soon, so I recommend either turning off disasters or to happen only on campaign victory.

Disasters are just a crutch for the lousy dead vanilla map where hardly anything happens, it gives players a sense of excitement to see "stuff get shaken up" when in reality it's just RNG to make up for the lack of a fun, working map.

Living World also fixes some serious map-breaking bugs on the campaign map involving factions being unable to see each other (the "no diplomatic contact" bug) by giving a select few factions guaranteed sight of each other.

============================COMPATIBILITY============================

This mod is 100% script based and is compatible with everything except a few other mods that change certain starting positions or add certain custom factions (most are compatible). However, the Southern Races, Kraka Drak, and Marienburg overhaul mods all work now.

Living World does not update any UI elements on the main menu, however, so the default start positions of races will be displayed as normal at start menu, but the positions are indeed changed.

Living World also does not update Victory Conditions, however, most Victory Conditions are still obtainable but they may take some more time to do so. If there are any factions that need a Victory Condition update I may be able to do if there is enough demand.

Certain mods, such as Legendary Characters, that add custom heroes might seem like they are in the "wrong" spots on the map, but can either be disbanded/re-recruited (for free) after wound timer is up (with SFO you can decrease wound timers with easy in-game menu and then raise them back up after), or you can just use them to scout in the part of the map they spawn in. Custom heroes have custom lore, after all.

This mod is completely Multiplayer safe and effective.

============================METHODOLOGY============================

While lore is important for flavor, it is impossible to have perfect lore in a game where so many timelines cross. For example, Repanse is 1500 years before Karl Franz. Azhag, Vlad von Carstein, and many other LL's are from different points of Warhammer's history.

Additionally, there are many gameplay considerations to factor in. So, I try to keep things loreful when possible, but I put gameplay first because pure lore is simply unfeasible. Thus Living World is 40% Lore and 60% Gameplay based.

I think of TW:WH3 as the Super Smash Bros of the Warhammer Fantasy universe. Take the coolest characters throughout Warhammer's history and let them wage war on each other. That said, capturing as much lore as possible is important because it adds a tremendous amount of flavor to the gameplay, and also prevents Order factions or Chaos factions from simply dominating the other. For example, in Vanilla, Skarbrand in the southlands is not only anti-lore, but it just means that Skarbrand takes out other "evil" type factions like Greenskins, Skaven, and Tomb Kings, resulting in an easy win for Teclis and his Lizard pals from the south, or Skarbrand is overwhelmed and killed by other evil factions, and a world without Skarbrand is a powerful victory for the forces of Order. Thus Skarbrand's vanilla start position results in Ordertide no matter what.

I was able to figure out what the AI was doing by using Prop Joe's debug mod, playing with no fog of war, and simply observing what the AI did. Southlands almost always had a huge Ordertide, as did Lustria, Ulthuan, and Cathay, while Naggarond was always an Eviltide of some sort, generally Dark Elves. Empire tended towards Chaos but Karl Franz is very OP since he starts with a full province and could oftentimes bring the Empire back from nothing because of broken AR values with some higher tech Empire units, which was pretty cheesy.

There was also huge sections of the map where some LL's just sat in place for 40-50 turns before being discovered by another faction. The campaign AI is very weak and prone to breaking or going full derp mode. Kholek in particular is very guilty of this, but so were some others like Kairos who just sits in the Southlands for 200+ turns (if he survives Oxyotl). In the rare event Kairos manages to leave the southlands he would usually just be completely outnumbered.

It was through these kinds of playtests, where I simply observed the AI, are all the map changes based on.

I would post all the changes here but there is not enough space, so check the discussions if you want to learn how the Plotlines work, and see a detailed change log. Otherwise, have fun!

============================GIVING THANKS============================

If you'd like to give me thanks, you can do so by upvoting this mod, and tipping the gentlemen at this discord here:

https://discord.gg/moddingden

Couldn't have done it without the boyz at Da Modding Den. In particular Groove Wizard (aka Vandy) deserves all of your money.