Haha, maybe not a popular choice. Thanks for fixing it so quickly!

@HjAa, it's fixed now. Seems like nobody noticed that in the past weeks lol.

Hi! Thanks for the update and the good work. I've noticed that the Death Knight's Curse no longer works. It says that it only gives 1xWeakened, but the icon is gone and it can't be activated in combat.

Very pleased to hear it. Thanks, buddy!

@HjAa that wasn't intentionally removed. I'll add it back soon.

Would you consider letting skeletons keep their Resurgence on Champion level, as per the griffon update?

Fun to see someone else working their heinie off to accommodate the new beta patch. I applaud your efforts and thank you for this great mod!

This mod has been updated for the Griffon Update Open Beta.
Older versions can be downloaded from Paradox Mods.

i wouldn't consider it scuffed, because base game used that same mechanic for "produce Merchandise" except that only affects a single city. What I'm suggesting would be a line of " trade food" and "Trade Production" that would take would reduce the active cities food/production and give an empire wide bonus based on the amount of that resource being produced in the active city. Alternatively and more scuffed in m,y opinion, could you make a building confer a spell for you? like the farm guild lets you cast a "transport food" spell that cost gold maybe and gives target city X amount of food?

@gunningminer69 it should still work, but you might encounter some bugs.
If I made use of DLC exclusively mechanics or units they won't show for you.

I presume if I don't have all the dlc this won't work? (Context, don't have dragons, eldritch, or giants)

Not a fan of the bodge, fair enough Cody.

@Orionox. Perhaps, I've never looked into it or seen that mod myself.
But I dislike "scuffed" modding and actively avoid it. Personal thing.

Couldn't you make a building that just infinitely builds that improves food gains empire wide? It's not super accurate, but it does get the point across. There's another mod that does something similar, but it hasn't been updated in awhile.

@Orionox I have wanted Food Sharing (like Planetfall) in the game for a while.
But I do not think I can mod it. Even if I could, it would require UI elements too.

It would definitely make those guilds worth more for your later cities.

farm guild and workers guild should give a city project that allows the city to export food and production respectively, conferring an empire wide buff to food and production while reducing it in that city

@ElJoe, I'll keep an eye on it. Nobody actually casts that spell in our games.
But we also have a bit of a soft ban on Reaper, because the unit is very OP.

Generally speaking I have no problem just changing it back to 40 CP for now.

Next thing I would like to bring up is the spell called ' marked for death' .
Description:
Marked for Death 35 40 - "Target unit: Sustains 15 unblockable Physical Damage. Loses -10 Morale.
Has a Decaying Zombie spawn adjacent to them. Is afflicted with Visions of Death until the end of combat."
It is 30CP in the mod I think.
It seems an extremely powerful spell.
Especially with lots of units/ longer battles comined with the often picked
shadow upgrade 'Death mageic'.
Sometimes it can be removed.
Sometimes there is no option to have anything in combat that can remove the spell.

Often 4+ units are affected at around turn 5 in battle. this grants 4 zombies each turn.
It can take 2 lvl 5's to take down 1 zombie.
Tedious battles while being worn down.
I think the cost reduction is a step in the wrong direction.
I think it ought to cost more to prevent it from being cast so frequently, back to 40CP or even 50CP. This to avoid the exploitative nature.

Thanks for getting back to me! Love your work and your responsiveness here. Interesting. Must be another mod overriding it. Might need to change the order of them.

@Codyksp As a resume, i can just leave all my custom/pantheon rules as is and they will work ok (probably with a little imbalance in their form traits). As i can see, you not just raise cap to 10, but change trait costs - so, in general, all my existing rulers should be quite balanced with new 10 point system (they still would use around 10 points anyway with their "old" traits) and i can just create new ones with new system.

@HjAa that sounds like the mod isn't active or being overwritten.
For me it shows up as T3 in both the tome and the Encyclopedia.

@aclyte your existing factions will be "converted" to the new point system.
This can potentially lead to not having enough or having too many points used.
But you can simply edit them to fix that before starting a new map with them.

Default templates and AI rulers are periodically updated by me to use all points.
That being said, I probably need to update them again after recent changes.

For some reason the Constrictor comes up as a T2 unit both in the tome and the encyclopedia for me. Is this normal? Will the unit be T3 in-game?

Hello! Want to try your mod, but i'm a single player guy and i'm a bit cautious about 10 form points. How will it work with current races in game (and premade/custom/pantheon rulers)? Or i can just ignore this 10 point rule, take one of premade forms and game would work ok?

@hank333, it is a valid point. There is a similar type of issue with the Guild structures.
Basically myself and the MP community view it as a necessary evil for the moment.

We still always make the Draft structures, simply to produce T3/T4/T5 units faster.
T1 units are played with early on, usually 1 specific one depending on your culture.
And for some very specific cultures T2 units are also used (most often the Support).

But yes, we don't use them later in the game with the bonus production ranks.
Though I am unsure it would even matter, as higher tiers have more potential.
Rushing through the Draft buildings is pretty costly itself and only grants 1-3 ranks.

i.e. you pay 100/250, 170/450 and 280/750 vs 200/200, 400/400 and 800/800.
Plus, a unit that's 1 tier higher is still better than +3 medals at their baseline.

The only exception could maybe be a build that plays with Prolific Swarmers.
But even then, the higher tier units simply have room to keep growing stronger.

I'm really enjoying this mod! All the balance changes spot on. City development feels a lot more natural after you gated advanced buildings behind the town hall. But there is one potential design issue with the new way city buildings though, which is draft buildings. Currently, to get the building that increases tier 1 unit levels, I need a level 2 town hall. But if I already have a level 2 town hall, then there isn't much reason to build tier 1 units. Similarly to get the armory (+ level for tier 2) you need a level three town hall. I have found this disincentivizes building these draft buildings, since by the time they are available they are already obsolete. Curious to hear how you think about this.

@ELJoe the T5 Dragon units have a base cost of 700 Gold from Vassals.
This is actually even higher than what most other T5 units would cost.

The only way to make them cost 350 is by having the House Levies perk.
In that case you're so deep into the Order tree that I don't see the issue.

Something that might be worth your attention, maybe you have a good approach to it.
The following situation seems too strong, although I guess it happens rarely.
I have a vassal state. The vassal state has 3 areas near the wonder that gives
dragons. I can recruit the dragons from the vassal state for 350 gold each.

There's about 4 dragons for sale. This happened to me around turn 55 (all settings
on difficult, and the focus on 'good development').
I think it is a bit faulty to be able to recruit these at such a low price so early on.
This bypasses the whole needed build up of a city to recruit them (and to build them).

Possible solutions: Increase the price of dragons from a vassal by gold.
Increase the price of dragons by 'vasssal points' .
Disable the recruitment of these dragons through a vassal.
I think the situation with the dragons is a bit more extreme due to different types of dragons being able to be recruited (and hence many to hire).

ok after playing with this a bit I agree with basically every change you've made, straight upgrade to the balance across the board imo. Awesome job, take my points

It seems it nulifies the 2 skillpoint mod, but appart from that seems to work really nice with other mods i used so far.

@AwwHEEEALNaw these specific changes didn't achieve what we wanted.

None of these SPIs were being played with anymore, outside of Sunshrine.
We'd occasionally see Tome of Cryomancy picked, but that wasn't for the SPI.
Oathsworn and Mystic Potential were also weaker for it, while not being strong.

At the end of the day, the changes to the Astral Empire Tree are enough.
Combined with the change made to Cosmoflux Elixir, which is fairly big.

thanks for the update, just out of interest what was the reasoning for reverting the knowledge SPI nerfs?

@Not_A_Furry You'd have to make a mod of your own to revert the setting.

Friendly Domain Movement Bonus - Sector Property: Movement
Located in GlobalSettings_Strategic.rpk. The original value is -2.

Basically your mod would emulate the vanilla settings and overwrite mine.

Is there any way for me to revert the change to the friendly domain movement discount on my own games? It makes movement on the map feel a bit sluggish. (This is the only real grip I have with the changes, otherwise all the other changes feel great to play with)

@Nutwit I have modded DLC content as well, but it should work fine without it.
In multiplayer the host can also share all of the DLC with everyone in the lobby.

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I dont have to own all the DLC in order to use this mod, right?

@AwwHEEEALNaw, well you can still fulfil the minor ambition easily with skeletons.
As for the major one, capturing a T4 unit is still possible (especially in manual combat).

is Dominator now a trap in this mod as due to the bone dragon summon changing to outside of combat you can't actually raise a T4+ undead unit directly after combat anymore? Great mod btw!

@Bert, I've heard some reports of this and will be looking into it.

@Hiroyoshi, the mod for 12 players is an extremely old one if you mean the mod that Triumph released when the game launched. It's highly unstable and not recommended.

I could add this again in my mod, but it leads to a lot of performance issues.

@Codyksp thanks for response and update, Isengard can rise again. Btw is it possible for you to make more factions for bigger maps? There is other mod that make it up to 12 but i'm note sure it will be compatible with yours

Is it just me or are mana nodes invisble with this mod on?

@Codyksp Thank you for your work. God bless.

The Bone Dragon issue (alongside others) has now been fixed.

@Codyksp Not sure what did the trick but i've gotten it down to just the Bone Dragon now. Might be Von's DLC Submods for Late Tier Cultural Units. I guess i can just ignore and not recruit but it's still annoying having it show up.

@Estoc Bestoc, the Bone Dragon is a bug from the mod and will be fixed.
The other dragons I have not seen in my own testing, maybe a different mod?

Not sure if its caused by this mod, but tested on Rise of the Godir - Valley of Wonders and i have high tier Dragon units in my list of recruitables at Turn 1, including the Prosperity and Calamity dragons and also a bunch of Young Elemental Dragons, requirement is max city tier.

@Hiroyoshi Wizard King is so bad, I finally just removed them.
Joking aside, this is not intended. I'll be fixing it very soon.

When creating new faction i can't choose Wizard King as leader. Is this some kinds of bug?
Already tested if any other mods may be in conflict but even with only this one WK is not there.
In full patch notes there are stats for him

PSA: This mod has been updated for use with the Ogre Update in the Open Beta branch. If you do not wish to play on the Open Beta, please use the previous mod version hosted on Paradox Mods: https://mods.paradoxplaza.com/mods/71083/Any