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Blackbriar Topiary (Ranged Treemen and Dryads) (SFO) (Discontinued)

I will no longer be supporting this mod. Currently, a crash occurs when the Avelorn Treeman fires an arrow. I may update a new version for Total Warhammer III when Mortal Empires is released. Possibly as a standalone.

If your game recently started crashing with this mod loaded, you will need to subscribe to A Blackbriar Topiary - REMASTERED IN THX; it is a new requirement.
This is a submod and overhaul of A Blackbriar Topiary (Ranged Treemen and Dryads) by ChaosRobie, balanced for SFO: Grimhammer II. It uses new unit cards and abilities from A Blackbriar Topiary - REMASTERED IN THX.
SFO is no longer required, but this mod is for the 40k-esque nightmare that is balanced SFO; brining this into a vanilla campaign would be only slightly less of questionable decision than adding Space Marines, if one should one did exist.
If you’re like me, once you started playing SFO, a few new units weren’t enough. A week after starting your first campaign, you had 103 new mods and 60 of them were new units. Some of these new units mods might include units like Warplare Launchers from Ratskrieg - Skryre Roster Expansion (SFO), which have 1524 AP missile strength before 3 Warlock Engineers and Ikit Claw get to them, or Warphunters from the same mod, which have 480m range and 680 AP armor-sundering missiles. All of that is kidding among 2400 Skavenslaves, too, so yeah, I’m a little bitter about what Ikit Claw did to me around turn 78 so I made a submod to deal with him. That said, it’s still balanced for SFO without Ratskrieg because the Wood Elf economy is absolute trash and every unit needs to kill a couple hundred enemies to be worth keeping in an army.
If you’ve ever wanted to turn your Treemen into railgun-wielding mechs or guided missile destroyers, this is your new favorite thing.

The Bowtreeman (Wood Elves)
The Bowtreeman is your standard anti-large specialist artillery with a big -off cannon. It does very well in melee but will get torn to pieces by well-spaced groups of archers or anti-large artillery/weapons teams which can out-range it. Its muzzle velocity is extremely high is expressly built for knocking Arcane Phoenixes out of the sky. One fairly impactful change is that it can fire in high or low angles, while the original could only fire in a straight line; very useful in sieges, which is something the Wood Elves seem to have a lot of trouble with. Overall, it isn’t a huge departure from the original version, but more bringing it up with the rest of the power-creep.

The Bowtreeman (High Elves)
This is not very impressive on its own. It fires several bolts at a 30 degree angle. If they hit an unarmored infantryman, it will kill it. However, after a few seconds, it explodes. Thus, a target which is under fire from this unit and inside its kill/casualty radius will be affected by Take Cover! and Shield Breaker, making them very easy targets for the Sisters. This unit is only recruitable by Alarialle.

The Blackbriar Topiary (RoR)
This is the RoR version (and you can get 2). Like the new Bowtreeman, it can fire at high or low angles. However, when firing at a high angle, it does not follow a ballistic trajectory. Instead, it becomes a guided missile when it reaches the highest point in the arc and will land exactly where it intends. The detonation is fairly large and is perfectly suited to destroying weapons teams, artillery crew, and Skavenslaves or Ungors. It does not perform particularly well against magically resistant units with high-HP models, let alone monsters. It will fire almost all of its ammunition within the first minute of the game, at which point, it becomes the glass cannon to end all glass cannons. With almost a complete lack of armor, melee defense, or physical resistance, it will die to anything with even the smallest amount of AP. However, it has a monstrous Melee Attack value and, like the Bowtreeman, can kill 10 enemies per attack animation. Obviously, high-mass single-entities won’t even notice these attacks.

The Malevolent Bowtreeman
The Malevolent and standard Bowtreeman have identical damage output, but the Malevolent variant fires 3 projectiles with 1/3 the damage, so more suited to being a cav-killer than single-entities.

Dryad Bowmen
Brought their HP and armor up to SFO standards; a little more armor than Light Archers, for reference. HP is about the same as any other low-tier archer unit in SFO. As of December 7 (2020), Bow Dryads have a new ability; "Rain of Thorns."

Originally posted by Mandras:

"At a cost to themselves these dryads become rooted in place, ready to unleash a deadly hail of bark shards and briars stripped from their own bodies."

• Huge reload buff
  
• Reduced AP, range, and melee defense
  
• Can't move
  
• 20 sec duration
  
• Does damage over time to the dryads (1 damage every 0.2 secs to 4 entities max)

This is a submod and overhaul of Blackbriar Topiary (Ranged Treemen) by ChaosRobie for SFO: Grimhammer II. It uses assets (The Bone Giant) from Total War: WARHAMMER II - Rise of the Tomb Kings. Obviously, it would help to have the Wood Elves DLC from the first game and the Mortal Empires add-on.
A Blackbriar Topiary - REMASTERED IN THX by Mandras

• If anyone wants to make a compatibility mod, I think these would be the problems to solve[imgur.com].
  
• A Blackbriar Topiary - REMASTERED IN THX is now a dependency.

Make sure all three mods are loaded like this in your launcher, with the files closest to the top of this list having the smallest numbers in the Load Order:

1. Blackbriar Topiary (Ranged Treemen) (SFO)
   
2. A Blackbriar Topiary - REMASTERED IN THX
   
3. A Blackbriar Topiary (Ranged Treemen and Dryads)
   
4. SFO: Grimhammer II (Optional)