Are you planning on tweaking the balance anytime soon? The High Elves are running rampant in my campaigns and DEs are always wiped out by turn 50. Also I think the arcane phoenix could do with a nerf it's healing to it's cap which nearly fills it's health and is unbreakable which is just too much to deal with.

Originally posted by carlon89:

Are you planning on tweaking the balance anytime soon? The High Elves are running rampant in my campaigns and DEs are always wiped out by turn 50. Also I think the arcane phoenix could do with a nerf it's healing to it's cap which nearly fills it's health and is unbreakable which is just too much to deal with.

I'll pass along the recommendations in regard to the healing cap.
The unbreakable attribute is there so the Arcane Phoenix doesn't feel too similar to the Flamespyre Phoenixes, but more powerful. It's a holy creature of Asuryan and pretty much a manifestation of his divine will, so it wouldn't exactly rout from the battlefield.

Generally speaking, all Phoenix Guard should be unbreakable too, but with how they're balanced in vanilla that would be insanely OP.

Any more balance suggestions would be highly appreciated!

High Elves war eagles should incresse in army cap per every level 3 harbor and level 5 harbor. Considering they are not exactly a good tier 5 unit as they die exceedingly quickly in combat. Even with rear charges they will evaporate because of low health count and animation states getting it stuck. As it is it is cheaper to spam level 20 nobles on eagles who have far more utility and are very easy to get to level 20 quickly than to only have 4 war eagle units factionwide. If anything they should be roughly in power to a Pegasus knights with a small buff and martial mastery.

Another issue is the high elf star dragons and moon dragons a cap idea might seem good but the so will continue to spam units that are countered exclusively by star dragons which are the antilarge single unit killer. Right now with this mod there is no antilarge single entity killer in the high elf roster. As sun dragons are meant for anti infantry and moon dragons are particularly bad in late game against heavily armored armies such as chosen.

A thing to consider is giving high elves access to bardings on dragon princes for antilarge capabilties outside of their RoR as a late game equalivent if you cant get enough star dragons to cover your bases in late gane especially because od norsca, pirates, and chaos knights

This mod will cash my game when I load with amazons expanded roster mod

work fine with others

Not a big fan of the hero tech. Locking shadow masters behind a tier 5 building in a red climate zone makes it a unit that might as well not be in the game. The amount of time and effort to reach tier 5 capital and then build the structure means all of your efforts must go into claiming this territory and defending it as early as possible. You have to sacrifice too much economic strength by rushing that province early. If you don't rush it early then the units will never be part of an army during the stages of the game that you do the most manual fighting compared to auto resolve.


Nobles:
Council Noble of Yvresse and Dragonship Nobles are under performing compared to the standard Noble. Noble of Tor Achare get frenzy with the rampage, which is amazing, but their mount options and passive stalk trait hinders their usefulness. They have the best combat stats for a noble, but if you put them on a mount they'll only be good for sniping artillery. They seem best used off of a mount and on the front lines or flanks. When mounted I struggled a lot against cavalry with them compared to the Noble of Etaine which gets the barded steed

Noble of Tor Achare is in a good place being behind a tier 4 and viable option to replace a Noble of Etaine. Maybe I missed something, but I couldn't find any reason to replace a Noble of Etaine with yvresse or dragonship nobles. I only ever used them to trait farm Conscientious.

Handmaidens:
Ellyrian Horsemasters are not a unit I kept in my army. I found that they didn't offer anything substantial enough to justify replacing a SoA unit to fill the same role. They also seemed to be flooded with mostly Noble traits. I only used them for the Fecund trait.
Shadow Masters are pretty amazing units and a solid unit design to offer more depth in the roster. It's unfortunate that they unlock at such a late stage in the game. I did however stretch the game out and managed to get 4 of them with honed, a single handmaiden, and transferred a few Tor Achare Nobles with Honed. I put them with a Punitive Lord and it made for a very powerful Seagaurd army. I think I would have had more fun with them if they weren't already part of a rank 9 army.

Loremasters:
Priest of Vaul is a nice addition and I'm on the fence with their value. The passive while casting of 15 seconds doesn't make up for what they lose compared to a Loremaster. Priests can't spam cast without bleeding winds, so it's not an option. They have higher defensive stats, but take significantly more damage than a standard loremaster. They also require other heroes to heal them. Soon as the Acolytes fall their damage falls off hard. Against Lords they can't compete with the loremaster. I found their main usefulness was using them on the flanks to tie down cavalry because the acolytes trap more units when cavalry tries to run. The best use of them seemed to be creating a doomstack of loremasters with fire and magical weapons. The loremasters gave me an insane recharge rate, heals, and single target boss damage with spirit leech. The Priests amplified the loremaster damage to absurd amounts. It's a doomstack that doesn't need amplifying though.

Overall I love the addition if even simply for the extra trait options. It is a bit punishing to only have local unlocks of heroes. I found myself skipping out on a few ideal traits because it would take over 6 turns just to reach the army I wanted them in.

The comments that find the new Nobles underpowered actually encouraged me to try this mod! I like restrained, balanced design like that, that errs towards too weak rather than too powerful.