Also the elevation issue which I saw mentioned a ton of times in the comments, yes to achieve maximum range you actually do have to aim at 45 degrees upwards, momentum carries the projectile until drag causes it to fall faster than it moves forward. That's how ballistics works. Your decision to lower the angle on bows and Xbows to nearly flat is straight ridiculous.

Just adressing the skeleton issue. Dried bones are incredibly hard. They become literally rock solid so it makes sense for skeleton infantry to have physical resistance. The difference between the bones of a recently deceased animal and one that's been long dead are like night and day. Bones start out soft and flexible while still inside a living body, but as I said become rock hard when they dry. So that's why zombies don't have physical resistance for instance, because they're "fresher" (As far as I know? Honestly I haven't played VCs in a while).

If you translate DnD the idea behind using zombies instead of skeletons is that zombies are just a program running in the head, they are dead bodies that stand back up. Skeletons are much more sophisticated creations and come with some advantages, as you say, innate missile resistance makes lots of sense. In DnD they have /5 bludgeoning meaning they get -5 to damage taken from slashing and piercing(ranged or stabbing) attacks and therefore are quite good in battlefields.

Zombies by comparison are /5 slashing meaning -5 to bludgeoning and pierce damage taken because they're essentially just people with no intelligence and very hardy bodies. You need slashing to cut their muscles so they stop moving. Ergo zombies are better bodyguards because they have more mass and the kinds of attacks an assassin will use are worse overall against zombies.

As with all undead, there are degrees to you can boost them to and make them stronger or faster or even intelligent. It's up to the necromancer. With skeletons I think you'd be limited by the sheer work required to make them better, you would want to bind ghosts to the skeleton to give it intelligence. A zombie just requires a slightly better intelligence, it still has a brain after all.

Hello. A bit of feedback if I may. I've returned to the mod after a long break. I am playing on VH/N and I am using "Kislev reborn" submod to play this exotic faction. I generally love realism mods and most of Your ideas. But I am struggling now and many things seems counter intuitive for me:

1. Economy seems very easy. I am not saying it's a bad thing. Allowing player to recruit higher tier units earlier makes campaign more dynamic. But is it intentional? The "Statesman" submod, though adding much flavour, doesn't seem to be particularly impactfull, although it is an early stage of campaign.

2. Battles. While the combat speed seems right, everything in Your mod seems incredibly fast moving (bar zombies of course). Historically, units, cavalry included, were much slower than we usually imagine. Here, everything is running so fast, that there is almost no room for preliminary manouevers. Gunpowder units are extremely hard to be used effectively since there is no time for shooting. Orcs or beastmen can easilly catch enemy mounted for example. I must forget about enjoying the spectacle by zooming camera, because I constanly and frantically micro every unit or press "P" button just to desparately fight for the control of battle flow.

AI lords. I expected, that for the sake of realism, lords will be toned down and they main role will be to lead, not personally sloughter hunderds of enemies. I've met Azhag on level 14, high, but not that high You must admit. And yes, he can decimate my army pretty badly. I send some cossacks, low level lord, greatswords and dwarf slayers against him, and they barely take 1/2 of his healt. Particularly the slayer disappointed me. I thoight, that they should be an ideal unit to kill single entities. And Azhag's mount is not the bloody dragon, just a poor wyvern.

3. Morale: Many units fight almost to the last men (orc, elf etc.) I've seen orc boar boyz unit with 9 warriors left, that was still attacking. It's like 1/10 of starting numbers. Shouldn't they got shattered at this stage?

4. Cavalry: I thought it will be my weapon of mass destruction (what can You expect while playing Kislev after all?) but no. How to use them effectively? Rear charges on frontally pinned units should obliterated them. Not really. Orcs, even lower tier seems almost unbreakable. Also, archers in the open field should melt after heavy cavalry hit them. Again, not in this case. How many rear charges should one made to break greenskins morale? Why on earth goblin spider riders can fight toe to toe against empire knights?

Rant done. Thank You for reading. Most of this post born from frustration after the last big battle. Azhag's orcs. The numbers are almost equal, but I have 7 cavalry units althogether, plus 4 gunpowder shooters not to mention one slayer and one greatsword unit. I tried few times. Not only I got beaten, but it seems I got no real answer to them. They just charge and obliterate my troops easily. I agree - orcs should be deadly in melee. But, as I said, rear churges, guns, unit of bears, slayers... To no avail.
Regards

okay i will go through that a bit at a time for clarity

1) Economy early game is at its easiest, end turn many times isnt that interesting, but as you expand that 4500 a turn injection becomes less and less impactful, and as the game progresses it can be much harder to manage. Corruption starts piling up and expansion is somewhat limited to keep expanding coffers.

2) orcs and beastmen can only catch if cav are caught out, with light cav at double the speed and even heavy at 1.5x approx. Gunpowder is hard to use, theres no doubt about that, but it is possibly the single most impactful thing in the game in levelling the playing field. Personally I find, and my usual advice, that the if the flow of battle is too frantic, its because the frontline is overcommited and too much of your army and with too few units in reserve and away from the main force to respond to whatever starts to go wrong - this goes more as kislev than as most as they are a very mobile force that lives by not engaging till they are ready - personally as them i like to start in a line but as the enemy bear down, pull back the centre of light units and draw the enemy into a U, if it is plunged deep enough (depends if they follow and how fast they are) then guns or cav can flank them in that U. Lords i have allowed the fact that it is warhammer to excuse the single man being potent - slayers will typically rinse azhag though so i assume they were tired, aggressive units suffer most from fatigue so remember to rest them. best to send a single unit at a time and let the others rest.

3)on morale, units expect people to die. Shocks are the name of the game, any spike damage, flanking, decisive charges, gunpowder etc are massively effective but grinding down the foe makes them a frog in boiling water, at every point theyre better still fighting than turning backs and dying without a fight, its only when things hit the proverbial fan that that risk becomes worth it.

4) Cavalry im surprised to hear that in that ive never heard anyone say that before, cavalry are an incredibly potent force and often make or break a battle. Light cav against orcs though wont do much as the mass difference isnt huge, while against human and smaller theyre significantly more impactful. Goblin spear riders will certainly lose to empire knights, but that poison damage will add up and heavy charging lances arent great for that fight, the light spider cav will tie up those knights and trade up decently, and possibly snatch victory in the right conditions e.g ina forest, fatigue dependant etc. Small note here that archers are people with bows rather than a purely missile troops, you can expect them to be poorer than melee troops but not simply melt.

Orcs are a formidable foe, and azhag is especially good at repelling cav - his passive ability from the crown giving him higher intelligence gives the orcs around him a better chance at organised fighting so repel cav much better. If you can get gunpowder sussed, thats one of the best ways to fight orcs though, especially big uns and black orcs who will krump kislev melee fairly consistently. if you have 7 cav, make sure you keep at least one resting for deciscive moments.

On waaaagh, the combat steroids are down, it aids with fatigue through the sheer love of battle and is oftemn used to get routing units back, which again makes me think fatigue management is the thing thats missing

FWIW I'm enjoying the back-and-forth discussion here as both of you seem to put a lot of thought into making the game & mod its best. I hope the discussion can continue in a constructive and respectful way because the mod will be better in long run.

I like the changes to VC, especially since they typically don't use ranged units and that is the one thing that I struggle with.

It breaks the realism when archers are 20ft. behind the front line and just stand there not shooting. I've adapted with them, but I still heavily lean toward a central turtle defense rather than a single long line. But, some units are downright useless it felt; namely artillery. It felt really underwhelming and cheapened what was supposed to be this cool unit.

Overall, i'm about to play a Wood Elf campaign and see how I adapt or how the mod's changes change their strategy. There's value in having to re-do strategies which is important when you have over 1200 hours in the game.

Its neat work

I have returned to the mod after a very long absence. I got some things to talk about
1. why are cannons accuracy not improved by manual aiming?
2. Why are cannon and mortar shots coming out at such high speeds? It seems gravity barely affects them now. Blackpowder (the propellant in question) has a muzzle speed of around 250m/s and from the era in question even lower. In TET the shots are more like 800+
3. I found some graphical errors with overcast rain of lead
4. I was able to beat dwarf greataxe infantry using TK spearmen. Is this normal?
5. Why are you able to access regiments of renown so easily?
6. When playing as empire, triggers for reinstating elector counts or forcing counts to hand back settlements don't trigger. These are core WH empire mechanics.
7. I had beastmen raid a distant settlement of mine, it generates 50gp per turn. They were raiding it for 1000gp per turn. This is possible if they're damaging the buildings in the settlement, but my global income went down by 1000. Why? That doesn't even make sense, the settlement being raided isn't worth that much.

Hello again. playing Middenland campaigh on VH/M and I am having a blast. Speed, diplomacy, drama, everything seems in the right place and the AI is not cheating like mad. But I have really no clue how to fight Vampires. Tried everything. How do You guys handle them? What imperial army composition works against vamps? Thank You

As middenland, my favourite would be your ulrican specialists, their hammers are incredibly aggressive and can break undead morale before they heal much. Knights of the blazing sun are also a very solid option. Ranged wise I'd be looking at archers probably, maybe some crossbows mixed in, only really guns if you're finding that encased are there. Supporting the middenland troops id be considering spearmen, greatswords and halberdiers as options, as the shields won't so you much good

Thanks for the answer. Well, my Middenland campaign is already lost. Finally almost everyone declared war on me (Reikland also, through the empire policy system) and the Cabal invasion (Egrimm van Horstman) was a nail to the coffin. I had tones of fun with it, but my final verdict is that undead (and to some extend chaos) is overpowered. They refuse to die, they don't break, killing lords has little impact on them. Don't You think that Crypt horrors respawning out of thin air is a bit too much? After the battle, when necromancers got lot of fresh corpses - ok, but during fighting? On some point I considered to disband my elite units and form large armies of chaff just to autoriesolve vamps for slightly better result. As I said, interesting experience for sure.

crypt horrors down respawn without inovcation of nehek, they only have the hunger which doesnt ressurect models. The key to fighting undead is to hit them in one place hard and fast to break the bindings, rest and repeat, defeat in detail with hard hitting, fresh troops