Please increase the Turkish and Mongol horse archers cost maintenance... or nerf their damage, or at least make it a sub mod. Most of my Kingdom tier steppe or turkic nations are fielding 3000-6000 horse archers.

Originally posted by Actalo:

Please increase the Turkish and Mongol horse archers cost maintenance... or nerf their damage, or at least make it a sub mod. Most of my Kingdom tier steppe or turkic nations are fielding 3000-6000 horse archers.

A sub mod for balance sounds like a great idea, I'll make one as soon as possible.

Originally posted by /\ltanic:

A sub mod for balance sounds like a great idea, I'll make one as soon as possible.

Never mind, I found an alternative to balance this for the moment.

I really like this mod, but after trying it out in an actual game, I find it to be incredibly unbalanced for a few reasons:
1. With the buffed speed, Khan's armies are next to impossible to catch. They will just ignore your troops and siege and move on before you can even get to them.
2. Khan's forces take almost no attrition and do not cost (almost) anything, meaning that even if you manage to mount a counter-offensive, you will quickly run out of supplies and men. It heavily favors Khan's forces even when fighting on your own territory.
3. The fact that there is basically no holding limit, by the time Genghis Khan makes it to Europe, he will have 70+ domains, insane amounts of gold to hire thousands of mercs, 500+ knight effectiveness and 60+ (more actually) knights, 100+ damage/etc to all unit types.
4. The only way I found to beat Khan was to cheese siege with 100k troops quickly enough to propose white peace.

What I think is fine:
Mongolian Horse Archers are fine, as they are an elite unit that you can work around. I didn't see much of a problem with there being too many of them or doing too much damage.
The Khan's camp movement really helps when expanding his territory.

So based on all that I made some modifications to the mod files. This is still a balance WIP as I plan to do more fight tests. I also made changes to the nomads, but haven't tested those.

In my test game with these new values, starting in 1221, Khan easily conquers pretty much the historical Mongolian Empire. One of his successors later conquers the Romans and the Byzantians. This was in observer mode without player input. Files:

pastebin.com/EBWgh33a
pastebin.com/iq4mH3SV

I tried to give Khan the ability to fight a well-prepared player without being insanely OP. By the time he makes it to Europe he will have something like 30 knights, 300 knight effectiveness, +100 Horse Archer damage, and around 100k troops. So beatable if you're running a well-oiled empire. One thing to keep in mind is that The Greatest Khan trait gives him bonuses on top of all the lifestyle, dynasty, and artifact bonuses he can naturally get throughout the game.

Question though, what is the a_great_khan effect? I don't see it pop up on any of his successors or anyone related to him. Is it something that only happens when someone tries to revive the empire?

Hey, thanks for the detailed feedback on the mod! Though I'm not as active in CK3 modding recently, I like helpful suggestions like this.

Originally posted by RockTheShoulder:

1. With the buffed speed, Khan's armies are next to impossible to catch. They will just ignore your troops and siege and move on before you can even get to them.

Yes, that is right. Before making Genghis Khan's camp move around, there was the issue with Mongolian army taking forever to reach its enemy from this capital, so the immense speed on flat terrains were set to help them on that. Now in hindsight, I does appear excessive with a moving capital. Maybe I'll recondition this so player also gain speed modifiers if they simply have horse lord tradition.

Also, I think you just inspired something quite good! Maybe a speed debuff to any besieging army so they can''t just pack and leave like they were just passed by. That makes a lot of sense.

Originally posted by RockTheShoulder:

2. Khan's forces take almost no attrition and do not cost (almost) anything, meaning that even if you manage to mount a counter-offensive, you will quickly run out of supplies and men. It heavily favors Khan's forces even when fighting on your own territory.
3. The fact that there is basically no holding limit, by the time Genghis Khan makes it to Europe, he will have 70+ domains, insane amounts of gold to hire thousands of mercs, 500+ knight effectiveness and 60+ (more actually) knights, 100+ damage/etc to all unit types.

Um, you''re right. In fact, I made it so the player suffers. Well, the "player" I had in mind when I modded this is a hardcore player who min max everything in the game(i.e. those stack-wiping elephant warriors kind of player). I find myself pretty over-powered most of the time, so Genghis Khan is that challenge to be faced in the end.

However, it turns out to be terrible in balance for casual players, point taken. Maybe, we can add a game setting so the player can choose if they want role play or insane difficulty.

The justification for lack of attrition was that Genghis Khan would raid and take supplies from everyone in a province, civilian or not. Easier if they're on a plain, not if on mountains.

Originally posted by RockTheShoulder:

Question though, what is the a_great_khan effect? I don't see it pop up on any of his successors or anyone related to him. Is it something that only happens when someone tries to revive the empire?

That is quote and quote, Great Khan, as someone who claims to be The Great Khan when there are other claimants alive to also call themselves the Great Khan. In the game, this should only appear after the Mongol Empire had collapsed, and it should appear for anyone holding a Khanate title and prestigious enough. The last and only character with a_great_khan_modifier becomes The Great Khan as there's no living claimant to challenge their claim, which would grant the same buff modifier as successor of Genghis Khan instead.

I'll try to make an update when I have the time to, I think I'll add a game setting for different levels of Great Khan buffs. In the mean time, you're welcome to make any changes to suit your gameplay :)

I'm not a super hardcore minmaxer, but I wouldn't say I am a casual player. I had a full army of pichaeri, palatini, crossbows, and those roman horsemen, as well as the best cultural development for the time Khan appears (it only unlocks in 1200, and I already had Palatini unlocked). I also had the best land (France, Thrace, a goldmine, Latium, and Jersualem), 300+ gold a month, ton of building upgrades, and I was seriously struggling to not have the war turn into a 10 year stalemate. Here is some context, this is all with the changes I've made:

It was a holy war against Khan, called by my religious head, and it was basically 2v1 in terms of army size with me leading 120k troops versus Khan's 100k or so. I purposefully chose something that was close to me and Khan's capital so I could siege it quickly. Khan is, without a doubt, still incredibly strong, but you can sort of deal with him due to him splitting up his knights and armies.

We barely won as my army was dwindling from starvation, my best men were crushed, and all I had going was constant sieges with an exhausted 70k levie stack. Khan just has too much staying power. Even if you manage to defeat him, he can come back with a vengeance. Again, this is with the changes I've made. I don't think it's possible to beat him in the original unless maybe sieging super quickly and just avoiding combat all together. Field battles are generally a massacre if Khan is leading his own forces.

It doesn't really seem to matter how strong your actual army is in the original mod. Khan will win because his attrition is non existent and he can run away at any point. Even if you are running elephants or OP archers, your army will starve to death before you can do any actual damage, and Khan will hire 36000 mercs out of thin air with his 57k gold.

Just my experience though. Look forward to what you come up with, and here are some screenshots:

The initial Mongol invasion, unchanged.
https://i.imgur.com/6ev8RvB.jpg
With the changes, where my character managed to defeat the great Khan who was running on levies. The battle advantage is nuts. My elite unit was later caught trying to reconnect with another army and utterly crushed.
https://i.imgur.com/APtnkgD.jpg
Barely defeating him in the Holy War. So far the only conflict he lost.
https://i.imgur.com/uBrGgAe.jpg

The only change I've made from what I posted earlier is up Khan's scheme defense to -200. Because everyone pretty much hates him, you get at least 100 points in success for any hostile scheme due to all the agents. I'm pretty okay with the shape he is in now. I will probably debug spawn him in the 1400s to see how he fares against an end-game player and for general closure to my run.