This one is a little self-indulgent. I generally love the creative interpretation of historical weapons in the more grounded side of CoE. But one set of kit I feel is really underserved. Mounted Archers! It dominated warfare in many times and places! The barbarians should get some proper mounted skirmishers.

Now, Light Cavalry already have their niche as "Archers that can keep up with cavalry". It's fine. So maybe this would be a special randomly offered recruitable.

How would we represent them? I say give them each 2 "assassinate" bow shots that hit anywhere, to represent them skirmishing before the lines clash. Otherwise, they would be similar to Light Cavalry.
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I don't find myself attracted to raiding. The fact that you can turn house ruins into something ALMOST as good is a good carrot, though. Maybe we can sweeten the deal?

What if the "swords to plowshares" ritual had something like a 25% chance to spawn an "Old Veteran" stationary character. The old soldier turned farmer, eyes still twinkling with past glories, what have you.

His first use would be a Gold bonus of 1. As long as his idyllic retirement is uninterrupted, he funds the cause. His other use would be his rituals,which remove him when used.

"Sow the Oats" would produce an Unlikely hero as well as an item chest (like the thief) to give the lad a little help.
If you already have an unlikely hero, he can promote them to a Barbarian Leader or a Mounted Chief, again bequeathing them an item chest before going to meet the ancestors.

OK, honestly, this came straight from me thinking "Wow, the Unlikely Hero looks JUST like a Barbarian Leader".

I think the mounted cavalry concept is worth testing. I could see making the arrows scatter 1 space to balance for the extra assassination round, and would be a good representation of wildly shooting in volleys.

Pillage is in a pretty good place with City Ruins being so valuable. I could see an uncommon interaction with Raiding/Swords to Plowshares being added too.

Played a match with a lot of serpent tribe warlords up and running. My thoughts:
The mercenary recruitments for tribal infantry are nearly unpickable. In a faction that has barbarian warriors sitting right there, 5 tribals are simply not worth 45 G.

Part of the problem may be that tribals are simply too weak to rub shoulders with player rosters the way they do in Barb an Baron now. Lion tribe are basically spearmen. The others have special gimmicks, but pay for it with hoburg-like HP values. I'm tempted to say they need +1 HP across the board, but wouldn't knock something cleverer.

Or you might just crank the batch number up to 7 and/or shave a little gold of the asking price.
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On the subject of tribals, I think the tech branch needs a little oomph at the end... Barbarians have multiple routes to efficient army production but are kind of everywhere capped at late-mid. They rely on attrition to bring down summoner doomstacks, and that's OK! Bringing the disparate subfactions together really sells the alliance of tribes theme. But tribals can't really participate in that yet--they are capped at early mid as far as I can tell.

By the "end" of the tech branch here I mean the tribal casters. I think they should each have rituals that meet the following criteria:
-Non-spammable
-Relevant in late-midgame stack building

Since I only really got to try serpent tribe, I've only an idea for the Serpent caster: Make the warlord and the serpent caster spawn serpents, and give the serpent caster a ritual that promotes 1 serpent to a serpent demon.

I like this because you can do it more the more warlords you have up and running, and it makes the serpent caster strongest when he is in serpent tribe territory.

Thanks for the feedback on this mechanic. I think this is a fair criticism, the tribal warriors were meant to be sort of pseudo-mercenaries with the free warriors at the tribal villages being a small incremental bonus. But if the offers don't compete with the standard barbarian warrior recruitment it really only serves as an emergency option. I'll take a look at making the pricing scale better so tribal warriors are more appealing. Not sure how far I want to lean into adding rituals to the tribal casters quite yet but I think at the very least the different tribes could have some unique rituals so finding the different tribes is interesting.

Another option the barbs simply don't need is heavy infantry. Onyx amazons do what they do, cheaper and eventually better.

Instead of unlocking heavies at castles, I think they should get something using the EA Ulm "Steel Warrior" sprite. 50G 25Iron, Armor 1, wields a magic greatsword, zerks, high stats for a human. Batches of 5 instead of 7, reflecting how only elite veterans are given castle-steel.

With this, the class gets a real reward for taking a castle and controlling lots mines.

I also think that castles are a good place for a Barbarian Leader ritual to promote himself to an armored version with a magic greatsword. Maybe called "Barbarian Conqueror" and looking like EA Ulm Warrior Chief.

I would actually make a case that the default setup for castles is good. Barbarians lack conventional siege units (heavy infantry + catapults) and castles unlock both for them giving a new way to spend iron they don't normally have. Berserking great swords would essentially be upgraded barbarian swordsmen rather than units that fulfill a new role. Onyx amazons are also a "heavy infantry" type unit, but have a lot more going on and require long term investment in their tattoos using a separate resource to shine so I don't think they make heavy infantry redundant.

The "Conqueror" concept is interesting, but I think it would be more appropriate to be cast at the Capital to go for a "sacking of Rome" kind of long term goal with a significant reward. Maybe that would unlock a new type of elite barbarian unit? I'll give it some thought.

"Castles unlock catapaults" wait really? I triple took and had to check it. They don't on my machine.

Well, it looks like at one point they did (it's in the extracted recruitment tables), but it may have been removed as an undocumented change in one of the updates. I'll probably just add that right back in.

So currently there is one T3 ritual for the Enarie. It's a relatively cheap non-spammable mass summon. Plays in neatly to the barb's shtick of easily making big armies, and later on making big sort-of-elite armies.

Here's a pitch for another ritual that is also meant as an affordable, non-spammable option, allowing the class the option to build in a different direction and to have higher long-term potential at endgame.

Enlist the Elder Tribe: Cast on Ancient Forest, 600 Herbs
Builds Hillfort enchantment and spawns a Wildman Warlord+Wildman Sentries (infinite javelin troop)

The Warlord defends his fort with Hedge Magic 2.
Like other tribal warlords, he spawns wildman hunters over time and enables recruitment of mercenaries. On offer would be hunters, warriors, and more rarely, a wildman caster or a Ravager.

Wildmen Casters would be reworked--always getting both deepwoods summon rituals but no others. I'd give them hedge magic instead of onyx magic, now that they are a part of the barb list. Since having a lv. 2 ritual is quite useful, you might remove them from the summon pool.

Nice job, this is a very solid concept that meshes well with the way I've adjusted barbarian. I really like that there is a terrain based limit to how many times it can be cast (similar to how Army of Legends has been adjusted), and it functions similar to the Barbarian leader's "Enlist Tribals" ritual so it's a nice progression on the rituals available in early game.

I'm currently planning that the next version of "Enlist Tribals" will be changed from granting 2-3 mercenary offers that are mostly the same for each tribe, to each tribe offering 1 unique unit so it's more interesting when a certain tribe is found. The "Elder Tribe" could be neat way to introduce a more heavy hitting recruitment offer for late game.

Ya know what grinds my gears? Spiritism's summon spells. A slow summon to come up with a handful of measly ghosts that are liable to die in one hit... It sure is too bad that spell schools aren't moddable.

OR ARE THEY? I've just realized these ghosts aren't the normal ones you see around the map-- have a special name: "Ancestor Spirit." BUFFS AHOY.

The obvious choice is to make "Ancestor Spirit"s come out with the stat block of an Ancestral Warrior or Bowman, by putting clones of them under the name. This MIGHT be a bigger buff than they strictly need. Not sure.

Cranking the HP of the Ancestor Spirit up to 3, and the damage up to 1-4 is another option that brings it in line to say, the 2 skeletons a necro can put out for every 1 Spirit a guide can.

The spiritism spells as a whole are probably worth looking into how they stack up against other equivalent spells in other schools. I think there was a bit of a means of balance in vanilla to have lower quality spells compared to others to account for the greater recruitment numbers of the class, but that's something I'll be rebalancing a bit anyways and I generally lean more towards "different but equal" so definitely more appropriate that the spirit guides aren't so much a "poor man's" caster through objectively inferior spells if I find that to be the case for some.

Although the spells themselves aren't moddable, the "weapons" they utilize are, so another option could be to buff the amount of spirits summoned per cast by increasing that weapon's "damage".