I pruned a lot of skills down to 1 or 2 level. Idea is to create less bloat, less noob traps and nerf super lategame heroes a bit. This should also allow me to pump a bit more power into the skills per skillpoint spent.
However, I believe I undershot many values, especially in the support tree and most % values in the army trees. Expect a buff there soon.

I believe the faction trees - and innate diversity of heroes - creates a lot of variiety lategame. ANd well, if it's very lategame, you'll grab all skillpoints anyway. I will look to reintroduce a few level 3s, though.

Inspirational leader 3 was so strong that almost every governor should optimally rush to get that. However, after testing, I think I'll reintroduce the third level, but with 5% boost instead of 10%. That mainly power up weak governors meaningfully. It's also basically a sizeable nerf to all governors, which partly justifies the power they now have.

Which governors come off as too strong to you? I'll look into those.

I dont think the support tree is that bad. It still got 3 different army buffs, reinforcement positions and 2 new capacities. However, I think I really undershot the values on the army buffs here(especially the level 2s, which are supposed to be powerful).

I dont know what else to do for spies :x I'd like to make Roving Clans spies a thing a bit more, though.

Thanks for the feedback! Expect some changes soon based on this.

Inspirational leader was OK, but a third level with 5% would be neat too, to me is not that big of a thing because you get cold operator first, and usually you already have some percents going (buildings) by the time you invest in the third level. Is a "cream on top" late game ability to boost governors, but it doesn't make any governor good just for it.

About the OP governors... is just in general, if I had to be picky, well, the buffs to city trade routes in Vaulters/Roving Clans are quite a thing, you can get insane numbers with some peace/black market trading. These are multiplicative with city percent increases. In general, strong governors are stronger and usually weak governor are in a much better place.

There's not much you can do with spies, the problem is that with a level 9 spy your basically done with the tree, IMO all level 3 spies and level 4 should have some spy-related goodies on the faction tree, not too far away from the starting point s you can continue developing spies, in mightier and magickier you got an extra skill dump node for spy-related stuff not sure is that the right direction to give them more to enhance, anyways the usual buffs are:

- More infiltration points.
- Less hero upkeep while spying.
- Less cost of spy actions.
- Less cost to infiltrate.
- More flat XP while spying.

Originally posted by ninakoru:

Inspirational leader was OK, but a third level with 5% would be neat too, to me is not that big of a thing because you get cold operator first, and usually you already have some percents going (buildings) by the time you invest in the third level. Is a "cream on top" late game ability to boost governors, but it doesn't make any governor good just for it.

About the OP governors... is just in general, if I had to be picky, well, the buffs to city trade routes in Vaulters/Roving Clans are quite a thing, you can get insane numbers with some peace/black market trading. These are multiplicative with city percent increases. In general, strong governors are stronger and usually weak governor are in a much better place.

There's not much you can do with spies, the problem is that with a level 9 spy your basically done with the tree, IMO all level 3 spies and level 4 should have some spy-related goodies on the faction tree, not too far away from the starting point s you can continue developing spies, in mightier and magickier you got an extra skill dump node for spy-related stuff not sure is that the right direction to give them more to enhance, anyways the usual buffs are:

- More infiltration points.
- Less hero upkeep while spying.
- Less cost of spy actions.
- Less cost to infiltrate.
- More flat XP while spying.

Hm.. I didn't actually meaningfully boost trade routes from vanilla. Are just equalized the levelups. Instead of 25/25/50, it's 35 per level. Instead of 50/50/100, it's 70 per level on the other kind of trade route skill.
I do find trade routes to be quite strong and the trade route governors are great for that, that much is true. Really not sure if a nerf is called for.
Regarding the
Some of the most OP things are the "over-approval" skills. They do a LOT in certain scenarios. With prenerf values, my Morgawr governor gave me like 48 influence on even sea or lake tile xD
If you catch any of those that are out of line, please tell me. I like the tech introduced by ELCP, but it has proven difficult to balance.

On the strong governors.. I think most sit where they should. Mykara might be a bit over the line - and Haunts, but Ive got no testing on them. I actually think Ardent Mages might be a bit too good. Individually, their skills are fine.. but being solely focused on science has such a strong multiplicative effect.
By the way, did you test Kapaku recently? They got a lot of buffs. All their numbers look so big, but while they are strong in total, the split focus of science/industry reigns them in well.

On spies, have you tried out Morgawr? They are actually great spies in the mod, cause True Sight gives massive Infiltration points. They lack the extra goodies that Forgotten get, but are very good regardless.

I'd be careful with Infiltration points, though. They are basically the most important thing and can get out of hand quickly. The rest are free game, though.
I think I've got some ideas for broadening spies, but I leave that on the backburner for now. First I'll do a big pass on army boosts and buff up supports as their tree does indeed feel a bit lackluster. Ive been blinded by the heroes themselves - which are all great in their own right - and their new faction option(I love the Fire Rain Ardent Mage, for example).
An idea I have to make the support tree a bit more exciting is give their army buffs dual stats - like atk+dmg or health+def. 5 atk and 5 dmg, for example, is generally stronger than just 10 atk or dmg, cause the stats synergize with eachother.

About trade bonuses: yeah the total extra is minuscule, the thing is, most of the time you're going with 1 point in those, you rush into cold operator / black marketer, and fill it back later. Having (roving clans) 105% with one point in both bonuses, instead of 75% is quite an upgrade. Later it evens out compared to a high level governor, but really adds up, in my experience. Anyways is not a big deal.

Mykara is fine (as the contender is the cultist hero for solo cities) other than maybe the 3 influence per district, that is draken levels of influence (Draken was be the king of big early influence). I have jet to play Mykara with this mod to give a proper opinion tough.

About spy heroes, what I mean is you max them out by level 6, and 8 for forgotten, then leveling further is more hurtful because rises their upkeep cost, at least if you have them as a dedicated spy. Roving clans gets a bunch of extra XP, not very useful as there are lots of XP in the path for the infiltration points (the absolute priority), Morgawr could get more base points than forgotten, I think that upgrade is neat. Forgotten, his usual stuff but with less levels to max out.

The thing with support battle heroes on vanilla, was that they were a slow burner, you have to go through the common tree to travel the tree, but a high level support hero was better than any other one, because you got health, initiative, defense and attack all of them with some flat and percent, that scales very well in endgame. Not to mention also some reinforcements like the infantry hero.

I'm currently coding a big patch. Nerfed the values of all trade skills slightly - from 70% to 60% and from 35% to 30%. It's a small bump, but should do the trick.

From my experience, Mykara feel great as lategame/big city governors. They scale very well with districts and food scales the amount of districts you have. I believe the influence is fine - Cultist have this absolute massive %Influence increase, while basically all Drakken skills give some Influence - and a lot of Flat influence to help early.

I'll work on the spy stuff after the next patch. One thing at a time. But what you say makes sense.. I think Infiltration Cost and Hero Upkeep will be good buffs to non-forgotten spies. Forgotten can keep being the best spies(kind of their thing, after all).
Personally, I use a lot of part-time spies, though. I think adding Assignment CD(Which ROving Clans actually have since my last patch) should be quite useful.

Hm, I see. I think you'll like the changes to the support tree I am working on then. I also gave them an extra level on their new Shock capacity - which is quite powerful in practice. I've also buffed almost all %based army buffs, as they were too weak. I overestimated them a lot.

Do you have some opinions on the army side of the Faction Trees? I tried to make them pretty unique and generally a bit more about Hero Power and powering up their specific faction(Like Broken Lords giving flat attack, which is the weakest point of broken lords armies).

The patch is now out. No spy stuff there yet and there are a few things I'd like to improve but that are a bit more time-consuming to do, but I hope you like. Supports should now give much more meaningful boosts to their army and generally, many level 2 skills have been improved.
Ranged got more level 3 skills now, as their factions usually do not have much of an army tree. They are really scary lategame, though.. If you get to it, Id love for someone to test "Artisan's Eye" - the ranged skill that buffs your armies' damage.

By the way, I wanna buff the Vaulters' "Tunnel Rat", give it some Industry somehow. Do you have any good idea there? Cause I'm kinda drawing a blank and have it noted down as "Give it some industry thingy" x.x

Back on the requests:

- I think the army side on faction trees is fine, good things to go with with, once you have your important thing on the army side or alternatively to boost your hero individual potential, or to further increase army from there with some heroes. I like some thematic choices, like the acrobat capacity on the forgotten hero, or the fly ability on Drakken. I miss some army/hero-related stuff on wild walkers ones, they are so heavily pointed at a governor, still they get army boosts in some of their heroes.

- Tunnel Rat... to me, thematically, is related to districts (tunnels are below) and the building subterranean garden (underground structures), maybe some industry on districts, on winter.

Hi, about the changes, on a quick view:

- Inspirational leader still don't have the third level.

- Iron taskmaster, signature skill for infantry heroes is too low IMO, went from 100 flat health to 25 health and 15%, I think is meant to scale better in eras instead of a flat raw health bonus, but you need to reach 500 flat to make up for it (and no standard unit get that kind of health...)

- Sure to double down with attack in the ranged tree? Artisan's eye was the big damage increase skill, now is a mix of damage, and even more attack?

- Support tree looks a bit better, yeah, at least got the health back.

All the ranged heroes have no or lackluster army faction trees. It kinda just wound up that way - that's why the ranged class tree has now gotten a few extra points to spend. All ranged heroes have something innately going for them: RC have high movement and get initiative from their faction tree(arguably the most important stat in ranged armies). WW get Insomniac, which can be quite useful, as well as innately having Forest Rage, which is ppretty strong on ranged heroes.
Allayi have some army stuff, killer instinct and well, the Allayi capacities. Vaulters start off with Range 4 and can get City Guard, which can be quite helpful. I think I'll also make tunnel rat easier to reach from the Class Tree in the future. Should get some better use out of it like that.

Hm.. Industry on District sounds good and is easy to do. Maybe I give it some fortification recovery on top, which synergizes with Subteranean Networker.

Fixed Inspirational Leader bug.
Well, you are comparing a 2-point skill to a 3-point skill there.

I tested Iron Taskmaster a bit and the second point gives around 40 health on lvl 4 assassins with t3 iron gear. And assassins are one of the lowest health units in the game. That seems pretty appropriate, about 65 health for 2 points on those guys - and there are units around with a lot more health than assassins.
But I'll go ahead and buff Iron Taskmaster lvl 1 back up to 30.
You also shouldn't affect that those %buffs affect the heroes themselves. And they scale immensely well with them.

Whoops, Artisan's eye was meant to give only damage, staggered blows only attack. Fixed that. I'll need to test it, but they might become really scary.. full ranged team with both of those skills maxed in +initiative gear might be a bit too good.

Hope with supports here is to make them among the top dogs of army buffs for a well rounded army. They should be great as the first army in(like infantry).

Yeah the thing with flat stats is that they scale extremely well later, iron taskmaster is OP in vanilla because a level 5 infantry hero could well double the health for low HP units (forgotten as you mention) but also you can double down later with health boost, percent health from gear, dust rings, etc. In Necrophagues synergizes well with their regen faction skills, in Forgotten compensates their low health.

Without iron taskmaster, an early push with forgotten can be extremely hard to pull off.

Yeah on vanilla the concept you get out of it:

Infantry heroes is about front liners, extra reinforcement, health, defense, you could get beefy units as early as level 5 hero.
Ranged heroes are explorers early and all all about offense in mid-high level heroes (attack and damage).
Support heroes were the all rounded, with everything except damage, but you need a high level hero to get all the stuff.
Calvary and Flight heroes are more niche, the flight hero gets an early initiative boost, boosting initiative is was only found in support heroes. The morale boost of the Calvary tree is also extremely potent.

Tbh, I found the +100 health from Taskmaster to simply be kind of a "must take" - it's just so strong. New version has a bit more oomph on the second point, but loses the total power of the 3 level version.


I think all heroes function pretty much the same as you described with the mod. Support and Infantry have stat boosts that fit their role leading the charge with reinforcement positions. Ranged is great damage late and early exploring, great for reinforcing.
Cavalry is most similar to ranged, but with more defence mixed in and also good at leading the charge, as their skills allow you to outspeed and kill/lockdown priority targets(Which is the role of cavalry, so I thought that would fit well).
And Flying is another one with great boosts for reinforcing, especially when commanding a flying army. Recently had a Haunt Hero lead a bunch of Kazanji, which was quite the terror.

I've been playing Kapaku on hard, just to test them out, quite OP of a race even with all the ELCP adjustments. I used your hero tree overhaul.

Some feedback:

Heat of the Hearth district food bonus works for non-kapaku factions, I guess that's intended, and I think is great, but I guess people won't notice with the tooltip? a mention, bypasses Volcanic Taint would be great.

OP stuff I noticed:

Over-approval skills: easy to get 10 industry per district with the Mikara governor, also 10+ influence on sea tiles with the Morgawr governor. The problem is that they scale per district, it can get really nuts. The Sisters of Mercy hero over-approval skill, while also quite powerful, didn't make or break the city.

Subterranean networker, even without sources of fortification recovery, that's 40 industry per strategic district from a two point early investment, and 48 with tunnel rat. Was not OP in my game but a L4 vaulters hero can give that bonus quite early into the game.

On hero progression:

Combat heroes got everything on the tree combat-related by around level 20 (only a few got into that). This was quite late game, but didn't make much combat, also on hard, enemies are quite tame, you don't fight many armies, keep that in mind. The progression was fine. The governors can get the same max-out about level 22 if you count the extra accessory (varies a bit from class to class). As I said earlier the only one that didn't get anything past level 8 was my forgotten spy. I bought it late game and was already level 5, got into level 8 in not much time with the fast learner accessory.

Yeah, over-approval skills are difficult to get right.
The Morgawr skill is meant to be rather powerful, as they have to take a useless governing point beforehand and get worse governing capacities. I'll try and see to land on a good number there.
The sisters one is kept in check, in my opinion, by them having actually little for industry in their skill tree. Less multiplication n stuff.
Mykara feel about right to me at this point. It's a big boost to industry lategame, but early it doesn't do a ton most of the time.. and lategame is also the time when food starts falling off in value. I'll keep monitoring the value of that one and run some numbers. I'll compare the skill to the WWs Architect one - the big %industry boost. If they are similar in power per point, I'm content.

Hm... You are right on Networker. I made a mistake in my head, only really accounting for a single point instead of the possibility of 2 points. Easy to fix, though: Second point shouldn't increase the industry gained from Fort recovery, just the Fort recovery.

On the kapaku bit.. clarity is good, so I'll do that change. The skill already has quite a bit of text, though. But yes, the idea is that Kapaku helps out volcanic cities on one hand by bolstering their strengths(industry/science), but on the other hand by making up a bit for the lack of food.


Been a while since I ever got a Hero to level 20 or above.. well, except maybe Governors sometimes. Tbh, when levels are that high, Id say its fine if they dont have anything more. They are worth an army by themselves at that point anyway. On Serious and Impossible difficulty, normal speed, my games vs AI(usually 6 factions) end around turn 100-130 and I thought that'd be a decent enough benchmark to balance lategame heroes around.

I think it is fine if spies dont have super much stuff. Part time spies are pretty useful anyway. I tend to use them as generals whenever I need some more combat power and have recently fiddling around with Forgotten as part-time governors(With both the skill tree and the hero capacity mod, they don't perform half bad).

I personally dislike the 3-level skills and do not wish their return.

Originally posted by Corrupted Slime:

I personally dislike the 3-level skills and do not wish their return.

Not many of them have returned, only a few, where it made sense(especially ranged tree).