@ThatWhichThinks - I'm a huge fan of this mod and I think you did a fantastic job helping building construction and planning a lot more exciting. I especially appreciate that you were able to breathe some life into some of the more boring buildings by having them boost garrisons or give enticing faction-wide effects. Kudos for this!

I know that you consider this mod feature complete, but I have some feedback on tuning some of your adjustments that I think will go a long way in cementing this as a must-use mod. I appreciate you taking the time to consider my feedback!

There are two primary areas that I feel are worth your time in reviewing: Defensive Structures and the distribution and tuning of Greenskin building penalties.

For context, using your mod I have played through an epic 300+ turn dwarf campaign, a slightly tedious 240~ turn Greenskins campaign, and shorter 100~ turn campaigns as Border Princes and the Vampire Counts. All campaigns were played on Very Hard difficulty.

I completely follow your reasoning on having region fortifications coming with a trade-off. It actually reminds me a lot of the City / Castle distinction present in Medieval II (which I was a huge fan of). I like the logic behind establishing border provinces as more defensive, but with a trade off to economy. Very clever. It also gives a solid incentive for the player to be mindful of reviewing which settlements are safe enough to demolish their fortifications and use the bricks to build schools and drive in movie theatres or whatever. ;)

However, in practice, I feel the current negative costs are notably out of balance with the benefits of the defensive structure and opportunity cost of not gaining the benefits of an alternative structure in its place. I'm not suggesting removing your idea of trade-off cost, because as I said I think it's a clever idea - but I strongly think the values should consider adjustment.

Here's an actual gameplay example: After some experimentation during my dwarf campaign, my preferred method for making sure my towns were well defended was to consistently build both the Toolmaker structures and a Trade Depot. Now, granted, it's a smart idea to build the Toolmaker / Gallows / Da Horde line in every town anyway, so that's not super telling. What is telling, however, is that I essentially started treating the Trade Depot structure as the Defensive structure due to the comparable garrison but with a much more significant upside. I had very similar conclusions with the other races to varying degrees (VC was slightly more appealing than the others due to lessened maintenance cost and improved unit composition).

The basic issue is that the Defensive Structure's maintenance cost does not exist in a vacuum - it comes with the associated opportunity cost of also losing out on an alternative structure's bonus and garrison. Therefore, in order to justify the penalties, the defensive structure has to really pull its weight in instilling confidence in the settlement's safety. I don't feel the current number and selection of units is sufficient enough to justify building a defensive structure. There are also some questionable unit choices that are especially unappealing (swapping all units to their Great Weapon equivalents, for example, is rarely the correct compositional choice).

To help, here are some suggested adjustments I'd make to your values (just for consideration - they need some feedback). Other structures may need to have their garrisons reduced to prevent a situation where more than 20 units are garrisoned (no idea what would happen in that case).

Note: these are in addition to the units already added. I focused on adjusting the garrison to preserve your goal for the maintenance costs, but you could alternatively reduce the negative effects and make smaller unit adjustments.

Empire:
Guard House +2 Spearmen, +1 Swordsmen, +1 Crossbowmen, -1 Pistoliers
City Watch +3 Swordsmen, +2 Greatswords, +2 Crossbowmen, -1 Outriders

Vampire Counts:
Corpse Pile +3 Zombies, +3 Skeletons
Grave Guard Watchtower -1 Black Knights (Lances & Barding), +2 Graveguard (shields), +3 Skeletons

Dwarfs:
Watch Room +3 Dwarf Warriors
Guard Hall +4 Dwarf Warriors, +1 Quarrellers w/ Great Weapon

Greenskins:
Goblin Watch +2 Orc Boyz, +3 Goblin Spearmen, +3 Goblin Archers, -2 Orc Arrer Boyz
Orc Guard House +1 Orc Big 'uns, +3 Orc Boyz, +1 Troll


I applaud your initiative to push each race to feel unique, and I think your approach to Greenskin trade-offs is flavorful and challenging. At first I found them to be exciting, but by the mid-game of my Greenskins campaign they had become frustrating and, most importantly, I found that the changes had actually removed a lot of the engagement and decision making rather than enhance them. I found myself demolishing structures, leaving structures completely un-upgraded, and avoiding certain structures all together. This was actually the catalyst for me writing all of this feedback. I feel you have the right idea, and your execution for the other factions is superb, but I feel Greenskins could use some significant rebalancing.

There are three areas of trade-off that you're using; Extortion Rates, Public Order, and (to a lesser extent) Research Rate. The Defensive Structures also have maintenance, but that's addressed elsewhere.

Extortion Rate:
I really like the flavor of promoting raiding and sacking by slowly decreasing extortion income as you build more structures. It feels very orcy, and is super satisfying when you can keep major raiding and sacking incomes rolling in. Unfortunately this is at odds with your use of Obedience.

Obedience:
You're absolutely right. You leave a bunch of orcs around with nothing to do and they start trouble - that's what animosity is all about. I'm with you on that. However, the severity needs major tuning if you consider their stacking effects combined with unavoidable campaign story events, difficulty penalties, etc. Even without mods, it's a good idea to build two Boss Shacks in each province, and with the mod the game becomes a very frustrating loop of putting out rebellion after rebellion.

The worst part is that this directly negates a lot of the good ideas you had with the Extortion rate trade-off. Rather than sending my armies out raiding and rampaging, I found myself having to spend even more time in my home territories doing the exact opposite!

At the end of my campaign I had determined the best strategy was to never build Defensive Structures, Boss Poles (Tier 3), or Da Hoards (Tier 3), and to build a Boss Tent in every settlement. Rather than have enhanced building management, I had very minimal building management.

I hope you'll consider adjusting Extortion Rate and Obedience penalties. My recommendations are as follows:
Totem Pole
Remove Obedience -1, Add Extortion -2%, Add Raiding and Sacking income +2% (all armies)
Boss Pole
Remove Obedience -2, adjust to Extortion -4%, Add Raiding and Sacking income +4% (all armies)

Boss Camp
Add: Extortion -2% (all provinces), Add: Raiding and Sacking income +2% (all armies)

Goblin Watch and Guard House
Remove maintenance cost penalties (Greenskins probably don't do a lot of maintenance, and the Obedience penalty feels appropriate as an alternative that sets them apart from the other factions.)

Research Rate:
This is a really neat idea for two reasons. Firstly it provides a way to shift focus away from research to large numbers of cheap low-tech units instead. It also lets you convert your research rate into cheaper units if you've maxed out the tech tree.

On the flip side, linking it to the Workshop creates an oddity where it's impossible to research the advanced tech without the 10% penalty which feels anti-player and anti-fun. It also doesn't make much sense to me from a flavor perspective why this advanced war machine facility reduces my research rate. If my Lord is saying "hey we should be using these dope advanced artillery pieces," isn't that suggesting embracing research?

The other problem with its building placement is that by the time you unlock the Tier 4 Goblin Workshop, the unit cost reduction is less important than the 10% research rate due to the rarity of research rate buffs for the Greenskins, so the optimal solution is to only build 1 Workshop and leave your Tinkerer benches un-upgraded.

My suggestion is to move the effects around a bit:
Goblin Workshop
Remove the Goblin Workshop -10% Research Rate penalty and -10% recruitment cost bonus.
Replace with +10% Research Rate, and -2% Extortion Rate (all provinces)

Sacred Spider Groundz
Add: -10% Research Rate penalty, Recruitment cost: -10% for Goblin infantry and cavalry.

Stompin Grounds
Replace current with: +1 Obedience, +2% Extortion Rate (all provinces)

I hope these suggestions make sense to you - I'm happy to clarify if any seem weird.

Thanks a lot for reading. Thanks for the fantastic mod!