Not really an individual adjustment, but the dwarves really are struggling, and I don't really know if this is linked to the unit stats (but it might). Autoresolve and all AI battle are basically lost 90% of the time against vampires and orcs, it break the game a bit on the long run (and playing dwarves is exhausting as you have to play every battle except when you have 4 dwarven units for a goblin one basically).
But I guess this is a different tweak, as in battle they behave quite nicely and it seems balanced.

Wood elves : The wood elves revival mod made something interesting with having only one glade guard unit and having the special arrows as special abilities... You might not want to do that though, then I'd go for someting like having a slightly better accuracy / armor piercing / magical attack on starfire but a bit more base damage on the basic ones maybe, or more range.
Also one of the buildings is useless now. Maybe keep a few units in the game who need a secondary building to be recruited, while keeping in mind your intention of removing tiers (I like keeping to use spearmen and base units in late armies as empire for exemple anyway)

Also I'd nerf a bit the bretonnian squires to keep the bretonnian infantry way crappier than the other factions. And basically rename them like "Men-at-arm retainers" or something like that (the best men-at-arm a lord has, and who are equipped accordingly). Not even talking about the lore and tabletop, where they do not exist, historically also this was not at all the role of a squire (the basic latin name was one of the shieldbearer, and later the name was also given to all non fighting nobles).
It would be nice to see a foot knights units (or have compatibility with Cataph's mods like previously ?), limited to something like 2 or 4 in campaign, as some are known to take the virtue of humility and fight dismounted.

Anyway, it's great to have you back, i'll try to do more extensive feedback... Ask if you want something specific tested. I'm starting to mod on my side and will see if I can do a few units balanced for your mod later.

Just uploaded last night with an effect for the wood elf fletching building, it grants additional ammo to units recruited in the province.

Yeah i'm playing wood elfs now to try that out. Idk exactly what I want to do with it yet. Idk if you can make those abilities unlockable by a building or tech, because otherwise it's definitely too powerful.

Btw, do the regular wood elf glade guard have magic arrows? Because I saw my glade guard friendly fire my eternal guard who were too close in front and they hit with like exploding green arrows.

Dwarfs will probably be next, to rebalance. I've done a bit of testing with empire and bretonnia so far. And I know they added units to bretonnia that weren't in tabletop, but GW neglected bretonnia for so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ long that they needed more stuff for sure. If they had gotten an 8th ed book, i'm sure some BS unit like royal hippogryph knights would've been made. In fact I wouldn't at all be surprised if GW gave CA their mock up versions of bretonnian army books that they never released, containing those new units, that no one ever saw before.

It's not a big deal to me, and I think since the Bret knights can't dismount, you seriously need something to fight in sieges and actually do stuff. But maybe they are a. Bit too good... we'll see

It´s not actual unit balancing, but the abilities or more additions a legendary lord gives, like reduced upkeep for savage orcs by Wurzhag.
So Wurzhag who specializes in savage orcs could get an lower upkeep reduction but for the whole faction and not only his own army. By this he would be different from the normal greenskins with more than a single army. Same goes for every other legendary lord that focus on a special unit or type of warrior.

Interesting.

I am gonna tweak some of the LL effects which are just sooooo broken (either useless or so OP like skarsnik's goblin upkeep bonus).

Wurrzag affecting his whole faction sounds nice to me.

For Skarsnik i would not decrease the upkeep reduction to much, cause i like the idea of swarming with a lot of Goblins for an assault from every possible side :)

Its more that I think its doing the right thing but in too heavy-handed of a way. For example, in Rome2, the cornella (i think) get a -50% upkeep for auxilary units. ITS SO ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ BROKEN. Most units in the roman army are auxilaries, cavalry, archers, etc. So I basically got 2 times the armies and navies by using exclusively aux troops.

In this case, I made goblins a lot better with the mob rule, and with a shift in their damage (to more AP), so an upkeep reduction for them makes sense, but not by a ridiculous margin. I think 25% is fine, but 40 or 50 doesnt sound like much more until you realize it means getting 2x the men.

I need to do more grand sweeping adjustments to Orcs/Gobs and dwarfs soon, we will see how this plays in.

Nice. I'll do some testing with bretonnia again.
To be fair, I don't mind the new units at all, and for the squires it is just that it makes no sense to call them that (Bretonnian lore being grounded in Arthurian myths and french chivalry we can have some understanding of what can be a squire). But I'm nitpicking, I am aware of that. As for testing, I saw some videos on youtube of the bretonnian squires besting chaos warriors 1v1, which seems really wrong gameplay wise.

I don't think the glade guard has magic arrows, it is probably more linked to some effects for elves, being mysterious and elvish and stuff (yeah, best explanation I got). But yeah, this would be broken. Would you consider (and is it posible), to change some building trees ? For example having the 3rd level of the barracks at a 4th tier or something like that... I like your idea of removing tiers and using all units, but getting greatsword in the first 20 turns of the game removes a bit of the satsifaction of getting them.
I find it to diminish your intention (keeping all units usefull throught the game, even the first ones) by giving access to specialized units straight away. For example as a dwarf player you will never field miners, you will field miners with explosive charges.

But I'm just asking, I'm fine with wathever you decide ofc, I just want to discuss a bit on this.

What I just (this morning) did was swap miners with blasting charges and thunderers. Also moved some dwarf stuff around.

Also the miners are less ♥♥♥♥, now, so you can basically use them like a rudimentary flanking force (since they have vanguard).

Yes it's possible to move building chains around like push tier 3 emp barracks to tier 4 unlock.

I think with greatswords in particular, making regular state troops better and making greatswords less in number does most of the trick, for me, especially since greatswords also take 2 turns to recruit (don't they? If not then they should).

Chaos warriors being bested by squires is a problem with chaos warriors being too weak, something else I just tweaked this morning.

As for calling them squires, GW probably would have done messed up stuff like that, too, so it feels authentic from a nostalgic laymen's understanding of chivalry sort of way, even if specificaly that word might not make sense for the etymology nerds out there

Yeah, that was just a side note.

I understand for the more elite units, but a 3 round difference in availability (for the barracks) +1 round recruitment is not much I think. i'll check it out and do more testing.

Empire units balance notes :

basic spearmen : same cost as halberdiers but less melee attack and def, less damage, less charge bonus and no armour piercing right now. I would lower their cost from 140 to 100 (?), or to 120 and maybe buff a bit their melee attack so they have much more than their shielded counterparts (who have a lot more melee def), so they would be a cost effective unit that still has use against large targets when you don't need that much armor piercing (and halberds).

Halberdiers vs shielded spearmen seems like a really good balance base. same with the swordmen I think. All 3 have a different role and weaknesses. I like it a lot.

archers : really cost effective, would add a bit of upkeep compared to crossbowmen. Also they fire faster (which is normal) but have more armor piercing and anti infantry. I would lower the armor piercing probably.

Free company (sword ones) : good balance vs swordmen, but maybe higher cost ? (75 vs 140 for swordmen, something around 100 might make more sense, even if they are squishier they are a good damage dealer with vanguard deployment. Slight base damage nerf ? -they have a bonus vs infantry and fast attack rate, they seem to be one of the more cost effective unit right now). The skirmishers seem to have a good balance compared to them, if the upkeep of the base free company is boosted a bit.

Crossbow vs handgunners again seems like a really good balance base.

Huntsmen seem to have bit too high damage even without the anti large, my only comment is that the two archers units with anti large and anti infantry seem to be enough to replace crossbowmen. If you want Huntsmen as elite/specialized and with their stats, maybe do the same you did with the greatsword and lower their number to 80 instead of 100 (in ultra size) ?

greatswords : indeed, seem like a good / cool balance. Slight damage boost maybe, compared to previously mentionned squires, or even the free company ?

I'll have to test more the rest but it seems pretty cool / OK.

Great feedback. I agree comppletely. I think upkeep adjustments for the reg spearmen, militia units, are good. Smaller huntsmen makes sense to me too, I know they are really freaking good. Maybe just the damage of Archers/Huntsmen is way too high.

These are old units from the old lorehammer (where everything was buffed)

For the archers probably less dmg and ap, cause mostly arrows are faster but way less effective against armours compared with crossbow bolts.

And "high" tier units like greatswords early accessable they could get reduced if there is only a limited number to have in each army.
So your "normal" troops bolster your army and "elite" ones like greatswords and black orcs etc. can function as real special ones cause every army has a limited access to them.

yeah I saw it was too much damage for all of the new emp units. Just updated.

Yeah the cost of greatswords for me means that they cannot be 100% of my army (unlike vanilla OMG what a sh*tshow). I'd probably use them to kill enemy elite infantry (since swordsmen would just die horribly to black orcs) but they are likely too expensive to be cost effective at killing things like regular orcs.

Remember, just cuz a unit is good or better than the competition, it doesnt mean its worth having. It needs to be efficient (kills/effectiveness compared to cost).

My thought was, that maybe there could be elite units which are better than the normal army troops. But they have a limit each army can recruit.

Like black orcs or greatswords or chosen. But while i am brainstorming I am not sure if graveguards should be limited for Vamps, because i find they are the main unit they use.

So dont know if you can use my thought for something usefull ^^

well you cant limit them to being like max 4 greatswords per stack anyway, except in terms of ai army composition (sorta).

Yeah I mean I think the problem I see more frequently is that the AI FOREVER uses ♥♥♥♥♥♥ tier 1 units (empire spearmen without shields for example), because it never seems to build the smith building which unlocked things like grave guard or demigryphs. (This is what I see in vanilla).

So I remove the restrictions for a second building, the ai actually starts using units beyond tier 1, and i actually dont see full stacks of greatswords or grave guard.

If these units are priced correctly, the player can then decide if he feels like having 1 full stack of all greatswords, or instead being able to afford 2 separate stacks of regulars. Which is fine, army variety is OK and some people like using all elites, while others (like myself) use all regulars (except for special occasions).

Like I think one of the best armies out there right now is a full stack of all glade guard because they kick so much ass... you dont need treemen and waywatchers necessarily. Its actually a problem I am trying to fix (without breaking the wood elves).

With Lorehammer part 5 (no update needed) there is already a bit if that. Like Carroburg greatswords or Teutogen guard being limited to 4 and being really elite. I love that.
The mod hits a nice balance mostly right now, playing as empire, you can't field armies of Greatswords, but the main line units still are quite good even late game with veterancy, character buffs and technologies. You can have armies with a lot of greatswords and all elite but you'll field half the number of armies, and frankly you can't afford that as you'll need to fight in a lot of places, and to be fair, with 2 units of swordmen vs one greatsword, you'll be able to flank for example... As emc said, it's all about being cost effective.
I had a few CTD trying to play manually against Skarsnik or chaos, but I use a lot of mods (which mostly seem to integrate really really well with Lorehammer, like Cataph stuff, Starting traits remastered, diplomacy overhaul, All tabletop lords...) with yours so I'll have to see were it comes from.

And huge question : I don't think I saw a single Waaaagh in my playthrought... Any problem there ? On the other hand, goblins and orks seem to have been quite buffed, maybe slightly too much (which would explain the dwarves getting their asses kicked 2v1 at times, and I had the same problem against Skarsnik, as 3 Empire armies barelly win against one of his)
I'll finish checking the endgame of the Empire and probably test the orcs for balance.