Currently your spot on with the design of the economy if thats your goal, i tend to be very strong at managing my cities but around turn 80 im still usually spending my whole income each turn and having plenty that needs doing still. Not saying that as a bad thing though, the ballance is right through most of the playthough economy wise.
As for chaos: i dont play them too often but i will try to do a playthrough with this mod and let you know what ive gathered from the experience in the next day or two. I did part of a playthrough a week ago though and ill leave my thoughts from it here: 1: Chaos will need a substantial buff to horde growth and recruitment slots, especially for new hordes. A new horde grows extremely slowly currently and starts with only 2-4 recruitment slots i believe, which makes it extremely hard to keep alive long enough to be useful in this mod. 2: i dont believe much if anything needs to be done with the chaos economy, they generally have extremely low upkeep and plenty of extra cash throughout the campaign. (mainly due to the fact that they dont have many times they truly need to spend a lot of money) 3: This ones kinda up in the air for me atm: horde infighting. While an upgraded chaos army on its own is an extremely formidable force, being unable to consistantly reinforce your other stacks with chaos is painful in this mod, and lightning strike is FAR more critical than for other nations. However if the ai attacks you during their turn you can quickly find your horde fighting 5+ stacks with no way to get help. 4: Minor note, only mentioning this cause i noticed its not in place for chaos but im sure its intended to be added with this, recruit rank for heros and lords which is now standard for other factions isnt effecting chaos currently.

A question on the side is this: it sounds like this will be a major update, you mentioned you were looking into changing some things for legendary lords and heros soon, is this going to be a part of this update or somewhere in the future?

Excellent feedback, thank you Fatalis. I am looking to update on pretty much everything you mentioned, and the lords and heros changes you are referring to will be for hordes. Was not intentional to have them recruit at rank 1.

Was also thinking maybe 2-3 recruit rank and skill points revamp for agents. I rarely use them early game because they are underwhelming. and even late game many units are a better pick over 1 guy unless they are built for pure magic support.

I would 100% agree with you on agents there. I feel like they are such a nice thing to have available to use in armies but find myself not using them in many situations simply cause until the heros spent many skill points and ranked up a fair bit they ususally arent your best option. However once heros get some skills boosted they are a powerful asset, so i feel like the change you mentioned there for them would do a lot of good.
Btw, i love what youve done with this mod, it makes the game so much more challenging and therefore much more enjoyable for me. I started playing a chaos campaign about 30 minutes back, ill give you any feedback i can as i go with this pre update. Ill get a new campaign started after it too for a good comparison between before and after the changes. As a side note, i can only test for chaos as i havent actually bought the beastmen dlc :/

Awesome fatalis, I think I will do the same thing. Maybe I will make a few basic changes (some time tonight), then delve into more complex changes later this week. Thanks for your help! It takes a certain type of person to enjoy a thurough but epic beating :)

Sounds good, im really looking forwards to it. Ill help playtest as i can. This current campaign is being quite brutal to me. XDDDD I love it. Currently the main things im noticing are things ive already mentioned and stuff youve said you intend to work on. The feel of playing with chaos on this mod is really quite different than other factions, im having to focus on keeping just a few highly upgraded armies currently, as making a new horde is painful and getting higher tier troops into is worse unless i weaken one of my other armies to do it. Definatly feeling the pressure a lot more. I almost lost my main horde just now, archaon had to kill 7 armies during my turn and got attacked by 4 more at once during the ais turn, ending in a battle that left little alive except carrion birds feeding on troops from both sides. Now archaon is fleeing back to razed ground in the chaos waste to recover, with barely any troops left alive and currently under attack by 2 and a half more stacks.
... im not sure im going to make it.
EDIT: thank god archaon is op as ♥♥♥♥, he killed 500 enemies in the battle i mentioned, he may be my only hope of survival.
post edit: still waiting for it to be my turn after that battle, 3 more attacks later. Archaon is the sole survivor of his once glorious horde.
ive survived the ai's turn. Archaon is bruised and battered, yet alive, and finally has some fresh warriors around him. Now they will feel my wrath.

on a side note. im noticing an odd phenomenom now, where enemies have 2-4+ stacks near archaon... and wont attack him. I cant imagine why. they follow me around and surround me but arent actually attacking.
I mean, i can kinda understand it, as archeon is a full stack of fully upgraded troops that will probably win the battle against their low-mid teir armies, but its weird having 4 armies camped around me constantly just waiting to be lightning striked at my pleasure.

Out of curiosity, how will changing things for chaos in this update effect the chaos invasion when the players are playing as something other than chaos? if at all?

lol, i love your play-by-play. almost exactly what i was expecting. I will not mess around with chaos invasion and leave that up to other mods, especially since radious mod already changes chaos invasion. Chaos and Beastmen definately need upgrade to match normal factions. Nice thing about hordes is that you don't need to maintain settlements so you can just blitz everyone and fall back where ever is safe :)

Diary of legendary campaign chaos playthrough turn 40 (found on the body of archaon the everchosen) Foolish mistakes have lead me to this point. Surrounded by my horde, i was unstoppable. Hundreds of armies fell before me, more with each passing year. Yet arrogance was my undoing. Surrounded by countless foes, who i thought feared me too much to strike, i raised one of my officers to command a new horde, and gave him command of my troops, thinking that i would get more troops shortly from the chaos waste to replinish my numbers. I was arrogant in my own might, sure that if the enemy did come, i could protect the newly formed horde myself.
Yet come they did.
Numberless were the hordes of the enemies, armies backing armies backing armies, my new general and i fought off the first attack, by the empire, four armies back to back, and we bravely fought off their assault. Yet before the last enemy had fallen four bretonian forces appeared, as many as the imperials, yet much better trained. The battle that followed was long and bloody, and many fell around me. I reveled in the glory of battle, knowing that i was chosen by the chaos gods to end as the victor. Yet the cost was terrible. The newly formed horde was uncertain in their generals leadership, they were veterans under me, but they did not know their new commander, they fought bravely, but one by one they failed and faultered until only i remained standing. Yet i did not give in, for i was the everchosen, the vessal of the chaos gods. Over a thousand fell to my blade before the battle was over, yet i was forced to retreat. The enemy hounds my steps, and i sit here, gravely wounded, knowing that i can run no longer. The final fight is upon me, one from which i know i will not return.

...
ya he totally didnt make it out of the battle. My chaos campaign is finished.

Alright, so heres what i gathered from playing through to that point. Getting started was rough, by turn 3-4 archaon was being attacked by 2 and a half stacks of dwarfs, was a victory but a tough one. After those armies were wiped out i was able to raze a fair number of cities to boost my growth, and i aquired lightning strike to help deal with large numbers of enemy forces. I tried to make a foray into the south early on but quickly had to retreat to the chaos waste because of norsca and 2 other factions were sending 4-5 stacks after archeon consantly. So i pulled back to the chaos waste and kept razing random settlements, making sure to leave at least one city for a faction so they wouldnt be destroyed and would repopulate settlements for me to raze again. I used lightning strike to deal with larger numbers of stacks when neccessary, and managed to aquire a full stack of mostly upgraded troops for archaon. What followed was the first play by play, ending with me barely surviving and beating a hasty retreat to the chaos waste. After that i made sure to get archaon top tier troops, and leveled him up like crazy. The next time i went south it seemed that archaons horde was unstoppable. I defeated army after army after army, and noticed after a while that enemies had stopped attacking archaon during the ai turn (still havent managed to figure out why) In the end, i decided to try and take advantage of this and raise a new horde, giving it 3/4ths of archaons army. The new horde was obliterated right after creation, 4 stacks vs 3/4ths of a stack with a new general. It wasnt very pretty. I spent a few turns after that getting another full stack of upgraded troops on archaon, i pulled him back a bit just to be safe, but the ais didnt attack him. Once i had enough growth i tried again to make a new horde, this time giving it archaons full army and camping them both within reinforcing range of eachother, infighting be damned. Unfortunately the ai chose this time to attack in force, and what followed was in my previous post, the new stack defeated and archaon retreating, given no chance to recover and quickly elimited within the same turn.

For most of the campaign until the end, i was able to survive with my main horde, win most battles, yet making progress further south or dealing enough damage to enemy factions to slow them down was rough, and each time i tried to make another army it was brutally shut down, eventually leading to my defeat. A full stack of upgraded chaos troops with an experienced general is nearly unstoppable, but fresh hordes are extremely vulnerable, as is the general who created them. It was extremely difficult to make any sort of meaningful progress or expansion at all, and while i thoroughly enjoyed the challenge, i was locked in a stalement for most of the campaign.

Damn, if i didnt know the backstory, id have thought that story came straight from a codex

Mind if i share you qoute with community? Its absolutely awesome

feel free. i dont mind at all. I added my um more serious review of what happened through the campaign looking back, thoughts on the playthrough in the post after that. i enjoyed typing that little story tho :P

im eagerly awaiting any chaos changes you plan on doing today so i can start my next playthrough playtest for chaos and try out the changes :D. ill need to buy beastmen at some point so i can test for that too, will be a while though.