What I believe the issue is with Khrone, is one of the most critical stats in any unit. their Melee Defence is downright, well... crap. Honestly, I don't use any khorne armies because their defense is petty to where I have to use them as a flanking than a head-on frontline. Skulltakers, when flanking, take skulls without a doubt, but on a 1v1, they are just pittiful. The reason Halbards are beating skulltakers is because of the high Melee defence, easily able to block, and attack, irrelevent if their Melee attack is low, they still block majority of the SK's attacks.

*As an idea, perhaps make Khrone much more... resistant. Perhaps have a physical resistance on Khrone units that is 20-30% and test from there, because the point of Khrone is to fight your enemy head on, disregarding your own safety with the rage to simply kill their enemy. I can see what you're going for, but their lack in melee defence is whats making Khrone seem underrated and pushovers.

Melee Defence is a important thing above all, if they can't defend themselves, then they are hit by every sword/axe/spear the enemy unit attacks with. Asides, Khorne is not Slaanesh, I should be turned into a Chaos Spawn for using Khrone for flanking than head on.

*Another idea could be to raise their stats overall? The weakness I could see with Khrone, is their weakness to ranged units, perhaps have zero protection from missiles, though in hand-to-hand, which the enemy would want to avoid as much as possible with Khrone, they destroy the unit. Point being, melee = Khrone wins. Getting hit with Ranged = Khrone loses.

Seriously I know what you're talking about completely, and its pretty much pointless having a khorne army when they are easily beaten by everyone else.

I agree on some of this since I want to have my own independent army from one of the chaos god too, but at this point only the slaanesh army that can be independent and somewhat not required the other gods or the chaos undivaded army to get their job done, because the rest of the gods army is either too fragile with very little AP like Khrone forces save for their Demons, or their entire forces has almost no AP at all like Nurgle forces. :/

@Crucifier
Anyway i can kinda point out what you do wrong here since if you have for example Khrone Lord and build the Khrone building up to the higest level then you can actually recruit Khrone unit with very cheap maintenance.

I also noticed that skull takers have almost zero armor piercing damage which is why they are obliterated by anything with armor - especially ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dwarves in melee.

They either need a significant defense boost or have their damage nearly doubled with all of it being armor piercing.

@Kharn67
They already have no defense against ranged units since no one has shields except the knights. They take boatloads of damage and have nothing at all to show for it.

@Briandoloho
Cheap maintenance doesn't help at all if my dudes constantly come up against stacks of cheap units that they have to retreat from so I can't make any money at all.

I guess it's back to my old strategy of making chosen and knights to be viable late game until this mod can be balanced.

Nah, Khorne infantry damage is fine(but their HP is not) in fact they have very high damage for an infantry, but they just really lack of AP and end game army of most faction are all heavily armored.

Anyway Steelb has say that he intended the slaanesh army as the AP guys but I think you should at least give the other gods army decent AP as well since the chosen with shield is never really desaind to take down heavily armored unit and yet they have more armor, shield and better AP(despite only use one handed sword) than most of the chaos gods unit, albeit they are more expensive you can also make the other god army to be more expensive as well but boost their stats too.

Is there any kind of temporary fix for this? My friend and I were just about to start a coop campaign, but this has brought things to a halt.

Well it's pretty easy to mod them yourself, just download this:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?730823-PFM-4-1-2-Warhammer-support
and then open this mod file and look for the land unit tables, main unit tables(for their cost, maintenance and etc) and the malee weapons tables.

I have no idea what would be balanced and what would make them completely overpowered, plus I want to be able to play this mod with friends (which would be a massive pain to coordinate customizing this mod). Is Steelb aware that this is an issue? I'd like to know if this mod has a balanced future.

You know learning make thing perfect, don't just complaining about stuff on several discussions when you don't even know to balance it, that doesn't help to solve the issue at all.

Brian - you're right. Decided to go collect data so that Im not just a whiner. Here is my first round of data for Khorne vs comparable units:

Parameter Skull taker (4) Chosen Great Weapon (4) Winner
Unit cost 1550 1400
Starting units 261 321
Ending units 64 280
% remaining 25% 87%


Parameter Skull taker (4) Chosen Halberd (4) Winner
Unit cost 1550 1400
Starting units 261 321
Ending units 33 178
% remaining 13% 55%


Parameter Skull taker (6) Chosen (6) Winner
Unit cost 1550 1400
Starting units 261 481
Ending units 68 314
% remaining 26% 65%


Parameter Skull taker (6) Empire Greatswords (6) Winner
Unit cost 1550 900
Starting units 261 721
Ending units 44 248
% remaining 17% 34%


Parameter Skull taker (6) Ironbreakers (6) Winner
Unit cost 1550 1200
Starting units 261 601
Ending units 141 530
% remaining 54% 88%


Parameter Skull taker (6) Hammerers (6) Winner
Unit cost 1550 1200
Starting units 261 601
Ending units 74 386
% remaining 28% 64%


Parameter Skull taker (6) Winner Longbeards (Great Weapons) (6)
Unit cost 1550 750
Starting units 261 601
Ending units 151 142
% remaining 58% 24%


Parameter Khorne knight (6) Chaos knight (6) Winner
Unit cost 1600 1400
Starting units 361 361
Ending units 95 254
% remaining 26% 70%

Note that all data was taken from custom battles with 4-6 units plus a lowest tier lord.

Per the data above, Khorne skull takers are outclassed by all comparable units (which are all less expensive) - and in some cases a unit tier lower as well. Khorne knights didnt fare well against regular chaos knights either.

This is all likely due to 2 things:

Lack of any AP damage
Lack of melee defense

I think a potential solution that is in keeping with the berserker theme of khorne could be to keep their weapon damage as-is, but make it all 100% armor piercing. I don't have time tonight to test this, but I think the data above is a good starting point to finding a fix.

Just for fun i going to give these Skulltakers 20 more AP with no change on their overall damage and see how they perform.

That sounds interesting! I'll probably be doing something similar soon. I willprobably be tweaking with different damage/AP values this weekend to find a point where skull takers can consistently beat out other infantry that is cheaper than them 1v1.

I thought it especially interesting how ironbreakers completely destroyed them using their bombs. I think the skulltakers will need a very high AP percentage of their total damage to be able to live up to their name (within balance of course). I will probably do 25% - 50% - 75% - 100% AP holding overall damage value at one point, then start tweaking the overall damage up or down.

So the army of the (blood)god vs puny mortals round 2, with 20 plus AP:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1119495463

With all of the damage being AP:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1119493955
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1119494028

With 15 AP and 120 armor(because the chaos armor is supposed to be just as strong as the Dwarf Gromril armor):
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1119498532
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1119498584
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1119498614


^ Lul the AI is only controling 9 out of 10 units...

What about trying 120 armor with all AP damage?

They will become so badass they will slaughter Khrone himself.

Anyway same as before but will all of the unit is AI controlled:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1119553725

^Now vs chosen with Greatswords:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1119553777
^1v1
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1119657499