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Black Ark Caps

This should work for both Mortal Empires and Vortex campaigns.

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As part of my ongoing quest to try and reduce Black Ark spam and make the Dark Elf campaign AI somewhat more measured, I've arrived at this slightly brute force method of enforcing a soft cap on Black Arks.

The ritual_weight edit mod is effective at reducing the AI's proclivity to spamming Black Arks over the duration of short to medium campaigns, but this is largely a delaying process. If you're a madman like me who sometimes plays campaigns in excess of 300 and 400 turns, Dark Elf AI can still aggregate up to 10 Black Arks each. Confederation can compound this.

The slave cost and turn cooldown has been doubled for the Mathlann rite. It always felt odd to me that the rite that gifts Dark Elf factions an immortal dark magic aircraft carrier was cheaper in cost and shorter in cooldown than rites that provide some unit buffs. The cost and cooldown increases are in line with the scaling of other rites, so they are not absurd.

The cap, cost and cooldown increase combined will serve to limit the amount of Black Arks in campaign. Dark Elf AI cannot use the Black Arks to besiege port settlements, but given it's the method Dark Elf factions use for global recruitment and replenishment, as well as supporting the armies through the abilities it grants, Black Arks still have a role for the AI. This method provides Dark Elf factions with Black Ark capabilities without spamming the campaign map continuously and slowing down your campaign playthrough.

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This mod is somewhat a rough and ready way of enforcing a cap on Black Arks for Dark Elf factions, and its method is not as elegant as MrSoul's Black Ark Provincial Limiter in WH3, owing to what I understand is WH2's scripting limits versus WH3.

The script checks for the number of Black Arks each Dark Elf faction has. If the player or AI attempts to recruit a fourth Black Ark at a port settlement, the Black Ark Admiral is immediately wounded, returning it to the recruitment pool, effectively implementing a cap of 3 Black Arks for a faction.

The cap applies to each faction individually (so 3 per faction).

If a Dark Elf faction confederates another with existing Black Arks present on the campaign map, these will remain in place. However, the faction won't be able to recruit any new or recovered Black Ark Admirals, being over the cap. Recruitment will only be available once the number of Black Arks goes below the cap of 3. This behaviour is in line with Lord and Hero caps elsewhere in WH2.

The script doesn't touch the Sacrifice of Mathlann rite itself, largely as I couldn't figure out a way to properly and conditionally disable the rite once the number 3 had been reached. So the AI (and the player) can waste a cycle / resources activating the rite if it's available, but increasing the turn cooldown and slave cost, and using my other mod that alters the ritual_weight table, will make this outcome largely negligible. The cost and cooldown increase acts as a further brake on Black Ark production as well.

Thankfully this means the mod can also limit the Blessed Dread's Black Arks through recruitment limits, as Blessed Dread does not use the Mathlann rite to recruit Black Arks.

You can change the cap yourself if you open the file in RPFM and save a local copy after editing the Lua script. I might make an MCT UI one day, if I feel like it!

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I've tested this in the first instance as both the player and observing a Mortal Empires campaign over 151 turns. There's a script debug log that the mod will output if you want to monitor this yourself via Script Debug Activator. So please do report any unintended behaviour if you discover any.

In theory, this should be fine to install on an existing save file. But you'll get the most from the mod with a new campaign, of course.

It's compatible with Reduced AI Black Ark spam in Campaign, which just edits the cai_ritual_weights_tables. The slave cost and turn cooldown can be found in the rituals_tables.