Dire Wolfs, according to their lore, are drawn to Necromancy, if I recall correctly, so I placed them together with the undead cult. I think, it has been some time and I am not entirely sure about my own reasoning back then anymore.
Glad you enjoy it otherwise!

I don't understand thematically why the Dire Wolf is recruitable at the ancient temple, otherwise great mod!

I have played a couple more games. Pirates are in a good space. NPCs still recruit them sometimes, not in the massive numbers as before. So far I have not seen any other big issues.

I think the pirate recruitment has become more clear. May be a seasonal change. Sometimes I can recruit melee only pirates and other times the pirate recruitment have missile attack as well. Doesn't matter if it is a pirate or regular port. That seems fair and balanced, and I haven't seen huge AI stacks of them so far......

I saw you updated this I will do some more play testing.

Ah, the Pirate recruitment from a Pirate Port has the crossbow in addition. That's great! I recommend changing, somehow, the Pirate without a crossbow, from regular Ports. Other factions might benefit from this, so not ultimately sure, however it seems useless for the High Priestess to recruit them (but doesn't infringe on my game either).

Adding a buff of some kind to the Pirate recruitment would encourage me to buy them (maybe a missile attack). I think the Battle Scholars recruitment from Cities should be disabled. Libraries are fine. Changing damage from 1-2 instead of 1-1. My 2 cents. More variety is cool, as long as the AI can mix it up.

That is exactly what I was afraid of. First I am told Pirates feel overpowered to the extend of being bugged, now they feel underwhelming after I made the adjustment of changing recruitment from 7 to 5 units... not that I would complain about the feedback or anyhing, it is very welcome, but Balance Is Pain, as they say.

The Battle Scholars might be a little overtuned by recruitment, because they are the only option in the Magic Library, so the algorithm might pick them a bit more often than sensible for their specific purpose. Not sure, how to handle that. Making them stronger, adding more variety? Mm.More variety would obviously be cool.

Thank you for the feedback.

Nice mod. Been having fun with it. I didn't play your mod before, but tried it the other night and the pirate recruitment at ports seemed underwhelming to me. I did notice, however, the Battle Scholar stacks of AI cruising around. They seem to be an underwhelming threat. I have to keep playing to try the other recruiting options (only tried the Ziggurat and Temple seem fine).

Here it is. I am really not convinced the Pirates were too powerful, but I changed them regardless and how they are now more enjoyable for you all. With this, all extraplanar locations should at least have some kind of recruitment appeal, Hades and Inferno recruitment options are nothing special but are already covered in the base game, so planes like Aztlan having nothing to offer really was always a little weird.

Balancing such special locations is tricky, it should feel rewarding but not game-breaking to capture them. Currently the Labyrinth and the Manufactory might be a bit too much, while Mag Mell is a little underwhelming, but well... let me know if you encounter any errors.

Alright, alright. I might have some spare time at the moment and could expand a little.
I guess this is the usual savegame warning, since I will have to add some new units and this will probably break current games once I publish the update.

I would love to see you work on this mod more or fix the pirate bug.

Nathan,

Thanks for the response. I know how it goes. if you are thinking about balancing this one let me know. I enjoy it a lot and the pirate was the only real issue i saw and it was not game breaking. I can dig deeper in to see if it messes anything else up. I probably played like 4-5 games with this active.

329 for the Bronze Castles, 252 for the unique Divine Castle.

And I just noticed, I never answered Loothar, sorry for that. This mod was always just a side project made out of an request, with a little extra content later, so somehow I always get sidetracked with other projects and never went back to expand on this one or balance it a bit more. There even is a half-finished update I never completed...

Castles of Heaven ? Which ID in editor ? I can\t find this castle

Nathan Pascal,

I am enjoying your mod. My one comment is that the Pirates are over powered. They are better than regular crossbow men and significantly cheaper. for balance purposes i would drop the number of units to 5 and make them cost 5 iron as well. For the High cultist start the ability to recruit 7 pirates for only 50 gold at your home citadel is a massive boost.

Interestingly enough the AI realizes how awesome the Pirates are and almost excursively recruits them as well. So in that way its balanced. It just completely throws off army compositions and diversity as ever NPC army is made up of mostly pirates and the player will end up recruiting many many pirates.

Looks cool I will have to try this in a game.

thx for ur work

Ah, right, sorry. I have a habit of declining friendship requests automatically, to only keep people I know personally in there. It is nothing against you, I am just not very sociable a person. At all.

While I don't dislike the suggestions you made, they would require me to turn all of those tiles into a citadel and that might have some unwanted consequences for AI behaviour and general UI management (every hamlet would appear in the recruitment window, for example).
Generating freespawn with an event from those tiles, while I absolutely adore freespawn mechanics in general, would break with the intent of this mod as well, I am afraid, and turn it into a very different, experimental experience.

I was more looking for those exotic tiles like Beanstalk Castle, that I might have never seen in my own game and therefore would never have considered to add.

I tried to add you as a friend to discuss these and more ideas for your mod, but it said 'error adding friend.'

10% chance of clockwork soldiers in gem deposits of their appropriate gem type!

and maybe spearmen in hamlets and villages too

slingers in hamlets and villages!

Skeletons or zombies or something in graveyards/gallows, etc

Swordsmen or something in ruined castles!

What about recruiting satyrs or something in ancient forests?

Ziggurat, Libraries (especially the unique ones), and Ancient Temple have been added for more recruitment variety in my yet unpublished changes. Some of them have not been citadels before, but now are, but since they are rather rare, I don't think that will have much unwanted impact.

By now I am a bit out of ideas, so if there are no other suggestions, I will publish it in half a day or so and probably break some save-games.

The more stuff like that the better. Awesome mod for an awesome game. Thanks, Nathan!

So, we now have Tower Guards in Guard Towers. Angels from Celestial castles, and a special choice for owners of Beanstalk Castles. Inferno and Hades already have their own special recruitments in base game, even though they seem a bit boring, since there is no difference between small towers and big cities, for example. Not sure if I should change them or not.

Since an update might break savegames with multiple mods, because I had to create a few new units to make Angels non-stupid and such, I am hesitant to just push the update right now. Warning, for the next few days, I guess?

Something else someone would like?

Angels.
Conquer Celestial. Recruit Angels.
Yeah.

<3

Noted.
Pricing might be a bit interesting, since usually you can't recruit monsters over 100hp. On the other hand, a single unit with low mr can be easily killed or stolen by a simple spell, so their worth is... very situational.

I have to admit, I don't visit other planes that often, so these suggetions are very helpul.
Tower Guards in Guard Towers might be the most obvious choice, nice for many classes who have not much use for iron usually.

I like the idea that special sites offer special recruitment. This can be the incitement to get them. Like all these special structures in Agartha or in Sky realms e.g. How about recruiting a giant in the beanstalk castle in the clouds?