It seems like the effects of this mod has changed? I just checked and Cult of Pleasure's went from an upkeep of about 40% off to only 15% off at turn 13 with the mod enabled, on hard difficulty (very hard only changed the value another couple of percentage points). This leads to a ridiculously easy early game (as Mother Ostankya, I am the second strongest faction in the game with 2 stacks of mostly spiders). Previously, the early game was about as difficult as it always is, but the mod helped the AI keep pace into the later game... Now it seems it is severely handicapping the AI.

Should be fixed now, thanks for checking up :D

Ah damn, i forgot to upload the new version of this one, so youre right! I'll get that changed to be the same as the no human penalty version one now.

Does it? Hmm, I see that you mentioned planning to do it in a comment on 16th of August, but the last mod update is from 30th of July. Not sure, then ;).

Yeah for sure, SFO reduces the baseline cheats, and this mod reduces the baseline upkeep reduction so ai wont get as spammy either :)

Sure. However, you mentioned using SFO with lower "base" AI cheats, so this might have an impact.

Whatever works for you, im currently playing most of mine on legendary/vh with my full modlist, so i think its just about getting it right for the faction/modlist youre using

After playing with the mod even more, I think that the current version works much better with Hard difficulty than with Very Hard. This may change if some base difficulty bonuses are adjusted, but ATM on VH stacked buffs are a bit too much when it comes to overall campaign experience in the long term IMO. Alternatively, one can switch from VH to H by turn 10-20.

Good mod overall. It's sort of a must have for me. I think that the devs should implement scaled difficulty as campaign option, as early game is usually fine, but then becomes far too easy.

I'd love to do MCT compat, when they update their guides to make it user friendly, sadly the guides are unusable at the moment and the level of complexity this mod requires makes it difficult to copy other mods options that arent as complex. I've tried multiple times already, but recieved zero help from modding discords and have given up each time sadly, and MCT keeps crashing whenever i use it with various other mods too so i've actually removed it from my modlists.

Yeah you shouldnt see that many, ill have a look at it and try to work out why it might be happening

Not seeing any caster buffs or anything else. Not using the other mod. It's been a while since I've played WoC, so maybe the high caps and rates I'm seeing are just Vanilla. Is it normal to see 300+ recruitable units in total in a province in the mid/late game? Also, I'm not sure whether the game has separate recruitment caps/pools for AI factions and the player. When I see 10 Chaos Warriors, can the AI Chaos "steal" these units by recruiting them? *If* all the caps are shared, then any boost applied to the AI would benefit the WoC player as well, so it would be best to disable it if the player is playing a WoC faction. If it's not shared, then it's ok.

BTW it would be great if at least some of the buffs were customisable via MCT ;).

If youre using my war of attrition mod, it adds a bunch of modifiers to that area for player and AI alike?

Ah, interesting. They shouldn't be, or youd see all the rest of the buffs too (i.e. casters getting big caster buff etc..) do you see any of those buffs too or?

I meant this: "recruitment replenishment for warriors of chaos - (300% of base values by turn 100)
recruitment cap for warriors of chaos (20 by turn 100)"

AI doesnt get extra replenishment anyway, so it'll be something else :)

I have very high unit caps and replenishment rates in Kholek's campaign. Are you sure that the bonuses are applied to AI only? :D

Oh, yeah, if the base upkeep reduction is lower than default at the start and then gets higher than default, then that should work well :)

Thanks for the feedback, i mostly play with sfo which reduces the base upkeep reductions, so ill integrate those changes in rather than reduce the scaling upkeep from the mod which should fix that issue, and ill reduce the recruitment slots, cheers

I've been playing with this mod a lot, so here are some small suggestions:
-> halve the upkeep bonus. The AI already gets a hefty upkeep bonus by default on VH. Way before turn 100 I see armies with very very low upkeep (sometimes 0 due to other bonuses, as they all stack).
-> remove recruitment slots bonus. Again, the AI already gets a bonus here by default and this contributes to one of the most disliked aspect of WH gameplay, i.e. losses not mattering and stacks appearing almost out of thin air. Short periods of downtime when the AI is rebuilding armies are good for gameplay. Let's not make it worse with even more recruitment slots.

Added new scaling caps to beastmen, chorf and tomb king factions

I would personally suggest using a mod that removes ambush attacks, and lightning strike, theyre both broken in the hands of a player, never fun to play against, and personally very silly to be able to ambush on an attack... especially when you can retreat and try again as many times as you want to get the ambush success. I have one in my modlist.

Only thing increasing ambush chance, since skaven can attack in ambush stance that dost sound fun:(

Very interesting mod. I'm quite happy with early game level of challenge in WH3 (first 20-30 turns are usually pretty exciting), but mid- and late-game becomes too easy. I use various mods to make the game a bit harder and this seems like a great addition. I like the fact that the buffs are added gradually and that you help the AI with magic as well (most difficulty-based mods ignore AI magic entirely). Some other good ideas here as well (like bonus lord/hero recruit ranks and ambush chance, but without going crazy).

That and their top tier eco, always uncapped units, instant recruit from any province, plagues that boost you to ridiculous levels.. the list goes on :D

It really is...massive increases to HP make % based regen too powerful

Also depends what faction im playing, some factions are so much stronger than others, for example nurgle is disgustingly op in SFO, but venris refuses to rebalance it..

Oh, this is with SFO btw

I use vh/vh, with the regular version of this mod (-8 po/-80 diplo with all), with no factionwide caps for AI, and a lot of self handicaps (no ambush baiting, no reinforcement/corner camping etc..) and my monstrous magic rebalance mod so i cant do the standard tactic of letting the ai blob on a hero/monstrous unit then bombarding the area with magic

@tesrali obviously not Cerb, but for what it's worth, I prefer Hard + difficulty mods over VH with less mods. I use this mod and several other difficulty mods.

What difficulty do you play the campaign on @Cerb?
I've played probably 15(?) campaigns with this mod now and it won't ever come out of my mod list.
I found "Hard" to be fun but I'm a bit more casual to the game in general.

Yep, a lot of lazy difficulty mods around sadly

Well, that definitely solved the army spam problem. Went from approximately 1 army per settlement to more like 1 army per 3-4 settlements.

Good luck :)

Been struggling with too many AI armies due to stacking AI mods. Going to switch from


Hecleas Overhaul (In SFO)
Progressively Harder Battles
Progressively Harder Expansion
Dynamic Difficulty
Medium Difficulty Mod

to

Hecleas Overhaul (In SFO)
Progressively Harder Battles
Progressively Harder Expansion
Scaling AI Difficulty

Fingers crossed.

it was me that recommended it :D, its compatible with anything so all good, and it doesnt have many subs largely because its actually difficult, and most people dont actually want difficulty. Thats why 95% of the top mods are essentially cheat mods in disguise.

Surprised you don't have more subscribers for all these mods. Was recommended this by someone in the SFO discord, so hoping this hasn't got any compatability issues, couldn't see an SFO version, just a Radious one

Thanks!

Made a version up for you for radious, just removed the upkeep reductions entirely, btw :)

Fair enough :) I do get that haha, been a fair while since Malakai et al came out

I'm a big fan of SFO, but 1) sometimes I need a change and more importantly 2) SFO takes soooooo long to get updated. Anyways, thanks

I will make a radious friendly version for you, though to be honest SFO is so much better imo :D

Regarding other mods, I'm currently using Radious, which does lower upkeep.

Income and upkeep dont work the same for the AI either, as the AI builds income buildngs poorly, so often relies on their background income especially earlygame, which income wont help at all

Unless youre using another mod, this mod will never get the AI to zero upkeep. At most it does 30%, which even with all the other buffs will never get the AI to 100% upkeep reduction. I cant stand upkeep reduction being too high, so ive kept it low.

I don't suppose there is a plan to deal with the zero upkeep issue? Or to replace lower upkeep with higher income, which wouldn't have the same issue?

Alternatively/additionally, any possibility of a version without the upkeep but keeping everything else?

Sweet :D

This is indeed save game compatible. At least from what we know. When removing the other one and using only this one it seemed to have worked though, so I would say its indeed save compatible.