@Devixian-Firehawk I think it's worth it in the right army, but you certainly don't want to spam the whole red line on every lord now!

I get that, but punishing the entire army with one of its most important stats is a bit much

@Devixian-Firehawk The goal is to make it so that you don't always want redline skills on every lord, but that sometimes they are useful.

I can kinda get the blue line stuff, some of it seems extreme, I'll admit, but I can see the vision.
Red line though...thats fucking overkill.

Thanks for the tips, I currently like the struggle, but these are options for the future.

I think you should install a mod that buffs your econ. I have done that myself (empire farms income mod) and maybe also my build new city mod. More cities with more income per city will fix the stagnation.

I understand, I just play with random starting positions and generally am not in war with my neighbours early. I often struggle when attacking in the early-mid game and mostly dont have more than 2 armies. I like the idea of your mod as I said, but I might change the stats if can make it compatible and get allowance from you.

Also the skill point requirements to unlock the second block of of upkeep reduction (quartermaster) have been reduced, so you can make an army cheap more quickly.

Maybe I will also update to make Frugal Pockets unlock early as well

The problem is if you can make an army cheaper when you are poor, you can also make it cheaper when you are rich, and then have even more armies and become even more powerful... this mod solves that because your reduced upkeep armies have extreme leadership debuffs in foreign territory, so if you really need to defend yourself you can get a cheap lord to use for defence only, but it will not be useful to go conquer the world.

oh I see

I dont put the buff on every army, just the first ones. When my economy is strong, then I pick other skills.

E.g. this mod is -25% upkeep for all your armies

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2790190940

If you are putting the upkeep buff on every army then maybe consider getting a mod that buffs your econ a bit, or just a general upkeep reduction mod?

If a particular effect is going to be on every army, why do you want to click it?

I understand, Im just a different player type, I mostly need the upkeep buff to stay active in diplomacy. Anyways I remembered that I play with a generalized red line anyways, which I think is likely incompatible with this mod.
Although I find that both mods should work great together as a concept, so maybe there will be a compability patch. (I have a taped red line mod that I would technically like to integrate in yours and change some stats).

Basically I wanted to make the downsides of cost reduction harsh enough that you don't want to use it most of the time, but some of the time it is useful for a specific purpose like a defensive lord who stays at home to put down rebellions or invaders.

> -18 leadership very harsh,

But it is only in foreign territory. You can stack all the cost reduction skills on a low-level lord and use him defensively. When you stack up all the cost reductions it is quite a large discount.

Thanks for accepting my feedback. From the screenshots I find -18 leadership very harsh, although I find stat debuffs as a concept interesting. I think replenishment rate should be avoided as the game is already very snowbally in that area and you do boost it over blue lines of lords and heroes.
I dont know if the hero self-defence stat is from you, but that seems pretty broken when the char is high leveled and it would likely be very tough to play against when the AI has embedded heroes.
I also would need a screenshot of one red line skill for the fatigue example. I dont know how that really afffects auto-resolve perfomance, upkeep debuffs might be an option there.

Thanks. Which ones do you think are too strong? Which downsides are too harsh?

Interesting concept but I think the downsides are too harsh and the buffs too strong on some skills. I also would like to see more screenshots.