Bakamono have what I can only assume is a glitch in their recruitment menu- in return for 3 gold -1 iron and 25 sacrifices i can gain 100 mounted O-Dachi Bakamono with all the other mounted bakamono having comparable prices.

Using the Hide Heart ritual removes all of the new recruitment flags from the sorcerer,

I will also note that the bakamono fortify/enchant gate ritual can be cast anywhere.

Sounds like a transcription error. I'll look.

As a possible suggestion- You might want to spread the recruitment flags out a bit, rather than having everything/almost everything attached to the baron/sorcerer.

Baron's tiering (due to lack of fully pathing all the new stuff because of how much of a pain in the ass it is) is more King gated than anything and will change when I can properly path baron out (which I can now that I have my sprites.

Bakemono, I know I have more options, but dammit I'm lazy. It's on the "TO-DO when I care" list.

Baron has a very tough start. Once he gets crowned, life becomes much easier, but surviving to that point is tricky. Part of my impressions of that might be "in comparison to Necromancer", though, since I played that last; obviously, Necromancer has a much easier time both with economy and with troop spawning. Conscription is a joke, compared with Grave Robbing, and Gather Cattle (15) is quicker, cheaper, and easier than the multi-character coordination involved in Hermitage -> Gather Peasants -> Oppress Peasants (60). Of course, Baron has more options, and can also go for towns and fortresses, and can also pack every single tile with useful things (given appropriate planning), but those higher initial costs make it a lot more difficult to get the Baronial economy off the ground.

For a class so heavily dependant on it, the Baron surprisingly lacks any source of Iron other than trade, which is a petty trickle in comparison with his requirements. Yes, he gets a global bonus to any Iron he can somehow find, but he can't create new mines, and he very desperately needs to.

The combination of being able to tile Elysium in forts, and being able to recruit incredibly effective siege weapons, seems pretty awesome, but money you're spending on building up your economy is money that you aren't spending on armies. It's a tricky balance to get right.

Vassals are an interesting proposition. Trading control over the troops you get from a fort for more money, more troops at that fort, and a commander that might occasionally do something useful sounds like a good deal all around. Even if all they just hang out at home all the time, they're still contributing economically. Unfortunately, they have a tendency to suicide themselves into nearby enemy armies when they'd have been more effective staying home and taking the siege... but Stupid commanders are like that.

As for more minor quibbles, I feel like it should be possible to repair Old Castle Ruins instead of having to build a new castle... not that it makes *much* of a difference. I also feel like the Abbot needs a way to call up defenders for their Monasteries; it's not a huge deal, but since every other tile the Baron creates can have levies or vassals guarding it, so the absence of temple guards seems like an oversight.

Feedback's been taken into account. I wouldn't expect much more tuning up of the Baron's early game, given its later strength.

Between a starting Monk, the mining rituals, and improved forestry, the Baron now has the tools to jumpstart his economy. If you can't king yourself with all that, you don't deserve the crown.

Some thoughts on the Baronial endgame...

Losing all your 'obsolete' recruitables hurts quite a bit, especially since it means you don't reliably have non-iron costing troops. Losing Longbowmen for Arqubussiers is especially painful, since Arquebussiers are *significantly* worse than Longbowmen (ok, they're a little tankier, have more morale, and hit well-defended targets much harder... but the tradeoffs of being slow and firing only every *fourth* round is a dealbreaker for everything but defensive roles). Musketeers are comparably fantastic, and don't even cost iron, but aren't always available. It seems weird that Dragoons are your most reliable ranged option after being crowned. Their carbines are very inaccurate, but they hit hard and fire quickly; for many engagements, I'd rather have ranged troops that shoot *those* instead of Arqubussiers... Blunderers, perhaps, armed with inaccurate but fast-firing Blunderbusses?

Source Iron is in an awkward spot. It's a ritual that you'd *like* to be able to cast a lot, but it's only available to the King, and you only have one of those, and so if you want to cast it, you need to have him running around the map climbing mountains, instead of staying home doing kingly things like upgrading your armies.

For all that, it's not terribly impressive. 50g+25i to produce an Iron Mine, which can't be closer than three tiles to the nearest Iron Mine. Not terrible... but the competition is having a Monk (which you ought to have several of), tear down the mountain for -50i, and build a Coal Mine on the remnants for free. So, for the effort of sending your King out mountaineering, the extra gold production pays off in 50 turns, and the extra iron production pays off in 75 turns.

Village Defenses is in a similar boat. The cost for a Market Village and a Motte and Bailey is very similar (95g and a Knight vs 90g), and the Market Village is slightly less impressive of the two options, having less gold production and much less protection (though it's also quicker to build, and doesn't rely on sourcing a Knight for full effectiveness). The advantage of trade is somewhat less important now that the Baron has *very* reliable iron production (you can stick free coal mines almost anywhere, provided that you can throw down a Motte nearby), but there's only so many places that you can stick your markets, so you may as well drop as many as you can.

On top of this relatively balanced option set, you have the option to spend 50g+25i to add one extra gold production and walls to your Markets... which makes them slightly less defensible Mottes that produce a bit of iron instead of gold, at a higher cost. Definitely a luxury upgrade, since you won't have any shortage of Mottes to bleed invaders with... oh, but only your King can do it. Sure, there's a possibility of installing extra Markets in the gaps left by converting your old markets to Towns, but I'm not convinced that Markets are more desirable in the first place, and it's not an especially feasible arrangement if one guy has to do it all himself.

These would probably fit better as Baron rituals. That way, you're in a better position to plan out your economy from the very start, deciding how to align your town/market grid with existing settlements and which mountains become which kind of mines. By the time you've got the income to start wanting multiple people casting them, you'll be in a position to crown yourself and start handing out Baronial titles.

To address everything in order:
If you can't reliably acquire iron, perhaps you shouldn't call yourself a King.

Arquebussiers are supposed to be massed and used defensively. They are not worse than longbowmen by a long shot when used thusly.

Musketeers are supposed to be massed and used either as standalone armies or (preferably) kept behind a few lines of pikes/dopplesoldners.

Other than the extra HP and the fact that they have some armor, Dragoons really don't have much to recommend them, based on the multiple walls o' text. They're more expensive, require iron to mass (which seems the crux of your complaint), slower to mass, and they charge into melee where they are only "okay-ish".

Again, Arquebussiers don't belong in the field.

That's kind of the point. Source Iron is there as a stopgap if there's literally no obtainable mines. You aren't a Dwarf Lord and you are perfectly able to mass significant iron income via trade. You can argue (and I've argued this case with myself) that Strip Mine should have its output halved, since it's not reducing a mountain to plain like with the Troll version, but I'll hear nothing more of free iron mines (I've also noticed I forgot restrictions on Sift Through Bailey, but that's a completely different issue).

Again, that's the point. Market Day vs the Motte and Bailey ritual is supposed to present a choice between the two. If you can live with the lack of inner citadel (and you can if you have arquebussiers or musketeers to spare), Towns are superior to their Motte and Bailey counterparts, enough to justify some extra expense.

While some AP load will eventually be taken off the king when I merge everything and don't have to worry about ritpow conflicts (Alchemist and Court Mage shall be getting their own ritpows), don't expect too much. Even with the buffs to the King unit, it shouldn't be used in combat when possible and should always be preoccupied with some sort of logistical improvement.

Fair. Some of the problem with the King's rituals might be that the Monk stuff is *too good*, or that the commanders that ought to be doing this work haven't been implemented yet. Ultimately, it's a minor balance quibble.

Troops that require iron aren't a *major* problem, but as it stands, the Baronial lategame is better at producing gold than iron, and there's lots of super amazing artillery to spend your iron on, so you'll *probably* have an excess of gold looking for useful outlets, which would make an iron-free troop offering nice to have. Even War Dogs would probably be a better use for excess heaps of gold than tasking multiple Abbots to full-time Divine Protection duty.

My main complaint with regards to the troop roster is that there *were* three separate offerings for "standard recruitable ranged infantry"; Longbowmen, Crossbowmen, and Tower Guards. All those went away, being replaced with Arquebussiers, who are too slow and specialized to fill those boots... and Musketeers, who are awesome except for the fact that they only show up as random mercenary groups, which means that they can only be recruited in one group every few turns (as opposed to "from all of your citadels at once, every turn"), which means they *can't* be massed in the way that Longbowmen could be. Obviously, you buy all the Musketeers you can, but I feel the need to have more ranged troops to hide behind the line of spears and pikes, and the occasional batch of artisanal muskets just don't scratch that itch the way mass-produced longbows did.

That complaint is why I suggested that I'd be quite happy to pay for the Dragoon's gun on an infantry chassis; not because it's a fantastic gun (it isn't), but because I want to be able to recruit arbitrary numbers of ranged attackers to stand behind the pike wall and shoot at things, and the defects of the arquebus make it unsuited to that role.

Wait. Musketeers should not be random.

Unsurprisingly, bugs are terrible for balance.

Musketeers being a relatively expensive gold-only unit that can be freely purchased neatly resolves all my complaints with the unit roster.

Poked at Bakemono. Didn't get terribly far before I wound up losing, but have some observations anyways:

They have a very tough start, since you need sacrifices to start up your sacrifice economy, but they start with a coal mine instead. It would help a lot if they had a starting village; nothing that their leader couldn't build himself, given the resources... but that first village would give them insurance against getting screwed over by the map layout, and would let them start saving for their first expansion immediately.

Regarding their unit roster; Bakemono Soldiers have almost identical stats to the slightly-more-expensive Bakemono Swordsmen. The only difference is that the Yari carried by the Soldiers has 6 init and the sweep special, while the Wakizashi carried by the Swordsmen has 3 init and no special abilities. In other words, Swordsmen are more expensive and are strictly worse.

Also, Tanegashima are terrible units. Their signature weapon combines only usable once every four rounds with scatter, on a weapon that is shorter-ranged and only barely more powerful than the bows of their kin. Oh, and they're also more poorly armed and armored (less armor, and they only carry an unimpressive Tachi for melee, as opposed to the O Dachi and Wakizashi the archers carry), but 33% more expensive (100g/20i as opposed to 75g/15i). I feel like I'd prefer Dai Bakemono Archers to them in nearly every situation.

That said, that might just be because Dai Bakemono Archers are honestly OP. They're very similar to Dai Bakemonos, except that they have 1 less HP, an offhand melee weapon that does one less damage, cost 10 less iron... oh, and they have a fairly impressive long-ranged greatbow. I'm inclined to suggest keeping the stats on those two the same, but making the archers the ones that cost 25i, while the non-archers cost 15i. The bows are worth the extra cost.

Also, something is wrong with the attack sprite on the Mounted Dai Bakemono units (at least on the General and the Archers; I lost before I was able to test further); when attacking, they lose half their height and are distorted, as if the sprite is the wrong dimensions; see here for a screenshot: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1618471679325749120/2C9CB0A0833E5FBE0578AC03E7ADB029558E2440/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

Everything in order:
Bakemono start is (mostly) fine. Between the starting bomb throwers and dai bakemono archers, bakemono can take tiles it previously had no chance of taking. Set up a gold economy prior to worrying about blood unless you have a large number of lightly defended villages/hamlets nearby.

For weeb goblin stats: That's actually a result of me forgetting about adding sweep for the benefit of the dai bakemono. Even then, the bakemono spears shouldn't be doing enough damage to consider sweep useful. It's easy to correct, though.

For the matchlocks: Probably has a thing or two to do with not scaling the damage to dai bakemono standards (because AN + shield ignore is rather devastating and I don't spend a lot of time testing). Even then, I guarantee they perform better than any of the archers against large, high armor, and/or heavily shielded targets, which is their purpose for existing. The same goes for when the unit numbers increase.

For dai bakemono archers: They've always been the best non-summoned unit in the bakemono roster and the class falls apart without a steady supply of them. Thankfully, there are alternatives to them now, even though most of those need to be unlocked.

Sprite issue noted and sent to artist. The response was "I'll look into it." so hopefully it'll be fixed sometime between now and Half-Life 3's official release. I can probably hotfix it myself in the meantime.