This discussion topic will give you more explanations about the overall intention behind the mod and additional details about its game features. This is an open topic so you can take part in the discussion.
First of all, many core things about this mod were lingering in my head for quite some time actually, to name a few-

-The pretty high redundancy of defenders that you face in regards to the beautiful locations of where you fight during Treasure site encounters always felt like a waste to me. It’s only recently that I discovered that you can actually attach several (and potentially very different) adventure sets to one given location which the game will choose randomly during the map creation, and that include its defender set but also (and that’s pretty important) the Battle enchantment that you can setup and all its possible rewards (resources / spells / units).

-Similar to the point above, the pool of spell rewards that you get in Treasure sites si also pretty lackluster- a few spells are kinda cool sure, but some others are really meh, and overall no big distinction is done regarding the pool of rewards based on the location that you explore, and for the ex world of warcraft player that I am who loves exploring dungeons it also felt like another source of unfulfilled potential. Same applies to items, they are just sorted by rarity pools but no “specific item” can be found in specific locations.

-Finally another (smaller) feeling of waste regarding the amount of new abilities that were introduced by all my Hero rework skill tree, in the sense that no units have any of the new stuff I made. Some people also made this feedback to me (hello tazarbill), and eventually the feeling of “♥♥♥♥ I need to do my own unit mod” grew bigger and bigger.

All these things combined led me to start the creation of this mod, in December 2022. And it actually has evolved quite a lot since its early stages. Initially, it was much more about rebalancing all the rewards of the game, adding units from my previous mods in the defender set with a few new ones, but nothing too extravagant regarding new units. But then the “Tribe” idea kicked in. The narration aspect of the mod started to take form in my head. I became better and better at creating new units thanks to practice and studying other unit mods. And here we are, with 5 thematic tribes and more than 100 new units lol.

Before going any further, the original intention of improving adventure sets is still there and be aware that vanilla sets are also modified, although definitely not as much as I originally wanted for the moment. The most important change apart from a little bit of unit set changes is that you can now obtain a lot more research from beating vanilla adventure sets (you can get any tiers I or tiers II elemental spells by clearing elemental mana nodes for example).

A few more things about tribes now.

You will find them in the different treasure sites, but each tribe has its favorite locations based on its thematic. On average, they all have 10 adventure sets, 4 of them spread on common/weak locations or Enemy spawners locations and 6 of them equally spread between “medium difficulty” treasure sites (like ancient ruins) and “hard difficulty” treasure sites (like Wizard tower).

The 6 Adventure sets spread in the “medium-to-hard” Treasure sites are the most important. Each of them will propose a specific challenge through a (generally) pretty impactful battle enchantment, and by beating these Adventure sets, you are guaranteed to unlock specific rewards linked to the Tribe you managed to beat.

It works like this:

- The first time you beat a “medium” Adventure set, you are guaranteed to obtain a Tribe domination upgrade which will allow you to produce all tier II units belonging to the tribe.
For all the other times you beat a “medium” adventure set from the same tribe, you will obtain one pretty powerful spell or Empire upgrade coming from the “medium” pool of the tribe.

- The first time you beat a “hard” Adventure set, you are guaranteed to obtain another second Tribe domination upgrade which will allow you to produce all tier III units belonging to the tribe.
And for all the other times you beat a “hard” adventure set from the same tribe, you will obtain one pretty powerful spell or Empire upgrade coming from the “hard” pool of the tribe. Rewards for each tribe are all listed in the marketing pictures on the front page of the mod.

Additionally, you will always get one random tiers II or tiers III unit belonging to the tribe, which means that, contrary to the vanilla game, it will be quite often worth engaging in a difficult fight and wins it as long as you do not lose more than one unit. I will talk about macro-implications of the mod a bit later in the topic.

And what about T4 units? Well, to be fair, I am not sure yet if they should be unlockable, and if so how they could be unlockable. They are extremely strong and serve as some kind of “Pve Bosses” for the moment if you see what I mean. We will see, they are kinda cool right, nothing is set in stone yet.

Regarding the new “Tribe” units that you unlock now.

They were all designed on purpose to be above the curve of power of units belonging to the same tiers. They shine by their high battle stats of course, their new visuals, but they shine mostly because they have plenty of new, unique, and exotic abilities. The point is to shake your routine, to shake your go-to army roster that you always use all the time. Special mention to the tiers II halfling tinkerer who can summon explosive barrels on the map ;)
Another important point, not all races have access to all tribe units. I was a bit hesitant on this aspect as it can be frustrating if you are unlucky (if you tend to face mostly tribes which do not match your starting race for example), but in the end the will to preserve a good amount of “race distinction” prevailed, although the end result is extremely hybrid and scattered in different directions-

- On average, all races have access to 2 or 3 tribe core set of units
- All races have access to one unique tiers II unit and one unique tiers III unit (which means that certain units only exist through one race).
- Some Tribe units are only accessible through Summon spells, which means in this case that all races can have access to them.
- And the same applies for any machine or monster units etc (there are a few). In this case, all races have access to them as well.

Quick note, depending on feedback and my own playtest, I have the following idea in mind-
You may have already noticed it, but two tribes out of five are directly taken from my previous work on the Leader Specialisations (Blood god & Conflux). I could try to provide both tiers II & tiers III units unlock empire upgrade at the start if you take the belonging leader specialization. It would kinda hurt the design point of the mod and it means I need to create two new spec adept+master for Kukulcan, Arachna, and Miracle Court but if the point above appears to be too big of a problem that will be my go-to backup plan to fix it.

About the AI, a pretty important topic-

Micro-wise, I have playtested absolutely all battles with various armies (thanks to test mod and replay auto battle), overall AI is doing well with the new stuff. It’s using the different abilities more or less properly, and there should not be any big problems there apart from small fixes.

Macro-wise is where the challenge is in terms of overall balance, as I believe it will require a lot of finished games before finding the perfect recipe. As mentioned, I would like the game to feel a little bit like a roguelike game. The “little bit” part is important in my sentence- if it happens that the value of rewards being given is too high and that the game is only a matter of clearing treasure sites as fast as possible and snowballing the game, then that’s bad. I still want empire interactions to matter, therefore you can expect balance changes to happen on this front (the most dangerous change that the mod does in this regard is the guaranteed unit reward after clearing a tribe set, so I will keep a close eye on this).

Finally, tribe encounters are designed for humans with a brain right- and AI is not a human. So in order to limit AI setbacks when it will try to clear things, I have upgraded the hidden bonus that the AI gets when facing neutral monsters. It is now set at +3 defense +2 resistance, versus +2 defense and +1 resistance. Not that big, but might be increased in the future if I notice that the AI still struggles a bit too much. So far so good.

We are close to done- one last thing, the mod sneaks into the settings a new global resource setting, the “Ayalin favorite” one, which increases Research cost by 50% and Population growth by 300%. As the title says, I have come to the conclusion that this is the best way to play the game, by stretching the spread between Research cost & Pop growth. To cut things short, by using this setting you will have better period subdivisions between early game (T1 & T2 unit roster), mid game (T2 & T3 unit roster), and late game (T3-T4). You unlock research at a decently good pace, but your income increases much slower so you are forced, if you want to keep up your military power at a good level, to transition properly between T1-T2-T3-T4 instead of going 1) starting army -> 2) City economic upgrades only & city expansions 3) Turn 40 start T4 production. With this setting, you will see that upkeep gold is truly a problem and you cannot afford to rush for Tiers 3 tiers 4 too fast, you need several transitioned army rosters composed of T1-T2 units to protect your economic growth. Worth mentioning this setting is highly favorable to the AI, as gold is not an issue for her.

I think I have covered all important things- feel free to start a design discussion here or tell your experience playing with the mod, I am looking forward to your feedback!:)