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Nerfageddon

Updated for 5.0

Takes the nerf bat to many areas of the game to fight powercreep and restore balance in the universe.

The game has too many and too strong buffs that are too easily gained. These permanent buffs obliterate many good game mechanics like fear/terror, loss of a lord or temporary boosts from actively used magic, because the penalties/bonuses from those are insignificant compared to the accumulated effects from all the buffs. The game is more fun if buffs from skills, tech, traits and items only slightly enhance the balanced base stats of characters and units in very targeted ways instead of slapping a huge green buff bar - often longer than the original bar - on every stat. Campaign battles should remain closer to the multiplayer balance, even in the late game.

This is a remake of my WH2 mod, but is now even much more radical. Instead of only toning down unit buffs, it removes most of them completely. In my opinion this really makes battles much more fun because the units are actually balanced, like in a multiplayer match.

• absolutely all leadership buffs from skills, tech and items have been set to zero
  
• all generic red-line skills that buffed regular units have been removed
  
• the ability skills in the red line like Rally or Stand your Ground are now unlockable without those other skills, but have level requirements
  
• unique red skills in the lord skill line of some LL's are still usable but their effects have been nerfed
  
• most traits that are automatically gained without any special effort or achievement have been removed
  
• all "defeated Legendary Lord" traits have been removed
  
• magic items drop much less often, so that they are rare instead of forming a scrap pile in the player's backyard
  
• followers also drop more rarely
  
• veteran units get much lower stat bonuses
  
• but units can reach higher veterancy levels considerably faster
  
• very few characters except faction leaders (LLs) are innately immortal
  
• the immortality skill is unlocked/acquired at level 30 instead of 20

The main goal is to limit changes to unit stats to a minimum, so that battles are and remain very close to how they are in multiplayer - balanced and fun. Active abilities, magic and game mechanics like Terror are much more effective now because their effects are not drowned out by a flood of permanent buffs.

Buffstacking is nerfed so that cheese tactics like using your LL with 70% Ward Save to make all enemies pile up in one spot and then murder them with AoE damage are less viable.

The traits are total nonsense and just had to go, you don't acquire special abilities just because one of your Ironbreaker grunts cut down Vlad von Carstein. And they pile up and build a gargantuan mountain of buffs that completely distorts any effort at balance.

Veterans are a good idea in theory, but if they are so much better than fresh recruits, it encourages overly cautious, risk-averse playing, and savescumming. It should be normal and not a huge setback to regularly lose units in tough battles.

Immortality should be rare and hard-earned, there is no reason for Black Arks to be immortal at level 1.

• Savegame compatible: No (skill locks don't work on old saves)
  
• Multiplayer: Probably, go test it and report!
  
• SFO, Radious: Unknown, go test it and report!
  
• Known incompatibilities: None, in the worst case you will not see all of the changes if another mod overwrites them

Before reporting issues, make sure that you have the current version of the mod. Steam quite often fails to actually pull the newest version after a mod has gotten an update. To make certain that you have the current version, unsub from the mod, then wait a few seconds. Steam will then delete the mod file from your hard drive. Then resub to the mod and Steam will download the current version to your hard drive.