Warband Expanded (lorefriendly)

The goal of this mod is to expand the Warband mechanic to existing races in a way that fits the lore and doesn’t feel forced. The core idea is that soldiers should grow together with your empire and that starting soldiers shouldn’t have to be disbanded simply because new recruitment options became available.

In general upgrades follow a natrual progression path for most soldiers. Think of Empire Spearmen being upgraded to their shielded variant and later on to Halberdiers or Pistoliers being upgraded to Outriders. Elven Archers being upgraded to their Light Armour variant or Silver Helms to their shielded variant.

Besides these upgrades there are a few extended paths for certain factions where it fits. Bretonnia is the first that comes to mind where Foot Squires can move up all the way to Grail Guardians. Only a few will receive enough experience to even come close but if they fight hard enough for The Lady a great knighthood awaits them.

You will never see upgrades that make no sense from a lore perspective. Bretonnia will never see the common folk ascend to knighthood for instance. Nor will a common Elven spearman ever reach the status of Swordmaster of Hoeth.

Looking at factions like Beastmen, Lizardmen, Skaven,… the potential is very limited. Often the lore clearly states that units are born differently (Ungor vs Gor, Clanrat vs Stormvermin, Skink vs Saurus,… that there are no clear upgrade paths apart from adding shields to unshielded units.

Another important aspect is realism. Archers simply won’t transform themselves into artillery pieces and infantryman won’t suddenly turn into monsters without the blessing of Chaos. The factions covered by this mod are still highly dependant on their construction to gain access to high level units. All this mod does is keep the regular units relevant for a longer period of time and minimize the need for replacing units simply because a shielded or higher armored variant is available.

Currently the following factions are implemented:

• Empire
• Bretonnia
• Dwarfs
• High Elves
• Dark Elves
• Cathay
• Kislev
• Beastmen
• Greenskins
• Norsca
• Lizardmen
• Skaven
• Wood Elves

To-do:

• All Chaos factions

• Vampire Counts
• Vampire Coast
• Tomb Kings

These factions are not included since it doesn’t make sense for them to upgrade units. Their units are undead units reanimated to life. They have no will of their own, no capacity to learn. They rely on muscle memory most of all to move forward and operate weapons. You won’t have sergeant Skelly teaching other Grave Guards to now use a big sword instead of a sword and shield. And you won’t see zombies stripping of their flesh to become skeletons.

Balancing is very much a work in progress. Costs and rank requirements are following a rough set of rules but might change in future or based on feedback.

Why no weapon swapping?
Honestly I’m afraid it will become very cheesy. Being able to swap all your units around to a different weapon setup to counteract enemies takes away the thought put into army setups and selecting the types of units. It will make the game too easy.

Is it compatible…
It is savegame compatible and should be compatible with any mod that doesn’t interfer with the warband system. The only addition to the game is a rule set per faction for upgrading units, nothing is written to save files and it’s not interacting with any other mechanisms in game.

Is it tested?
I’m a software developer so… not really. It’s a simple mechanism and I verify each race from the UI but I can’t verify each and every upgrade path without levelling up each unit to the required ranks. If you run into a but let me know!

Why the horizontal paths?
To be honest it’s a bit of a challenging system. For each unit card you need to set the X and Y coordinates within the window and per visual link (the little arrows) you need to tell the system from which card they leave and at which card they arrive. You also need to select where in the card they will enter (left, right, top, bottom,…) this makes aligning things other than horizontally a challenge.