Pest Control (Skaven Campaign Nerfing) – UPDATED for Silent and the Fury
I updated the files based on CA’s minor changes to stances. This works, I tested multiple Skaven factions for stalk stance behavior and also made sure Skaven settlements are still visible. The visibility doesn’t seem entirely consistent and I couldn’t tell you why except that there may be Skaven tied to initial missions (those first battles you always get) and their home settlement may be hidden as result of startpos or something, I don’t know.
There is a real vermintide in middle-late campaign in both Vortex and ME across the last several updates (2 years!) Even the settlements always showing as ruins is annoying to me and hearkens back to a time when Skaven were much weaker than they are now and were shoehorned into a style of campaign that isn’t really thematic, in my view.
EDIT: The Rakarth Update changes partially vindicate the existence of this mod! Thank you, CA!
With hero caps as they are and that it costs a lot of money to scout settlements you end up sending your armies instead into cities with unknown odds or save scumming because, unlike every single other faction (that has settlements) you can’t see the army that is garrisoning the settlement. On top of that, you get to pay for the privilege of exploring ruins and finding out 95 percent of the time they are just Skaven settlements anyway. That’s no way to live!
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Thank you to Lily for the thumbnail! See her great workshop at https://steamcommunity.com/id/Moipy/myworkshopfiles/?appid=594570
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The Skaven have an UNDER-Empire. They live parallel (mostly) to the no-furs above. They should be more like the Vampire Coast with its coves and a few key settlements. Even Legend hates fighting the Skaven in battles but it’s not about winning the battle, but the irritation in carrying out a war against them when they control 100-200 cities as in some of my campaigns. These are settlements that you must first explore to get any intelligence on whatsoever. At least with Ordertide you had a variety of factions/races to fight and have visibility over cities. The Skaven just have too many advantages and their disadvantages have disappeared (except leadership.)
This mod does a few things:
1. Skaven settlements are NO longer HIDDEN. Once it’s within sight of your army or hero, the garrison and city
will be visible. Now you can spend time exploring actual ruins.
2. No more stalk stance for Skaven EXCEPT for Eshin, for whom it makes a bit of sense. Credit to Pluumer and his No Default Stalk Stance mod https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2096355485mod for part of basis of this mod (I left Alith Anar with stalk.) I will work on putting in default icons but right now understand the "stalk" icon is still displayed but only Eshin will be able to ambush on the march.
3. Higher Skaven-on-Skaven aversion in diplomacy. I would also recommend using a mod that eliminates the bonus to confederation for the AI but I didn’t want to be like one of those modders who creates beautiful and interesting units or heroes and then ties you into their 200 other changes to the game you didn’t want.
4. Skaven Under-cities are harder to detect to give them an advantage where they deserve it. For that part I give credit to, uh, Barack Obama’s concealment mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1723785511
Feedback: Let me know if you have any other ideas. I toyed with notion of reducing some aspects of combat effectiveness but instead I recommend FiftyTifty’s version of Zar’s Better Auto-Resolve mod https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2096362428.
