Bytz Skills of the Empire Rejuvenated: An Empire Skills Overhaul
Yes, I realize now that there is a typo in the cover photo…it makes me sad.
I’m not satisfied with the Empire’s vanilla skill lines. They’re kind of bland and generic, and also largely irrelevant to making your armies tick. Doubly so due to the Empire being encouraged to diversify their armies, but then having skills that buff only one or two units, and often buffing them in irrelevant ways *cough* honest steel *cough*.
So I set out to fix that, then this mod grew wildly out of hand because I don’t know when to stop, and I had to break it up into five different mods.
So enough faff on my part, what does this mod do? This mod completely replaces the red and blue lines for EVERY Empire general, and gives each type of general a COMPLETELY UNIQUE red & blue skill tree that plays into their strengths. This encourages the Empire to diversify general types based on what enemies they’re fighting and what units they want to field.
Generally speaking, the Empire Generals (including Karl Franz, Gelt, & Todbringer) want diverse armies relying especially on elite units such as handgunners, halberdiers, greatswords and demigryphs.
Arch Lectors rely more on sustained melee combat with especially large buffs to "common" troops such as spearmen, flagellants, and swordsmen.
Huntsmen Generals are all about unit roles, with cavalry being fast shockers, infantry being better at holding the line, and archers getting significant boosts to their range & reload.
And that’s just the red line! The blue line is structured along a similar idea; for example, only Huntsmen Generals gain access to Lightning Strike; meanwhile Empire Generals get large boosts to XP, both on recruitment and over time; and Arch Lectors suffer less attrition, have massive untainted effects, and heal their armies very quickly.
You can see a few of the skills in the screenshot to see what kind of changes are at work here.
If you like lightning strike for Empire Generals and Arch Lectors, I’ve made a submod that reintroduces it:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2499960664
This mod was designed to work alongside my other Empire mods:
Bytz Better Karl Franz
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2469027163
Bytz For The Emperor! An Empire Unit Tweaks Mod
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2469027473
Bytz Imperial Tech & Economy Tweaks
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2469027675
Bytz Better Witch Hunters
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2398026968
Due to the way it was implemented, any mods that add units to the Empire will need to be specially included to get buffs from the red line skills. Currently the following mods are included (what that unit counts as is in brackets):
Empire Pegasus Pistolkorps (Horse version of the appropriate weapon)
Gyrocopters for Empire (Siege)
Templars of Sigmar (Greatswords)
Unique Steam Tanks III (Steam Tanks)
Should be fully compatible with all the units introduced by Sigmar’s Heirs. (Let me know if you find anything that doesn’t seem to be working with it.)
Due to the size and scope of this mod, I don’t know how balanced it all is and I don’t know if everything works the way that it should. I’ve been working on it and testing for about four months, but I don’t have enough time to test everything as much as I’d like to. Therefore, if you notice anything is functioning a little bit wonky, let me know. If you want to make this compatible with SFO or any other mod feel free to, I just ask that you give me a nod. I don’t know if there’s much to translate, but if you want to translate it, you have my full permission to do so.
