Nerfageddon

TWW2 is no longer getting patches or DLC, so my mods are also considered final and will not receive any more updates. Therefore I disabled comments on all of them to avoid constantly getting notifications for the same dumb questions that have been answered a thousand times already. Any comments or announcements I might make in the future will be posted under my collection here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1766089433

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Premise: 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. What’s a small morale buff from "Stand your Ground" when the unit already had 90 leadership and fights until almost everyone is dead anyway? The game would be more fun if buffs from skills, tech, traits and items only slightly enhanced 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.

The mod nerfs over 3,500 individual effects from skills, technologies, items, followers and traits to advance this goal. It is focused on a number of unit combat stats, but also rebalances some general game features and even a few more specific mechanics that are egregiously imbalanced in the vanilla game, like the Dark Elf slave economy.

TRAITS
All "Defeated Legendary Lord XY" traits have been removed. Most passively acquired traits like "Superior Attacker" or "Sea Legs" that were automatically earned just by playing the game have also been removed.

Faction traits and innate traits of Legendary Lords are unaffected and have not been nerfed, except some that buffed leadership. Extra nerf to some especially ridiculous generic traits like Entrepreneur and Incendiary.

(This change conflicts with the "Community Bugfix" mod. If you use that mod, you need to change the mod load order in the Mod Manager so that the Community Bugfix is below the Nerfageddon mod. Note that you will then not get the effects from whatever the Community Bugfix changed in the Lord Traits script – but still all other changes/fixes that mod contains. Without changing the mod load order, traits will still be awarded, albeit most of them without any actual effects.)

TECHNOLOGY
Many effects from technologies that buff unit combat stats have been nerfed.

SKILLS
Buffs from skills to many unit combat stats have been reduced by 50%, rounded down where necessary. Bonuses to leadership have been nerfed even more.

MAGIC ITEMS
Many randomly gained items have weaker buffs, especially if they buff damage resistances or leadership. Unique/Legendary items have not been nerfed except for bonuses to leadership and damage resistances.
The random chance that a magic item drops after a battle has been reduced sharply. It used to be about 50% plus bonuses from the character so could end up at 100%. Base chance is now 20% and there is no bonus chance for game difficulty or victory type anymore, also the effects from skills and items on drop chance have been heavily nerfed. Magic items should now be scarce instead of piling up in a huge heap with most of them unused.

FOLLOWERS
When normally a follower would drop, there is now only a 25% chance that it actually happens.
Effects of followers have also been nerfed in some cases.

IMMORTALITY
With a few exceptions, now only Legendary Lords are immortal without unlocking the Immortality skill. That skill can now only be unlocked at level 30 instead of 20. Most characters that started with the Immortality skill no longer do so, for example Black Ark admirals and Vampire Bloodline lords.

VETERAN UNITS
Stat increases from unit veterancy have been nerfed so that veteran units’ stats grow slower and have a lower ceiling.

DARK ELF SLAVE ECONOMY
Provinces can now hold much fewer slaves, about 30% of vanilla. The idea was that provinces actually get full quickly so their slave income cannot be raised further, and the player has to distribute slaves among more provinces. Unfortunately that didn’t work out as planned because the modifier to income depends on the slave percentage, so now you still get massive bonuses to income from buildings, with fewer slaves. That said, there are now massive public order penalties from slaves, and at the same time slaves die off three times faster, so the player needs to constantly capture new slaves to keep his income up.

ROR / BLESSED SPAWNS
Regiments of Renown, Mercenaries and Blessed Spawnings can now only be recruited when no hostile army is in the same province or in an adjacent region to the character trying to recruit them. No more summoning full elite armies out of thin air instantly, anywhere on the map, to fend off unexpected threats. This only affects the player and can be disabled by using the MCT.

What has NOT been nerfed (yet):

Most innate Legendary Lord traits, faction traits and effects from special mechanics like Grom’s Cauldron
-Faction effects, while often very powerful, are arguably what makes the factions play differently
-Some ridiculously overpowered mechanics like Grom’s recipes probably need a nerf anyway…

Buffs to certain combat stats like speed, range, armour, magic resistance
-those are rarely buffed and the buffs mostly seem reasonable

Most effects that work on the campaign layer (movement range, income, recruitment costs, recruit rank etc)
-While the economy is out of control too, my other mods already handle that
-Army buffs on the campaign layer are fairly balanced

Character abilities, active/temporary combat effects, magic spells
-Those require active play and player skill to use optimally, they can now actually shine and are more powerful because they are not buried under a thick layer of permanent buffs to everything

Q: Can you make a version without the nerfs to…
A: Nope. But feel free to make it yourself (and publish it if you want).

Q: Savegame-compatible?
A: Skills on existing characters will not be gained/lost when the mod is disabled/enabled, otherwise yes.

Q: Is it compatible with…
A: No idea but probably not fully, this mod edits many tables and if other mods edit the same entries then you will either not see all the effects from this mod, or from the other mod. It’s compatible with my own mods, though. Except the previous, small "Declutter" mod.

Q: Why aren’t all nerfs optional/adjustable with MCT?
A: Most of these changes are static database edits that cannot be manipulated via script at runtime, so MCT is not usable.

Q: Why don’t you also nerf…
A: Maybe I just forgot about it 😉

RECOMMENDED OTHER MODS

I recommend using this mod with all others that are currently in my collection, or at least those in the collection that were created by me. Although my mods also work separately, I use all those that are in my collection together, and in my opinion only together they reach their full potential improving and rebalancing the game.