Arthanor’s 5th Ed White Lions
Here is yet another stab at fixing the poor white lions. This one is inspired by my memories of 5th Ed high elves, back when I actively collected them.
White Lions are the strongest of elves besides heroes, fearless monster hunters and bodyguards of the Phoenix King, not trash tier infantry. This mod aims to make them "high elven big ‘uns": elite, high damage and dangerous to monsters. In order to get them there, they got:
– Recruitment cost increased to 1100 and upkeep to 280
– HP increased to 84 per model from 75
– MD increased to 32 from 28
– Mass set to heavy
– Leadership increased to 90 from 75
– Weapon damage set to 17/25 Normal/AP from 9/25
– 14 Anti-Large added
– White lion chariots now require a grove in the same province to be built.
The graph attached shows expected damage against a range of melee defense, against infantry and large targets for most high elf infantry. With these changes, while lions still underperform phoenix guards against large units and do worse than sword masters do against their preferred targets, infantry. Against infantry, they do about the same as phoenix guards also against infantry or sword masters against large units. They outperform spearmen and silverin guards per attack, but have lower numbers and worse defense on top of costing more. If one manages to engage 20% more silverin guard with large units to benefit from the 20% more men, they outperform the new white lions.
As of 2020-05-29
Two new passives added to represent the old Lion Leaping and Lion Rampant special rules and define a new playstyle for the unit.
Lion Leaping: +MD when charging
Lion Rampant: -MA/+MD when losing a fight with high leadership, recharges only out of melee
There is no "when charged" trigger for abilities and charge defense seemed too strong. So instead, if morale is high but the fight is going poorly, White Lions will try to hang on a bit longer.
Overall, the passives reward a daring playstyle with the lions: Charge dangerous, big things or hold on despite the odds to buy extra times for the archers/lords/monsters/cavalry to come save you. Exactly what I would expect white lions to do.
You can really see the effect of these two passive by watching a unit’s health in combat. Charging swordmasters, Lion Leaping makes the initial engagement about even, then they lose when it wears off, lion rampant kicks in and health drops slower, then it wears off and they get slaughtered. Also, when charged by cavalry, they quickly go into "unit losing", Lion Rampant kicks off, they weather the charge bonus and then turn the fights with anti-large.
If you are interested in lore friendly high elf mods, check my workshop
