The Black Watch – Miao Ying’s Personal Army

Welcome to the Black Watch my friends, a semi-overhaul project for the Northern Provinces of Cathay that has been a labour of love for me for a good bit over half a year. I had the basic idea almost a year ago, starting out as specialized version of the Celestial Dragon Guard for Miao Ying. From there it grew to include not one, but two armies, two legendary heroes, a colour change and a special campaign mechanic exclusive to the Northern Provinces. Let me run you through the details.

The headline of this mod consists of the Black Watch, which is an army of elite female warriors available only to Miao Ying. The Black Watch is the force that guards the Great Bastion, under the command of Lei Shen and Dian Mu, Miao Ying’s oldest daughters (details below). Those in the Black Watch are women that are descendants, at various distances, of Miao Ying, akin to the Shugengan Lords. Unlike them, those in the Black Watch have pledged to serve as soldiers at the Great Bastion, under the overall command of their matriarch-ancestor. Commiting their inherited powers solely to holding back the hordes, they very quickly become elite veterans in a force any Chaos Lord would fear to face. Battle after battle, defense after defense combined with the power of Dragons, hardens any person to perfection. Units in the Black Watch share a number of traits, such as Immune to Psychology, Defensive Stance and Charge Reflection, as well as the passives Will of the Dragons and Eyes of the Dragon. This specializes them for one purpose: stalwart defense in the face of overwhelming odds and numbers. Drawing upon their inherited powers, they also all do magical attacks. These units can be recruited from various levels of the main settlement building of the Snake, Dragon and Turtle Gates of the Great Bastion by Miao Ying only.

Of all the descendants of Miao Ying, her daughters Lei Shen and Dian Mu are the most powerful. This has earned them direct dual command at the Bastion as Miao Ying’s on-site representatives. Both of Miao Ying’s oldest daughters are hybrid-spellcasters, though in different ways, coming with two full magical lores each. They specialize in different lores, with Lei Shen drawing upon her mother’s storm powers to wield the Lore of Heavens, alongside Lore of Yang. Now it may seem odd that the oldest daughter of a Yin-aligned Dragon would wield Yang, but this is due to the fact that Lei Shen has chosen to become a melee specialist, fighting in the thick of it in same way that her mother does. This is also because of the Cathayan view of balance and harmony, with the Yin side of things inherited by her younger sister. Dian Mu has also imbraced the Lore of Light, which is more suited to her more support-oriented combat-style and philosophy. Like the Storm Dispensers, she focuses her storm powers into archer-styled lightning arrows, but at a significantly more powerful scale, specialized in crippling large chaotic monsters.

Although being Miao Ying’s daughters, Lei Shen and Dian Mu do not transform into Dragons during battle. They share an affinity for their soldiers and chose to fight alongside them, maybe not as equals, but as fellow warriors defending the Bastion. They are technically available for recruitment by their mother on turn one, but you have to unlock the recruitment for Astromancers in order to get the appropriate recruitment window in the hero section. When you unlock recruitment, don’t pay any attention to the new icon tabs in the hero window, simply select the default one and scroll down, you’ll see the daughters at the bottom of the hero list.

While the Black Watch guards the Great Bastion, Miao Ying has another specialized force under her command: The Militia of Nan-Gau. This is a more medium-tier squad, designed to be a more urban militia on par with the Jade Warriors. These are also descendants of Miao Ying (with one exception), but more distant, without any special powers due to heavy interbreeding with normal humans. Unlike the Jade Warriors though, aside from their lower armour value, the core of the Milita is very much a self-supporting force, in various ways. As it is designed to be an urban force, 4 of the 5 units have been given mutually supportive close-quarter AoE abilities, namely Restock, Stand Your Ground and Fight or Die. The idea is for the units to be used close together and beyond the basic buffs of fighting in base-game Harmony, these additional abilities will further enhance their ability to hold the line during sieges. These units are available again only to Miao Ying and can be recruited by building the Ninth Wall special building in Nan-Gau.

One of Miao Ying’s most important tasks, as the ruler of the Northern Provinces, is to defend the Great Bastion. With the Black Watch being an elite force that takes multiple turns to recruit, building up a Black Watch army would normally take a long time, even with all three gates under your control. To compensate, Miao Ying has been given an extra faction mechanic, where she gets extra local recruitment slots for every level of the main settlement building of the gates at level 3 and above. At level 3, the gates gain an additional slot. At level 4, they get another one. And at level 5, a single gate can offer 5 recruitment slots. In total thus, at maximum, Miao Ying can utilize 15 recruitment slots at the three Bastion Gates, which should make building up the Black Watch easier. This is again a feature unique to Miao Ying, it does not work for Zhao Ming.

The Northern Provinces and the Western Provinces have swapped colours on the campaign map and when it comes to uniform color variants. Miao Ying’s faction is now primarily black, while Zhao Ming’s is primarily white. This both to bring them in line with their flags, give the Black Watch their proper colours in campaign, but also to more accurately depict the Yin and Yang colourscheme.

Enjoy!

– Dian Mu’s weapons are grounded on the campaign map. Can’t really do anything about until Cathay gets a ranged hero in future. Just didn’t want her to T-pose on campaign map.
– Dian Mu’s ponytail looks a bit weird when running with sword equipped sometimes. Im still new to Asset Editor and haven’t figured out how to make it stationary on her head yet. Just make her run with a bow okay?
– The Ninth Wall building in Nan-Gau has for some reason been downgraded to a Tier 3 building. I seem to recall it started out as a Tier 5 building, right? I can’t remember. Anyway, this is the game’s doing when I assigned the units to it, not an intention of mine.

Missile Cavalry variant of Storm Dispensers, when Cathay gets missile cav in future updates.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2984830686&searchtext=