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Progressively Harder Campaign - Anti-Snowball

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://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1766089433

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Dynamically raises the difficulty, scaling with the size of the player's empire and the number of armies he has. The unmodded game is most challenging at the beginning and then very quickly snowballs, most campaigns are effectively won after 20-40 turns. This mod leaves the challenging very early game almost unchanged, but then raises the difficulty gradually to keep campaigns challenging and interesting for much longer.

Now supports the new Mod Configuration Tool by Vandy. The old MCT is no longer supported.

FEATURES
-owning more regions and having more armies progressively reduces tax income and income from raiding, looting, sacking, and increases construction costs
-optional: in addition to these global effects there is reduced growth in every region on higher Empire levels (can be mitigated by sending a specialized hero there)
-optional auto-leveling of AI lords, also scaling with Empire level of the player, so that you don't face noob lords in the late game

EFFECTS AND RECOMMENDED STRATEGIES
-expanding into low-value or unsuitable/uninhabitable provinces is now counter-productive, because they will reduce your income from all your other regions while adding very little themselves -> leave more land to your allies, or as uninhabited buffer zones
-slows expansion because new provinces are a drag on income from all your provinces, and only really contribute significant additional income after they have been developed -> expand slowly, let newly conquered provinces grow and develop them before taking more land
-overall income is significantly reduced, so you'll have to manage with fewer armies and/or cheaper units than in a vanilla campaign. This is by far the biggest impact of this mod -> git gud, don't use three armies where one or two is enough, pick tough battles with the odds against you and still win, no more easy autoresolving through the late game

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Supports the Mod Configuration Tool: Reborn (MCT2)
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/workshop/filedetails/?id=2136347705
With this tool enabled you can choose how many points per region and per army you will get. By changing the defaults you can adjust the added difficulty. For example, if you change points per region from 10 to 9, owning more regions will raise your Empire level and your penalties slightly slower.
The effect description in the game will still wrongly state the default values 10/40, even if other numbers are in effect. Unfortunately effect descriptions are static.
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When enabled, growth penalties are applied per region and can be lessened or even eliminated by sending certain high-level heroes into the province. This way, although most provinces will basically stop growing in a large Empire, you can still develop a few provinces at a time using your heroes. Check the effect description in the province panel for information on which type of hero you need to mitigate the effect.

The AI is not able to keep its lords alive, so it often runs around with level 1 lords even in late game. To help the AI, its lords will now automatically level up when being created or when completing a battle. Their minimum level is player Empire level * 0.66, rounded up. So if you are currently at Empire level 25, AI lords will be at least level 17.

This mod can be used alone, but I balance it to be used together with my other mods which for the most part also make the game harder in other ways.

It can be enabled or disabled at any time and should be compatible with all other mods. When disabled, the savegame will load without the penalties. When enabled, the penalties will kick in after the next turn.

Limitations:
-don't use it with horde factions