Please use this space to discuss the balancing of the mod. Try to persuade me why changes should be made. Save games of campaigns in progress are gold for me as it's so time-consuming to run campaigns just to test balance.


Almost all races have all their units capped except for one or more absolutely core uncapped unit types. Which units are left uncapped varies depending on the race.

For capped units, the cap is currently derived from four sources:

1. A base cap. All units with a recruitment cost ≤950 have a base cap of between 1 and 4. This cap is inverse to recruitment cost. Dwarf infantry units with a recruitment cost ≤950 have a base cap of between 2 and 8, again inverse to recruitment cost.
   
2. A bonus cap from Legendary Lords. Each Legendary Lord brings with them a small bonus cap to one or a few units associated with the lord.
   
3. Caps from recruitment buildings. These caps are derived from the weight of all the units recruitable from the building at that level. These caps also account for (mostly not implemented at the time of writing) hero caps, and other campaign effects.
   
4. Caps from other buildings. Buildings such as landmarks, ports, trade resources, and others, all offer opportunities for targeted, thematic caps to specific units. Caps from landmark buildings are often quite high. Caps from other buildings are typically very limited.

I may or may not add caps from these sources in the future:

• Red line lord skills.
  
• Technologies.

Caps from buildings are calculated on a per-building basis. This means that the player/AI gets a nominally equivalent return from any building of a given tier, no matter how many units are recruitable from it. For example, the Reiksfort, a T3 building, offers recruitment of a single, quite powerful, cavalry unit. The Empire Stables offers recruitment of a wide selection of mounted units at T3, most of which are comparatively less powerful. This can only be balanced by giving higher caps to the Reiksguard from the Reiksfort than to any single unit from the Stables, but giving an overall higher unit cap from the Stables than from the Reiksfort. The Reiksfort gives a medium number of good cavalry, the Stables offers a collection of small caps of weaker units, that add up to an overall larger number of units, hopefully of roughly equivalent worth to the Reiksguard. Which building will be of more use to the player depends on the difficulty level, and the player's needs. A common question is why the caps for unit X are so low, but the caps for unit Y are so much higher, and the answer is invariably that unit X is sharing a recruitment building with multiple other units, while unit Y is alone, or shares the building with only a very small number of other units.

The cap, and the mod as a whole, is intended to be as minimal as possible, change as few things as possible, create as few incompatibilities as possible, while remaining functional, thematic, and fun. This means that some compromises are made, and many opportunities to make the mod more awesome are simply not touched because they are not core to the unit cap, and would create further incompatibilities.

The spreadsheet I use for calculating caps can be viewed here.[docs.google.com]


For capped units, the cap for recruiting allied units is derived from two sources

1. A base cap. This is the base cap above and is per unit-type, not per allied faction. For example, Skaven warp grinders have a base cap of 2. This applies whether you have one, two, five, or zero (if you're a Skaven faction yourself) skaven allies.
   
2. A cap from the constructed outpost. A tier 1 outpost gives a cap of +1 to T1, T2, & T3 units. A tier 2 outpost gives a cap of +2 to T1, T2, & T3 units, and a cap of +1 to T4 & T5 units. A tier 3 outpost gives a cap of +3 to T1, T2, & T3 units, and +2 to T4 &T5 units.
   
3. Wood Elf unit caps are generated slightly differently as a comparative test to see what works better. A tier 1 outpost gives a cap of +1 to T1 & T2 units. A tier 2 outpost gives a cap of +2 to T1 & T2, and a cap of +1 to T3 & T4 units. A tier 3 outpost gives a cap of +3 to T1 & T2 units, and +2 to T3 &T4 units, and +1 to T5 units.

Constructive feedback on which of these models of cap provision is better is welcome.

This makes outposts quite useful even for factions of the same race, and allows relatively generous access to some of the toys available from other races. Because it's fun.