I think I found a error in the stats of units. The trebuchet and catapult has an ability called boulder shot thats labeled "use once per battle" and also states "only usable once every three rounds". Essentially the trebuchets only work once during the fight but are labeled to work every three rounds. I looked at vanilla it doesnt have this so I believe its in this mod. I have no other mods active.

So is this ability boulder shot suppose to be every three rounds or only once per battle?

Luckily the ability is working as intended, being used once per battle. You are correct that the reload stat isn't doing anything and that will get removed.

ok good to know. A shot every three rounds from trebuchets sounds devastating lol.

Took the new baron for a spin! Weening him off his resource bonus and expanding his conscription gimmick was an ambitious choice, but damn if you didn't pull it off. My takeaways from the playthrough:

Hoburgh Soldier spawns are worthless. You already have more human spearmen than you need, and you get them in the exact same time and place. Now, you don't want something too good coming out of Hoburgh Villages, because they are just farm tiles another faction upgraded. That said, I think spawning a single Hog Knight on the Hoburgh Village during conscription wouldn't be too much?
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The Levy ritual is quite pointless on smaller settlements, often spawning 3 of the weakest units in the game. Now that baron has unique interactions with local tribes, I'm imagining a reworked levy ritual with a small gold cost, stronger summons, with local troop types represented.

Nice! Glad to hear that is hitting the mark. I think Hog Knights during conscription is a fine and interesting addition that would add a cool interaction with games played in the New Empire age, and will probably make it in some time soon. I'll give some thought to some kind of levy re-work. I could see going the way of adding terrain specific summons to the existing ritual, or adding an improved version "level 2" version the Baron can cast.

Here's some spaghetti for the wall:

New Merchant ritual that turns an oasis into a trading post.

Merchant rituals have chance of producing ogres or a nameless white wizard.

Conscription from pyramids: 1 skeletal horseman on the manor.

Nice! I'll give those some thought. I think I can safely say I think the oasis ritual will make it in.

***DISCLAIMER:I'm not sure how much flexibility you have working with the vassal mechanic, so some of my suggestions may be bunk. Ain't I a stinker?***

Vassals! A cool gimmick, but their use-case is... tricky.

You give up crucial knight conscription, so spamming it just for the gold bonus seems wrong. You want to get value out of the Vassal Knight and his army. But how?

They are not equipped for guarding walls, more for patrolling. And if there's a nasty indy stack nearby you can't clear immediately? They're going there, with 0-2 conscriptions, and that's where they'll die.

So your use case for vassals is some place you can properly clear out, but still needs patrols due to wandering spawns. Or maybe someplace that might see enemy faction pressure... but like WAY in the future tho. Kind of narrow.

One thing that would help is if you could use AP debt or something to stun the vassal for a good 3 years. That way when they threw themselves into danger, they'll at least have enough troops to inflict casualties. If that's impossible, just make them "lazier". Even that would make them better IMO.

Another idea is to increase the cost of the ritual to say, 25? And give the vassals say, 3 archers and 5 spears to start them off.

Vassals are something where modders do have a little bit of flexibility. Their range of potential wandering and chance of moving can be tweaked (which is an 80% chance to wander out up to 3 squares away). Probably adjusting chance to wander would be the best move, I don't think the "AP debt" would be possible and summoning units that are under their control within the same ritual would be very tricky to make work correctly.

One way to ensure a vassal knight has a minimum amount of forces is to give them a prebattle summon.

Breaks with the game's usual logic, but would not be OP since you can't control them.

I've actually been using prebattle summons more and more as a means to distinguish a non-caster commander in a position of royalty/prestige. I think this is a good suggestion for Vassal Knights and will help give them a little staying power for when the AI's behavior rolls have them make very aggressive plays before they can build up a force. But this is a bonus that appropriately won't scale into the long term.

So, the Baron currently has LOTS of ways to spend 50 gold for +1 income on a tile. The big offender is the monk. Find a big patch of swamp, and it enables a LOT of turtling--and if you manage to upgrade that monk? Double it!

I recommend adding a proximity limitation so that Drain Swamp can't be used near other farms or monasteries. As compensation, you could improve the passive spawning of the monasteries to be more in-line with the forest outposts.

why remove it though? its not like its a particularly good investment anyway, it takes so long to pay off

Paying for itself for 50 turns might sound like bum deal. But think about the alternative.

5 spearmen. They are likely to die on the WAY to expanding into +1 gold worth of territory.

Ok, that's not entirely fair. In practice, you're probably buying longbowmen to complement your free spearmen, and your new territory might come with freespawns or strategic value...

But here's the thing.

Assuming you have decently secure place to do it, turtling is much, MUCH better than expanding, as it doesn't expose you to more multi-faction pressure, which is how games are lost. It's a must pick IMO, just maybe not right away if you find swamps in a bad position and need to expand around them first.

I think having no limit on "drain the swamp" is fine. Flipping a swamp to a farm is a small bit of "building tall" with a reasonable limit, and it's a terrain change that every class in the game can re-capture and benefit from. The Witch is the most harmed by this, but has the means to immediately flip it back.

Monasteries is a different story. Although it's a similar investment/return on gold, I don't think the ability to create a cluster of unit-spawning/monk-boosting temples relatively cheap is great. I think in this case a small/moderate proximity limiter to existing monasteries is appropriate.

Currently I have the Baron's mean to improve bless tied to a random chance anytime a monastery is created. This a change that goes way back to before I even started this mod when I was being very cautious about messing with vanilla mechanics/balance too much. I'm planning on changing this to a new "Reliquary" unit with recruitment scaling off of temples that starts being offered after you've promoted to King, and can expend itself at temples to gain a new blessing. It represents the formation of a new "Royal Church", with sacred relics being purchased with gold to increase the King's holy influence. This way going for a "bless build" and focusing on Templars is less reliant on chance and scales off of holding temples rather than building them and then they lose their relevance. I will likely set the limit for maximum attainable blesses gained this way lower than 20 and give the reliquaries a secondary use so this doesn't run off the rails and turn the Baron into a 2nd Voice of El.