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Leaders of Legend (Lord/Faction Trait Overhaul)

The mod is in the process of being rebuilt and ported to Warhammer 3! ETA unknown, may be released in beta state.

Look forward to dozens of custom traits, rebalanced or entirely new legendary lord skill trees, and updated faction/lord bonuses!

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Generic lord traits, Legendary Lord traits, and faction bonuses vary WILDLY in value in vanilla - many are nearly useless, especially most generic lord traits, and some lords are seriously held back by just having really terrible faction bonuses in general (why pick Vlad over Isabella?). This is particular notable in a lot of Old World factions, but honestly some of the New World factions have it pretty rough too. And then some factions, like Norsca, are stuck with especially terrible generic traits AND mostly mediocre faction bonuses, in some cases having little to do with the fantasy; why does Wulfrik only really buff mammoths and not the Marauders he's supposed to lead?

It's no secret that most generic lord/hero background skills in the vanilla game are genuine trash - Disciplined and its +2MA to army is one of the few vanilla ones I wait for on most lords, and while a few factions have powerful and fun generic options like the Dark Elf Spiteful or Chaos's Infernal Dominance, most wallow in wonderful effects like a massive +5 armor and +3 melee defense to lord only.

So! This mod aims to fix that. Generic traits were split up into three main categories (battle, self, utility) and made much more distinct and meaningful; a self-buffing combat trait will actually make a generic lord pretty damn scary, while there are now multiple different army buffs to pick from rather than JUST Disciplined for most factions.

Due to the fact that many legendary lord traits are mediocre at best, and some were just powercrept a bit by these changes, many have gotten buffs as well - Alith Anar now gives ranged bonuses to his entire army to keep him relevant after Shadow Walkers get replaced by Sisters of Avelorn for example, instead of just wanting a Punitive lord, and Morathi now has a variety of factionwide and personal bonuses to harpies, medusa, and witch elves, as well as lowering nearby enemy Winds of Magic to better represent her mastery of magic. Ghorst can now significantly decrease the vigor loss of his entire army as well and gives Corpse Carts a new aura; he may not win in stats but in persistence!

While not every faction is meant to be perfectly equal, a lot of factions, particularly Old World ones, had very clear good and bad starts. For example, the Fay Enchantress's massive factionwide replenishment boost made her the best Bretonnian starting lord. They were NOT nerfed; instead, I appended buffs to their competition to try and make each faction play a little more uniquely. Skarsnik's start will still be the hardest Greenskin start and Belegar still has his +50% upkeep mechanic, but almost everyone got some new fun stuff.

Wulfrik for example now offers a pretty chunky factionwide boost to the Charge bonus of Marauder infantry, while Grimgor now offers factionwide bonuses to replenishment to counter Azhag's amazing research, sacking, and construction bonuses. Each of the Tomb Kings lords gets bonus cap for their iconic units so when Settra finally makes a Warsphinx statue it isn't 'wasted' on the Warsphinx he starts with. In general, faction bonuses either offer nice generalist buffs based on the lord's approach or try to nudge the player towards using more of their iconic units.

Some lords who had no unique skill lines now have some. This is admittedly an experimental work in progress, but from testing so far I'm pretty happy with how they make some underwhelming lords feel a lot more memorable.

• Most generic traits were roughly balanced against strong traits like Spiteful, Infernal Dominance, etc, or somewhat worse versions of the high influence traits. High Elf Influence traits were balanced against the better influence traits of that tier, ex. Punitive.
  
  
• Lord traits were balanced against the best traits available to that faction and/or the lord's fantasy. Alith Anar outperforms Punitive for example, whereas Lokhir focuses on buffs for Corsairs.
  
  
• The overall power level of lords IS increased. However, this is not player biased; enemy legendary and generic lords alike will be much scarier and more varied. Overall campaign difficulty seems slightly harder since it's not just your Disciplined guys vs useless traits, and you can run into some HORRIFYING armies lmao.
  
  
• Faction traits are very roughly balanced against better vanilla options and the difficulty of the campaign, but I am open to suggestions.

• Save game compatible. Can turn on or off at will.
  
  
• Not SFO compatible and will never be. SFO already reworks all this stuff anyways.
  
  
• Radious compatible; Radious's reduced upkeep of vanilla stuff takes priority but everything this mod adds remains unchanged.
  
  
• Should be compatible with most other mods; if another mod edits the same effect in the same trait, one will win out but it shouldn't crash or anything. May have balance issues if combined with other trait-editing mods that add separate effects. Mods that add custom effects to lords/traits will not be affected by this one.

If you want a smaller scale version of this mod that only messes with generic lord bonuses, I present to you... this trait update! DO NOT run both mods together! They will crash.

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While I don't intend to make further spinoffs of this mod concept, I absolutely welcome feedback - if you think some faction bonuses are way too good now or a faction didn't get as much love as you'd like, let me know and I'll think about it. In the end I'm just a dude who wanted more of a reason to ever pick Mazdamundi or Grimgor or Louen over their better parts, not a robot scientist calculating flawless faction bonuses.

Now with a Chinese translation, thanks to Nemo!