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Ori's Army Buffs for Agents: Bretonnia (S&F)

TL;DR - this mod adds two new skill lines to all the Bretonnian agents in vanilla (i.e. Paladin and the three Damsel variants). The new skills focus on army-wide unit buffs.

Agents/heroic characters in vanilla have somewhat lackluster skill trees, so this mod gives each agent two new skill trees that focus on buffing other units when the agent is embedded in an army. In total 4 new skill lines were created, each one centered on a different unit class as follows:
1. Peasant Bowmen and Mounted Yeomen units.
2. Low tier melee peasant units (mob, men-at-arms and polearms).
3. Beasts, Grail units and Battle Pilgrims.
4. Low tier knights.


Each agent has two of the abovementioned skill lines as follows:
Paladin has lines 2 and 4.
Damsel of Heavens has lines 1 and 3.
Damsel of Beasts has lines 1 and 2.
Damsel of Life has lines 3 and 4.


Each skill line is roughly divided into 3 parts:
The first part is composed of 5 skills, each with 3 tiers, that buff specific units in battle. For example "+X Melee Defense for all Pegasus Knights units", or "+X Magic Resistance for all Knights Errant, Knights of the Realm and Questing Knight units".

The second part unlocks after spending 5 skill points in the previous section, and gives flavorful abilities to specific unit types. For example "Regeneration for Grail Knights and Grail Guardians units", or "Stalk for all Peasant Bowmen units".

The third part is separate to the previous two, and has 4 skills that buff units in campaign - i.e. replenishment and upkeep bonuses.


Agents are in my opinion a campaign mechanic with a lot of potential, yet are underdeveloped in vanilla, where they perform mainly two types of tasks: Hero actions on the campaign map or fighting in combat (including spells). With this mod I tried to give them some more utility and add strategy to their skill development, by creating two more functions: Buffing units within battles (hopefully incentivizing different army compositions...), and staying embedded in an army even if that army is not fighting - through the upkeep/replenishment buffs. The measure for success being the player asking more often - "what are my agents doing right now?"

I tried to avoid more of the meta-doomstacking cheese and buff stacking, so for this reason there are some seemingly weird balance choices. For starters the buffs are all relatively weak, about the scale of 2-4 Weapon Damage, Melee Attack/Defense or leadership depending on the level of the skill. The choice to give abilities to units also fits this purpose, since the same ability can't be stacked by multiple agents (unlike flat buffs). Lastly, the units that are buffed by these skills were carefully selected so as not to create one meta skill that buffs all the 'good units', but instead, buff the typically weak units and hopefully make them more viable for campaign. If the mod works as intended, then the player should have some incentive to form themed stacks, with 2-4 agents and units that have a bit of a twist.

And finally, an example: In this mod there is a skill that buffs the melee stats of Peasant Bowmen and all Mounted Yeomen units. The player, who wants to use Peasant Bowmen, has an agent lying around and figures "might as well buff their melee stats, just to unlock that vanguard/stalk ability that's actually worth something". Let's say that happens three or four times, and suddenly - Mounted Yeomen are actually viable, your Peasant Bowmen are decent in melee (making them into a new type of hybrid unit...), and there is an incentive to form a new and themed stack. Oh, and those Bowmen will also have stalk ;-)


This mod is in Beta. I tested different skills to see that it works, but hadn't yet played a full campaign, so balance might be off and bugs that I don't know about could show up. Please let me know in the comments if anything comes up.

Should be compatible with any mod that doesn't add new skill lines to the Paladin and Damsels. Switching on/off mid-game is not recommended.

I don't have any plans to expand on this mod or adapt it to other factions (aside from a version I made for Empire - check out bellow). Feel free to change this mod as you like. If I make balance changes in the future, they will be relatively small.




Check out my other mods:
Ori's Bretonnia Vow Rework
Ori's Army Buffs for Agents: Empire
Ori's Respawn for Greenskins
Ori's Respawn for Horde Armies
Ori's 50% Experience Gain
Ori's Frozen Climate for Norsca and Kislev
Ori's Overpowered Raids for Beastmen and Savage Orcs
Ori's Super Agents: Buffed Campaign Actions