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Cathay Skill Tree Overhaul [Updated for 4.2.1]

Have you ever just looked into the sorry stats and skill tree of Lord Magistrate and wondered why he even exists? Have you ever just stared at Shugengan's Dragon Ball fighting animation, and wondered why is she not a hybrid lord? Have you looked at the skill tree of Alchemist and Astromancer, compare them to the agents of WH2, and think to yourself "Boy do these skill tree sucks massive D"?

I know I did, especially after playing Chorf.

If you have had any of these problems, then this mod is for you.


In short, it adds a total of 53 new, custom skills to generic lords and heroes of Cathay (LLs are not touched, since they only lack artifacts but are fun in everything else). Most are just additions, except for magistrate.


The Lord Magistrate receives the most changes as he has the most confusing skill set in the entire game. He has awful melee stats and once on the balloon, he loses the ability to melee altogether. Yet for some philosophical reason, CA decides that this poor guy needs a yellow skill tree but with buffs not nearly as good as lords such as Arch Lector. With this mod, he does not have a yellow skill tree *period*, and to compensate he receives two new lines of skill: one is a red line that further buffed units past lv.7 in his army, and the other one is a blue line that provides a massive bonus to the local region. He should now be THE best generic lord in the entire game for leading the army or holding region while remaining as a god-awful personal combatant, and next to worthless when the combat actually starts. He also has 5 mutually exclusive skills that provide faction-wide buff once he hit lv 20.

With the new changes to magistrate post SoC, skill nodes have been moved around for magistrate. His skill tree now is quite bloated with this mod on, I will think on what to do with him next but right now the mod should at least not mess up all the skill nodes and actually work.

Shugengans now have a custom skill tree that is slightly different depending on their lore. These skill trees are better than other hybrid lords as Shugengan's base stats are not great. Overall, they are now very capable hybrid lords that are more akin to vampire lords once the yellow line is invested. Yang lord is more specialized in going personal, while Yin lord is more specialized in sticking around and applying debuffs. Shugengans have 6 mutually exclusive skills once they hit lv 20, which will allow you to further specialize them.

Alchemist has 2 mutually exclusive mini-skill lines once she hits lv 18. The first one provides various elixirs ability to herself and embed army if you invest more points in the skill. The second one provides an army-wide buff, making her more similar to an engineer (albeit the number are a lot weaker compare to skaven or dwarf, however she does provide magical attack). To balance the fact that she is already a full fledged caster, both skill trees increase the upkeep of all units in the army that she is embedded in. She also has a skill that gives her access to warp fireballs similar to an Eshin sorcerer, because why not? I am sure snorting warp stone is fun.

Astromancer is similar to Alchemist. The first of his new skill line greatly buffs his efficiency as a caster and the last skill will allow your army to access 'Celestial Intervention' and increase its uses. However, his personal combat stats will be further reduced (if you put him on the compass and invest in this skill tree, without defensive item/trait he will have 0 melee defense and will be moving at 20 speeds. He will die if stuck in melee). His second skill tree has 0 downsides, and is focused more as an anti-mage, increases WoM cost, miscast chance for enemy caster in the province, provides spell resistance and the finisher gives him 'Talisman of Obsidian' (remove magical attack). A little boring, but thematically makes a lot of sense, imo.

New skill and abilities icons are made based on vanilla icons, and are done by Cactopus


If you are using SFO, use this compatibility patch.

This mod changes the vanilla combat skill tree of Lord Magistrate by turning them off in UI. Using this mod with other mods that make changes to these skills may have unintended consequences (probably won't crash your game though).

Unit sets for magistrate are custom, so if you are using mods that add more units to Cathay's roster, some of them will not be buffed by some new skills. The compatibility patch can be found here. If you have other mods in mind then you may post a request for them in the comment, and I will see what I can do.

Should be compatible with everything that doesn't change that magistrate combat skill line.

[中文] Chinese Translation