Herald’s Start Positions – Kislev & Norsca aims to achieve geopolitical balance in Kislev and Norsca in Immortal Empires through a start position script.
This mod is aimed at players who generally enjoy the vanilla Warhammer III experience, but would like to have some of its gameplay issues fixed, or are looking for a new experience, while conserving the vanilla feeling of the game.
It is not aimed at players using a lot of mods which bring new factions and/or change start positions in Kislev and Norsca, such as SCM: Tribes of the North, Cataph’s Kraka Drak, Mixu’s Legendary Lords etc., and wasn’t developed keeping these mods in mind.
Herald’s Start Positions mod series should work with mods like SFO: Grimhammer III which rebalance different aspects of the game, but generally do not touch the start positions of the factions.
The main geopolitical balance issues of the area in vanilla Immortal Empires include
- Kostaltyn‘s faction getting destroyed in the first 20 turns by his northern enemies very often,
- Katarin struggling to survive against enemies in the north and south,
- Wulfrik dominating most of Norsca quite quickly because of the Norsca confederation mechanic.
Starting with overhauling Swissbob’s True World Azazel, Sigvald and Wulfrik changes and then continuing with some of my own, here is a summary of the changes completely resolving, or in Katarin’s case toning down these issues:
- Azazel took Sigvald’s place in the Shard Lands, deciding to deal with the Dark Elves in his own way;
- Sigvald the Magnificent ventured into the Naglfari Mountains looking for beauty, while establishing a power base in Norsca;
- Wulfrik the Wanderer moved to the shores of the Sea of Claws, preparing to raid the Empire’s northern provinces, or to find different challengers when controlled by the player;
- Throt the Unclean focuses his gnarly efforts on the revived Kraka Drak dwarfs, delaying his involvement in the power struggles in Kislev;
- Malakai Makaisson is in the process of clearing the Trollheim Mountains of any Chaos Umgi presence, effectively securing Kostaltyn’s northwestern flank;
- the Brotherhood of the Bear continues its crusade in the Mountains of Hel;
- Throgg decided to strike at Kislev from the northeast, where few would expect him to launch his invasion from;
- Katarin and Kostaltyn can now experience the political struggles in Kislev for longer, being secured from imminent threats to the north at the very start of the game;
- the Baersonlings now start in a more lore-friendly position in the western Goromadny Mountains.
The mod includes a variety of balance, flavour and polish changes in the area.
On the edges of the lands encompassed by this mod, but concerning Be’lakor‘s behaviour in vanilla Immortal Empires – he beelines for ruined settlements north of Naggarond, or for you if you are playing as Louen Leoncoeur, so now he has an additional starting enemy when not controlled by the player – the Bjornlings empowered by Wulfrik’s departure from the Vanaheim Mountains, bringing Be’lakor to Norsca in the first 15 turns and effectively resolving the aforementioned issues.
You can see the most important changes in the screenshots, and all of the territorial changes on the map created using nopeace.net. Factions starting without a settlement are shown controlling the region in which they start their campaign.
I recommend using this mod with my HSP – Ostankya near Kislev mod.
Credits go to Porkenstein for the faction intros and the narrative script, which I edited to fit my changes; Swissbob for his Azazel, Sigvald and Wulfrik code which I used as a base for this mod; and nopeace.net for the maps I used to show the territorial changes.
Coming up:
HSP Gelt in the Empire
Herald’s Climate Suitability Mod – The Empire
HCSM Bretonnia
HSP Athel Loren
HSP Alberic in Bretonnia
HSP Morghur in Bretonnia
Herald’s Recruitment Mod – Bretonnia
HSP Yuan Bo in Cathay
Herald’s UI Mod – Wu Xing Compass
HSP The Changeling in Cathay
Herald’s Building & Recruitment Mod – Kislev
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