Hello everyone,
first of all, sorry for my English, while reading this you may experience bad grammar and phrasing
INTRODUCTION
Since i bought Warhammer 1 i started to be fascinated by vampire's lore and history, that's why i started modding them and creating new units for them, while i have finalized my TWW1 mod experience by creating the Ordo Draconis - Templehof Expanded mod, together with Guvenoren. This mod was intended to provide a different gameplay for a vampire faction and was made with little ambition tbh, that's because its release was close with the release of TWW2 and i didn't have the time to do everything in a "loreful" way.
That's why i am planning (and start to work on) major overhauls for all the vampiric bloodlines in Warhammer 2. Since we have little knowledge of what will be the fate of the Nechrarchs and Strygos once Mortal Empire and Tomb Kings will be out, take this as a preliminary plan. Consider also that i've heard of the presence of Lahmia maybe, but i might be wrong, so i will not include it here for now.
The Idea Itself
The Overhaul will be divided in three major steps:
- Roster Expansion unique units for each bloodline, customization of generic heroes, unique heroes, unique lord(s) and unique technology/buildings (when possible) for each bloodline.
Uploading of the roster expansions on the Steam Workshop and here to receive some feedback and see if the changes brought by the units alone will be enough or something more is needed.Startpos editing, Unique Legendary Lords (if not already done in step 1) and eventually other modifications after the first feedback.(Optional and interchangeable): Themed summoning, bored to be the same grave guard raised both in Bretonnia, Empire, and Southlands? i will try to improve that by making every raise dead unique to the region you are summoning them. I don't know if that is even possible but i may even actually do this first.- All the above except the first step have been cancelled due to my little time available, unfortunately my work requires a lot more time than expected this year. I decided to deliver each mod as complete as possible, so to avoid endless patches. Moreover, any mod will require Crynsos Faction Unlocker.
For the moment i have begin working on the strigoi, so they will have more information and preview here.
"Detailed" Factions changes:
The Strigos: Thanks to Crynsos, the faction was re-added after the TK release, so the work here can go on. The mod will be released by the end of August.
- Strigoi- and Ghouls-based army, necromancy is of course present but will have some downfall since brute force is the main concern of the Strygos. Some necromantic power will be available through the Strigoi Lords and the Strygani Petru.
- Planned variation in weapons and colours for strygos and ghouls (when possible). Also, lore-friendly summon spells for strigoi and revamped skill tree with loreful traits and skills. Summon spells will include "summon bats" and "summon vermin" from the WFRP 2nd edition books.
Possible unique spell: Bat Form. Not possible for now- Humans "levies", the Strigany, that will provide them with expendable infantry and cavalry and some little firepower (not artillery, i don't want to make anything powder related apart from what can be found in the lore).
- Concept and Mechanics: Expendable and numerous forces, with hosts of different sized and characterized strygos vampires as hight tier infantry and flying monsters (the strigheist). Magic still need to be looked at, but i don't want to mess with vanilla spells to avoid compatiblilty issues. They will play as a faction more concerned with quantity rather than quality. The player will be able to lead a human army of strygani or an undead army. Each one will receive bonus from the respective Lords (Strigoi for the Undead, Khazarkhan and Petru for the living, but see above for the Petru. Ushoran will be able to provide bonus for both.)
- The player will have to choose the path of the Ghoul Kings OR that of the old Strygos. The faction will get unique units based on the choices. Until now this choices will be provided via technology, or everything else that can make the choice exclusive. Due to limited time the "choice" will be dependant on the Lord that will lead the army, specific and loreful bonus will be provided via unique technologies.
- Lore-friendly name list to add some variation between the standard vampires and to avoid the spread of the von Carstein in the South.
- Lore-friendly events and choices after conquering specific settlements.
Army Roster (definitive, i may have forgot some vanilla units)
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
The Brotherhood of Nechrachs:
- Magic-centered faction, focused on skeletal, zombie and everything necromancy-related or monstrosities. Flying units like zombie dragon and abyssal terrors to support the units. Unique units will be the necromantic constructs.
- Planned variations for the appearance of the Nechrarchs, with reference to both recent and older miniatures from army books and WFRP books.
- Unique spells, traits and skills taken from the WFRP books (e.g. Summon Ancients)
- Lore-friendly name list to add some variation between the standard vampires (in particular, Nehekharan names).
- Living units: mutants and dregs.
- No access to vampiress or vampire Lords, so no real melee Lord, apart maybe from some limited strygos used as experiment.
- Probably many traits, skills and else will give bonus to winds of magic and magic cooldown for certain spell (i want to avoid spamming of course). Variation between summons and summon spells.
This is the faction about i'm more ignorant, i still need to study about them.
Army Roster (still WIP)
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Ordo Draconis: the mod is released, you can find it HERE
- Heavy cavalry and infantry-centered faction, expensive units with bonus to costs reduction given by agents, lords and heroes.
- They will have to play aggressively, since they will field less, elite armies, rather than 4 doomstack of expendable units.
- The units will rank up faster to avoid being steamrolled by the superior number of the enemies.
- Malus to necromancy users and most of the spells-related things.
Mechanics: i would love to make them a horde faction to begin with. So they will be my first try at startpos editing (another solution is the unlocker provided by Crynsos, but i don't like the idea of asking others for a work that i should be doing). Of course most of the assets are already done because of my mod in TWW1, so there will probably be less work to do in that sense.As before, due to my little time available, I will follow what I did in TWW1 here, that said, Ordo Draconis will replace Templehof.
Every faction will receive technologies, buildings, faction traits and stuff according to their lore, to improve immersion and to differentiate from a common vampire experience (of course i don't want to make the factions forcedly different, i will not force anything that is not loreful or lore adjacent).
These are the starting ideas, i understand they may seems lacking in information, but keep in mind that everything will be more clear (mostly for myself) once more DLCs will come out and after the release of Mortal Empires.
Of course i would love to hear ideas and suggestions to better characterize those factions. This will be a long project given the amount of unit and other things that needs to be done and tested
Also, most of the inspiration was taken and will be taken from PaulH's amazing threads and in particular his Information Thread for Potential Vampire Counts Units