this is definetly a great modmod for what i already consider the best Civ 4 mod ever created, its much more lore friendly than even the original and so far is mostly balanced
except one thing, the runewyrms
i haven't seen such a broken unit in any FFH2 modmod, and i have played every single one of them, ever, it got so frustrated with it, that i had to NUKE the unit stats in the XML because its so ridiculous overpowered its not even funny
see the thing that makes an unit that hard counters something not frustrating to deal with when you are being directly attacked by them is that there still ways to mitigate their damage and stop them from going trought and killing the units they are supposed to counter if you are prepared enough, for example, in the original ffh2 and pretty much everyother modmod the counter to mages and arcane units are assasins, but you can stop them with guardsmen promoted units and being agressive instead of waiting for them to attack you
runewyrms attacks are completely unavoiable, they target arcane units first, with an ridiculous 500% bonus against them, this is without counting the fact that their magic inmune promotions also gives them extra % to strenght against said units, so they'll never lose regardless of the defending units stats, and even if they do by some mathematically miracle, they are expendable, since you can summon them with the force 3 spell with the same ease as summoning an skeleton, they'll most likely be summoned during the enemy turn and attack your stack of units killing them without you being able to respond, not like you could do anything against them anyways with those broken stats
as if this wasn't enough for some reason, even if this unit loses it still makes all your arcane units useless by removing their spells.... like what? do you have any idea how long it takes for a non charismatic leader to level up an archmage to a decent state? all of this for the enemy to pick one damn promotion and completely negate your arcane units forever? this is probably the thing that infuriates me the most, you have this unit you have spend Hundreds and hundreds of turns leveling and protecting and it has all the reason in the world to be strong because you have spend the time and effort to make sure it gets to that point, so there shouldn't be any balance complains here, but then the enemy comes with a freshly promoted archmage, picks force 3 first, summons one of these dumb units, and instantly destroys all that effort, with no effort or planning of his own, the runewyrm in his vanilla state is a goddamn I WIN button, and that's absolutely disgusting, because there absolutely no other unit that's like that in the game, oh sure some can reach that point if they are promoted enough, but that will take effort from your part, yet the runewyrm is like that since the start, no investment in time, combat, or resources whatsoever (asides from having a source of force mana and one archmage)
they even make good units to throw away at the enemy regardless, they have 7 strenght wich is a lot for a summoned unit, has a bunch of free promotions and his race automatically gives it great combat bonuses and inmunitys aswell, as if that WASN'T enough it also has force mana afinnity and gets a FREE promotion for each force mana node you have because i guess they are still to weak?..., so not only they completely negate arcane units with no way for the enemy to do anything about it, but if you specialise your civ enough, they are also extremely good against everything
i genuinely don't understand what went trought your mind when introducing such an unit, did the trough of how frustrating it would be to go up against it as a human player never crossed your mind? there's no unit like it in the ENTIRE game, literally everything else at the very least is acceptable balance wise, nothing too crazy or too weak, yet this unit just stands above everything else with how ridiculous it is and how easy it is to obtain, oh sure Arcane units are a lot stronger in this mod but you still need to give them experience and promotions to make them work and that means they have to risk their lives in combat in order to accomplish that, that takes effort and luck, yet the runewyrms don't need to do any of this, has they have all these advantages right as they spawn
you can still have an unit that fits its purpose without making it a broken mess, remove the absurd 500% vs arcane that makes them insta win in combat and make it something more sane like 25 -50%, so the defending units may still survive if strongh enough/well positioned, they already get bonuses against arcane because of their promotions (175% total bonus against an archmage or an unit with chanelling 3, because the effect vs channeling stacks, so its 25% vs channeling 1, 50% vs 2 and 100% vs 3,all of this for free) no need for more, the fact that they target arcane units first regardless of the stack promotions already makes them a better choice than assasins, and for god sake remove the "even if i lose i still screw you over" effect they have of taking all the enemy spell spheres promotion away EVEN if they lose (guess having 675% extra str against arcane units right from the start isn't enough of a guaranteed combat victory huh?), wich is completely ridiculous, they also ignore guardsman units, so forget about protecting your units with another one, their attack is completely unstoppable and unavoiable, literally, in every sence of the word, an I WIN button of an unit
sorry for the rant but talking about this unit bought back memorys about the games they ruined, i really tried to go around them in several tries, but i just couldn't, i got feed up of being frustrated with losing my archmages to a broken unit that i just had enough and made it a wimp in the XML, if i knew how to remove it for good, i would in an instant
unrelated with the above but some of the BUG options where slowing down the game turns quite a lot, dunno wich one exactly as i disabled all of them(minus advanced combat odds) and it fixed the issue
