Make Karaz Ankor Great Again: The Campaign Side

This is a post about the current issues with the Campaign mechanics of dwarves and possible, simple ways to implement solutions that I’d like to propose. If players or a willing modder finds it interesting, please make it a reality for I believe this would fix most of their issues. If you do not agree, hey this is a discussion thread so make your opinion known!

Dawis, although a fairly popular race, largely suffer from half baked implementation and ideas, and many players are deterred from playing them due to the actual faults in their playstyle. This is especially true on the battle side (corner camping and artillery hammering can only be fun for so long), but they also suffer on the campaign side because of uninteresting and passive mechanics. So before acknowledging the issues, let me stop the grumbling for a second and list the overall positive changes they received:

\-The implementation of the forging system is a good addition, providing some customisation options to a largely static roster.

\-The grudge meter is also a very interesting, loreful mechanic with a lot of potential. The emergence of slayer can prove useful.

Unfortunately, both these mechanics are suffering from the half-assed syndrome: a lot of runes and items and only craftable once, and more importantly, runes for units can only be implemented once per army. This means that if I want to make my grudge thrower hominy projectiles, I can only have one of them doing it. In a game where you hang with stacks on 20 and generally between 4-6 artillery pieces this is a huge design issue. Same for unique runes, it generally gets diluted very quick in the huge pool of army you get by the mid game.

The grudge system is also not developed enough: there is 0 reason to not reduce the grudges as much as possible, as the benefits are too good to pass on, but the benefits of settling a grudge are only a handful of gold and oathgold which is completely forgettable. Therefore in lategame you should limit your amount of grudges as much as possible.

I believe that these two mechanics can be tweaked to make Dawis way more interesting without making them OP or by adding new mechanics from Chorf, and I shall try to explain how. But before, what are the Dwarves strengths and weaknesses?

**Strengths**:

Strong economy in lategame (although got nerfed since WHII)

Strong ancillaries

Good heroes

Decent T1 infantry and early range units

Strong autoresolve weight due to armor/MD

**Weaknesses:**

Slow growth

Expensive buildings

No mobility

No magic

Uninteresting lords with no mount options

No replenishment option (crippling in early game)

Unidimensional playstyle (range castle or nothing)

Basically, the dwarf plastyle is fundamentally defensive in early game, slowly gaining levels and ancillaries to leverage the economy while slowly growing settlements and then going ham with lots of armies. Of course it is possible to be more aggressive, but this is how the game pushes you to play.

I think that campaign mechanics should incentivize 2 aspects of the dwarves more:

1. **The importance of the past and Grudges in Dawi society**

For this I would like 3 things.

First, have the rewards for grudges be more than gold and oathgold. Give factionwide growth and public order for 1 turn to push players to stop turtling and actually get shit done in the wider world. Having your high king get out of his realm to raze a human castle because the guy stole 2 cents should be exhilarating for any dwarf. It would allow good dwarf players to actually develop their economy before turn 100. Have the rewards scale with ther severity of the grudges also! I’d imagine something like +50 growth +5 public order for minor grudges and +150 + 5 for severity 6 or something. This way letting a grudge fester to actually reap greater rewards would be a viable strategy, which is actually loreful.

Second, please give an actual post battle option for dwarves that is worthwhile. Currently you have access to either : ransom for gold/oathgold or Gorog, which provide 20 growth and 2 public order for 2 turns. The theory behind gorog is that fighting battles near your provinces should help growing your settlement. Good idea on paper, except that 20 growth and 2 public order is so forgettable that it is always better to take the gold. Moreover, the growth and publi order bonus does not increase with the size of the battle, and if you fought the battle even slightly outside your province, you have to go back to get the bonus active, which often result on it only lasting 1 turn if you cannot go back right away.

Either make the bonus for gorog stackable (currently you can only have 1 gorog active) and scaling on the size of the battle, or make them act factionwide for it to be worth it.

Third, focusing on the “reconquering the Karaz Ankor part”. Dwarves basically want their ancestral homes back, and care little for anything not a mountain. Why can dwarves colonise steppes, jungle or wasteland is beyond me. What I propose is that, similarly to the donut for the high elves, every major dwarf stronghold is tracked. Whevenever orcs or skaven occupy them, dwarves get debuffs, but when the proportion of pacified stronghold increases, the dwarves get increasingly more buffs to reflect the restauration of the Karaz Ankor.

Additionally, dwarves are the only race able to build T4 ressource buildings, but most ressources are on minor settlements, which make it useless. To correct this, make it so dwarves can only build outpost in everything that isn’t a mountain hold (like wood elves), but in exchange make them the only race able to build T4 minor settlements. This should naturally make them play tall, keeping them to the mountains.

**2) The importance of equipment, ancestral runes and elite infantry impact**

Dwarves armies in the lategame are all alike. This is mostly due to their roster, but also to their strong economy, lack of unit caps unimpactful units. In the late game you pump out armies like there is no tomorrow, and it’s weird for a race that supposedly struggles with dwindling numbers.

Something that would help getting attached to armies would be to have some scrap-like upgrades for dawi troops based on oathgold spendings, and some oathgold upkeep on the more elite troops like ironbreakers. There is already a mod that does it on the workshop, where you spend some oathgold on a unit to give it upgrades. This would give some sinks for this resource other than items and runes.

Also on the subject of runes, make them stackable in an army: If I want to have my 3 cannons all have the exploding runes, I should be able to do so if I can pay for the runes. This would allow for armies to be more personalized and unique, and pushing the player to take care of 4-5 stacks rather than sending 10 to their doom every 5 turns.

There it is, sorry for this huge brick of text, Congratulations to anyone actually reading this.

**TLDR:**

\-Make grudges resolution give rewards scaling with severity, composed of factionwide growth and control bonuses rather than just gold/oathgold. Have spontaneous grudge missions pop whenever the bar is too low.

\-Rework the Gorog! post battle option to scale with battle size and make it factionwide or last for more turns

\-Rework dawi habitability, giving them T4 minor settlements in mountains holds but having them only build Wood elve-like outpost in everything that isn’t a traditional dwarven stronghold.

\-Have constant bonuses/maluses to economy and public order based on the amount of major dawi stronghold actually occupied by dwarves similar to the high elve donut occupation system.

\-Have oathgold/scrap like upgrade system for units, either on cost or on upkeep to provide additional oathgold sinks

\-Actually make the runes for units stackable in a single army, and producible in several exemplaries