Hey Phoenix, thank you so much for your feedback and for playing this mod and am very glad to know that you enjoy it (with a friend, moreover)! :) I'll answer to each point and hopefully find some solutions if there's any.

1 - FIELD DEFENDER SKILL : The skill should only target bow infantry, and if matchlock unit are impacted by this skill, it is not intended. After checking the values for the skill, there's nothing that can be done regarding this.

2 - SECTARIAN SKILLS : They aren't as good as the regular skills depending on a normal playstyle. This tree section focus at making the game harder at the beginning to gradually unlock very useful skills. It is to emulate a struggle, which is historical for the faction having this skill tree. I was also supposed to make a few tweaks to make it even more of a struggle, but lost interest and went toward other hobbies. I'm coming back soon though to bring a couple change and work on some balance issue. After reading this, I'd like you to give me more feedback on what could be done, knowing that this skill tree has the purpose to make the game harder at the beginning if the player chose this path.

3 - OTOMO MATCHLOCK : Again, the Otomo isn't a big player in this game, so they have a great advantage in the beginning, able to use matchlock right on, but the more the game advance, the more they loose this advantage. It is up to the human player to play wisely and not let time play against him. But also, what is not known, every single faction have a matchlock unit cap, except for the Otomo. The Oda and Tokugawa, if I remember, have a pretty hight cap, but the other faction have a unit cap of around 20 or 30 matchlock units. So the other clans, if they chose this skill (Army Reform), might have an advantage over the Otomo, but just in quality, not quantity. But the chances that they choose this skill and use a lot of matchlock units is small, from my experience. So the human player always have the upper hand, in the end.

4 - UNIQUE CLAN SKILLS : You are totally right about that and I had a note to tweak this feature before I stop modding S2. I'll have to check again all the skills, but for sure, I will change the Mori (and the Admiral skill tree, to make it more attractive to the player, the loot bonus will be much more high, so it will become an easy way to make money, costing honor though, it will be a dark path). As for the Otomo, if I remember correctly, there is no skill to enhance the matchlock units other than for ammos, but I'll have to check again and test.

5 - TRADE NODE & SHIP CAPS : First of all, caps main objective is to keep armies realistic. No full army of samurai, or at least not EVERY army full of samurai, as for the oda long yari, its just to prevent having full army of them. They are a cool assets, just didn't want it to be overused.

Secondly, ships mechanics is ♥♥♥♥ in this game. AI spam ships all over the place and Sengoku Jidai era isn't known for the role their ships played. It's just not that important for this period, in my mind, so that's the main reason I put cap on it (even though you can have a decent 2 or 3 full navy armada), to prevent ship spaming and bug, and force AI to focus more on land units than sea (which works quite well). Also, if the player become strong enough and conquer all 6 nodes, it sucks. The player should focus on one or two nodes and leave the others to other faction or prevent them to make a profit with them by sinking their ships. If the player become very big, well nothing prevent him to separates his trade ship to occupy all nodes. Won't make as much money as if he had full fleet of trade ships, but at this point he won't need it.

Lastly, the last tier of the merchant bulding grants you all the ressource available from the nodes as compensation for the ship cap.

6 - TERCIO CAP : You are right and I will increase the cap to make it more impactful in the late game.

Hope my answer will satisfy you and looking forward for a response.

Merry Christmas!

First of all, thanks for the well thought out response. I can only give a quick reply right now (I am away from my shogun install and my notes on this subject) I will be able to give a better and more thoughtful reply when I return home, especially regarding the sectarian skills

In regard to the unique skills, I know there are no skills in the game effecting matchlocks only, however, skills are just a modifier that applies to the generals army, and I am aware of at least one modifier effecting Matchlocks that isnt ammo, the Arsenal (final matchlock/siege building) gives a faction modifier that gives 10% reload speed to matchlocks. I havent modded shogun 2 so I dont know how easy it is to do this, but would it be possible to base a modifier off of that? And your army reformer workaround works fairly well for accuracy (it would also effect siege weapons, but they are never a major component of armies)

Merry Christmas

Okay, back home for a day, so I can actually refer to the skill tree, this is gonna go tier by tier along the sectarian tree

T1: Overall this tier is a bit odd in terms of balance, if you embrace the weaknesses (mainly sucky general), you can get powerful buffs for only 1pt in each, but you are mainly not rewarded at all for placing more than 1pt in these

Isolation: This is a weird one, because you either but 1pt in it and just keep your general out of combat (see synergy with pacifist) or you have to put 3pts in it to have no effect at all, I would probably just make this a 1pt skill with the effects of the 2pt version of this skill

Pacifist: Another weird one, its actually strongest at 1pt, +10 morale to all units makes most units practically unbreakable, and if you go all in with having a sucky general, it doesnt pay to have more than 1pt in this skill, this skill is particularly powerful for Ikko (something I have noticed for a lot of these), I would probably do the same for this as for isolation, except make it have the effects of the 3pt skills, because +10 morale for 1pt is pretty crazy

T2: Search for tranquility: this is ok, its worse than poet in magnitude, and its already easier to boost chi arts than bushido arts, so another 1pt dip just to go further down the tree

T3: This tier has some good, especially for Ikko

Enlightened: Plus all art mastery is markedly better, +1 happiness where this man is present is pretty worthless on generals, as they usually dont sit around defending castles, but this skill is pretty good for a early game general to tech up faster with

Turn towards the world: +1 happiness (same as enlightened) same argument for that as with enlightened, plus replenishment is very nice, especially for Ikko, who have high casualties on their inferior mobs

Devout Beleiver: + Influence radius and rally effectiveness arent great, especially if you just dipped on Pacifist, +10 morale kinda makes rally and general morale boost not do much, Inspire is nice

T4: Again, very good Ikko centric skils

Donation Gatherer: + tax rate is powerful, but like art mastery doesnt actually help you win battles, and generals are there to win battles, its nice for Ikko who lack metsuke to buff tax rates in economic centers

Liberator: -Resistance, -looting, +replenishment, its a good set of buffs, overall a pretty good skill, it fits the flavour for Ikko in particular

Preacher of Hate: -happiness, plus morale, its ok, the happiness malus is usually offset by the troops the general is leading providing repression, and plus morale is nice, although it pales in comparison to the bonus of Pacifist

T5: Holy blessing is meh, Divine protection is way better

Holy Blessing: More Rally, morale and assassin resistance, more inspire, the first three are mostly negated by having 1 each in the T1 skills, which is basically a reqirement to get this far down the tree

Divine Protection: +5 melee defence for all units, more assassin resistance, and +bodygaurd size, this is a powerful capstone, and almost makes it worth going down the tree for, but compared to what you can get by going down the Strategist tree.

That was each skill as itself, and compared to its tier, compared to the central tree (starting with strategist) its hard to justify putting a lot of points into sectarian skills, unless you are Ikko, where the extra replenishment and morale can be very powerful, the other weirdness is that many of the skills are obsoleted by having just 1pt in pacifist

A quick comparison to the central tree, a max level general has 17 skill points

3 Strategist, 3 Infantry Leader, 3 Field Attacker, 3 Field Defender, 1 infantry Tactic
This gives +50% movement range (strategic mobility is one of the best out of combat bonuses for a general), +30% influence radius (decent, and is a side effect of strategists movement bonus), +2 melee defence for spears, +4 morale for all units, +3 Melee attack for all units, +10 accuracy for bows, +30% reload for bows, +50% ammo, +4 command when attacking or defending on land, and Stand and Fight (very strong), with 4pts left over, you can pickup the clan unique if you want it, and still get honourable (for the daimyo especially) or poet, or Cavalry commander and cavalry tactic

It costs 7pts to get Divine Protection (the best skill in sectarian), which means you would have to give up field defender or field attacker at least, maybe both if you want the clan skill and/or honourable, and that by itself isnt a complaint, you should have to pick and choose which skills you want. Overall I feel like most general builds will focus heavily on the central tree, because ultimately, generals are there to help you win battles, with poet being excellent if you want to tech up faster (particularly for matchlocks),

I feel like the Sectarian skill tree should remain a tree (rather than the buffet table that is the standard upgrade for upkeep skills), but it should fill the same function, as a supplement to the primary skills, rather than a replacement (its easier to balance this too), right now the main points I have come to notice is that some of the skills would be better off being weaker 1pt skills, because right now they are either 1pt dips or you ignore them (especially T1 & T2), which is a wierd place for a 3pt skill to be, and maybe there needs to be a tweaked version of these each for Ikko/Uesugi/Otomo, where most of the skills are roughly the same, but a few have some tweaks for each clan, as right now they seem to benefit and fit the Ikko 'Clan of the People' style the most

Thanks, I'll consider everything that was said here while rebalancing the mod.

I came back to playing once again this mod, which I really enjoy. Regarding the unit caps :

Ship caps :
You can very well get around the cap by capturing ships, especially Wako ones. However this leads to a lot of metagaming, as you want pirates to spawn. You end up having 2/3rds of your merchant fleet and 1/3rd of your navy being Wako ships, which I am sure was not the case in Sengoku Japan. :)

This also makes you go for boarding during all naval battles, as capturing ships is the only viable way to expand your economy and navy. Moreover, captured ships do not cost any money to build, so you also end up leaving a couple of small clans building them in order to have a steady supply of new ships.

I would highly suggest to remove the limits on the trade ships and raise the one on the Kobaya type ones. The current version of the mod forces you into a lot of boarding which makes the battles play more or less the same way.

Removing the limit on trade ships allows for more money, which helps the maintenance of new ships. Kobaya type has mostly archers, so they would help you defend from boarding parties and speed up battles if need be.

Is there a way to show the cap for each unit in game or at least have a link to an external table where all the current caps are ? For some units the Paedia page does not work and for those that it loads there is no cap limit mentioned.