About unique weapons - The vanilla game has a unique spear the Ray. It is slightly longer and a couple of points(1 or 2) stronger than ordinary long war spears - a small chip for the Munchkins. In balanced mode, it became weaker than long war spear and the point of buying it was gone ... this is not entirely logical.
That isn't correct. The Ray has speed 88, 220 weapon length, 33 thrust damage. That is better than both Long War Spears, the highest damage one is speed 91, 193 weapon length, 33 thrust damage. 3 points of speed for the extra length is no choice.
The only thing competitive with the Ray is the Heavy Long War Spear, lootable from high level enemies. That one has 88 speed, 205 weapon length, 34 thrust damage. Between the Ray and that Heavy Long War Spear, it becomes a tradeoff of 15 length vs 1 damage.
Creating those kinds of tradeoffs is exactly the goal of Balance Mod--make all top tier weapons have some viable choices for the player to choose the best for their situation. And note, there is absolutely
no reason why the Ray should be the unquestionably best spear. It is easy to obtain--spend a little gold at a special smith.
The harder equipment to get are items for which there isn't a guaranteed way to buy, but instead you have to loot them from the best troops. Balance Mod generally takes the best guaranteed equipment and balances them to be of similar tier but slightly different tradeoffs from the best lootable equipment: Orm's Lorrica vs Bear Lorrica for example (Bear Lorrica is only obtainable by looting the highest level Norse troops).
What Balance Mod does do is make all the unique weapons that were underpowered better. Unique swords are given boosts in Balance Mod, especially the ones that were weak in vanilla, and Irish swords are no longer always better.
Moreover, the one spear that actually
is special and hard to obtain--Gungnir--is made stronger, with +1 damage over the Ray in Balance Mod, making it the best spear in the game. If the player actually wants to work to earn a slightly better weapon, they have that option--go get Gungnir, and pay the price that comes from seizing it from its owner, rather than expect a super weapon for dropping a small amount of gold at a smith. Though it doesn't matter much--+1 damage is dwarfed by player skill, and either spear is going to kill your enemies.
They already had their advantages - a big bonus of speed, due to which they inflicted very great damage, the ability to use with a shield, the ability to use with a horse and most importantly - they, unlike other long-range weapons, occupy only one slot. So I chose this particular weapon for my character in VC vanilla without any additional damage. So it seems to me that it’s not quite balanced to make this weapon ultimatum: 1 hit = one death.
There seems to be confusion here--Balance Mod did not make throwing weapons in general stronger. Throwing spears and basic "javelins" were only buffed to make them closer in overall utility to the Irish/Pict javelins. Not equal, mind you--the Irish and Picts versions still have an advantage there--just a little more condensed.
Throwing spears got a boost of damage in balance mod, to make up for their low range, low speed, and low ammo. This doesn't make them overpowered, it just makes them more competitive with the Irish/Pict throwing weapons with each having tradeoffs.
Javelins, on the other hand, are not one hit kills, and more importantly Balance Mod did
not increase their damage as a general matter. Instead what Balance Mod did was condense the difference between the Irish/Pict javelins, and the basic javelins wielded by anglosaxon/norse.
Since you mentioned player weapon loadout--no, Balance Mod has not offered the player a better weapon here. In Vanilla VC the player would always go for Irish Horseman Javelins, by far the superior weapon. In Balance Mod that same weapon is still the best (though slightly weakened) overall, though the player might, based on their specific kind of play, sometimes opt for the higher damage very low ammo/range throwing spear instead, giving them a viable tactical choice.
Ok, I prefer to give them better longbow + an additional pack of arrows + some sort of light armors + boots and helmets (the same as used by briton archers) + light spears (like used by a soldier wives) and archery skill 145.
Please don't complain that a unit was "nerfed" relative to your own modded version. I treat player feedback very seriously, and it always causes me to research things, so when you above complained that I had nerfed the unit, I went and recorded the Balance Mod stats and equipment, then loaded up vanilla VC, and then wrote and posted a comparison. That's a lot of time wasted.
You are welcome to suggest your own alternate versions of units, though I wouldn't adopt this particular one (as I mentioned earlier, I think making female warriors pure archers is far overplayed in popular culture, and I prefer a hybrid elite slinger/melee christian counterpart to the norse warrior archer).
In general, choosing the right type of items is quite difficult, given the fact that they do not have numbering - only a position in the list ...
You can mostly use Morgh's editor for personal changes, just don't try to edit Lords or it will erase their navigation skill.