Future Underway Mechanic for the Dwarfs

CosmicMoan#1504

Intro

Since the Wood Elves rework reveal, a lot of people have been giving the same suggestion that Dwarfs should have a campaign feature similar to the Wood Elves' teleportation.

I posted a discussion many months ago, asking for such a feature in a potential revisit to the Dwarfs. They along with the Vampire Counts really need another rework pass, since their rework pales in comparison to what we got since the Empire rework. And now the Wood Elves rework is shaping up to be the best out of all of them. I'll leave a link of the post I made about the Dwarfs rework. https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/266657/suggestions-for-future-revisits-to-dwarfs#latest .

The Underway

So, let's get started with the subject matter. The dwarfs could greatly benefit from a mechanic as thematic as that of the worldroots, in the shape of the Underway.
Of course, the Underway feature shouldn't be a copy of the Worldroots. But my idea is that the Dwarfs have to focus on recapturing their lost holds and securing their underway passages. Once secured, they have to repair them, and during those repairs they still have to protect their work from incursions. Once fully repaired, they have to make defensive and infrastructural improvements to the Underway and build up a Garrison for each entrance point. The Underway shouldn't just be exclusive to the Dwarfs imo. Once fully repaired, other races will be able to use these passages to travel to distant locations, as long as they have control of one entrance point. Non-Dwarfen factions cannot teleport to a different point if that entrance hasn't at least been repaired by a dwarfen faction.

For the player, they could have a new UI menu from which they can see different sections of the Underway which need repairing or where an incursion is forming up to reach the upper levels of your region. Ignoring these incursions will lead to them attacking the settlement above the underway's entrance. Attacking any of these incursion armies while they're still underground, will lead to an underway battle. This would also simulate how Dwarfs have most of their fights underground.

One way of seeing what regions have an underway entrance is via an icon next to a settlement's name where other information is found, such as the local resource, etc. If the player isn't playing as a dwarfen faction and has control of such a region, they can use that button if the underway beneath that settlement has been repaired. If they teleport into a region that's control by another AI dwarf faction, then the dwarfen faction will declare war against the non-dwarfen player for taking over another fellow dwarf's settlement and controlling their underway. This not only gives the dwarfs a way of having control over a good chunk of the map, but gives them a great importance, especially in the late-game, when it comes to global objectives for other factions and control of movement over the map, IF they can repair the underway and reclaim their lost holds by then. You might wanna betray your dwarfen ally in order to have that ease of access to two opposite edges of the map, or help them keep it secure from any other threat.

I think there should be a defensive option in the campaign map to seal a hold. That way, a Dwarfen capital city becomes unsiegeable and the underway entrance to that city would be blocked for several turns. This would be a defensive cooldown to secure an entrance point and a valued capital, in order for it to not fall in the wrong hands. But doing so would also disable that settlement from recruiting new forces and your forces would gain battle penalties such as loss of leadership.

Final thoughts

This is just one suggested feature of many which I think the Dwarfs really need. Another being rune-crafting for example or the reconquest of the lost holds, and giving them confederation rewards via the Book of Grudges, etc. Rune of Wrath and Ruin also needs a change, maybe CA can make its effect similar to that of the Skaven warp-grinders, where they disable movement and cause damage in an AoE, along with some thundery/fiery effects.

How would you all feel about this?

permanentquandary

Try this mod. This is similar to what you suggest.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2184408013&searchtext=underway+mod