Khan Attila Overhaul 0.6

Have you been searching for a base game Attila overhaul that seeks to be more balanced and historical? Then this is the mod for you (maybe xD). Originally this was a private project but I have decided to release it publicly so maybe people can get some enjoyment out of it.

Off the bat I will have to give credit to JGdaJoker and The_Yogi for their mods which I have incorporated into this overhaul (AI will colonize the burned world! and Fertility-Increasing Sanitation Buildings respectively). I have made some minor tweaks to both to fit better in this overhaul so all credit goes to them for developing the original products. Also, absolutely massive thank you to Magnar whose Rome 2 modding tutorials on YouTube allowed me to do this.

This overhaul combines minor changes and additions I have made over many months so I will not give a comprehensive list of changes but an overview. First, battle stuff:

Units rebalanced across the board

Levy troops’ morale is much more temperamental – you can spam them if you want but beware as they can shatter much easier (especially for Christians when fighting the Huns!)

Cav = powerful but can still be fragile and are expensive. No longer immune to impact damage – use light cav cautiously, they will get destoyed by heavy cav in charge. Elephants much better now because of this

If anyone knows how to stop cav being auto-killed when they retreat from combat please let me know (think it’s to address pulling through but is annoying for cav)

Missiles are generally more accurate with more ammo for bows/slings but slightly less damaging – missile block chance significantly increased for larger shields so shooting from flanks/back is more important. Jav inf = quick damage dealers so good against cav

Bonus vs removed for most things in game (except inf spears and some others). Doesn’t effect strengths of most units (funny that). Cav spears included in this, now spear armed cav have higher charge while sword armed have more melee attack

Shock inf have low melee attack, defence but high damage and charge – don’t use as front-line troops

Hoplite wall ability (currently only on Roman spears) now gives 100% melee attack with units balanced accordingly. They will beat similar tiered sword units when in formation (remember to give an attack order once a unit in any shieldwall-esque formation is in combat otherwise the unit won’t seem to attack and will perform poorly – another Attila base game oversight which seem to pop up a lot when modding) but will be poor out of formation – i.e. strong but inflexible

Combat is slower so unfortunately is easier (I like playing on very hard battles)

Fatigue is very important with greater impact on melee defence than other stats

Probably many other tweaks but can’t put them all

I’ve probably changed a lot in campaign so I’ll try keep it brief. The big change in campaign is that wars are expensive!! Upkeeps in the field have been dramatically increased so it is very likely as a small nation that you will be losing money when campaigning with an army, so you better make them brief. It’s not perfect, but to simulate this upkeeps are dramatically reduced when an army is garrisoned and army recruitment capacity is dramatically increased. This is to encourage keeping small armies during peace and then quickly “levying” the rest of an army when war breaks out. And to stop a player cheekily hopping from city to city to avoid upkeep campaign movement range is also reduced when garrisoned. Again, not a perfect system but it does bring in to play a couple of things. I’ve actually found myself using that tax slider that I’ve previously never touched when I’m campaigning to alleviate some of the cost and trying not to get into multi-front wars. Also, it encourages building up a treasury before a campaign and utilising stances like raiding while in the field. I would also recommend pairing this mod with AoC Diplomacy for grand campaign by Phallus Darkblade for less “no peace until my last city is about to be taken” AI and War weariness: Attila Campaign by Magnar for a little more challenge (especially for Romans). I’ve done overhauls for a number of factions – Ostrogoths, Vandals, WRE, ERE, Franks, Sassanids where I’ve added/removed units, tweaked different things and tried to make them more unique. I will dot point below for each:

Romans – garrisoned armies have less upkeep reduction but decrease local construction costs. All Roman military are more expensive to recruit and take longer to recruit (3 or more turns). As a result legionaries are some of the best infantry in the game (cost wise). Exception to this is foederati and bucellarii (currently only infantry units) – they take only 1 turn to recruit but foederati are same standard as other factions and bucellarii are more expensive. You’ll have to decide whether you can afford to wait around to recruit a professional army or have to rely on foederati/bucellarii and mercs to put out spot fires – good luck! Starting economy is much more developed and starting armies better

Vandals – Dramatically increased raiding/sacking income but less income from buildings when settled. Luckily, they have access to specialist Vandal raider units – any Vandal raider unit has increased campaign movement range and are less expensive to upkeep (living off land) but have a smaller unit size and are generally less armoured.

Sassanids – All units that are based in client states i.e. dailamites, sogdians, kurds etc. have a campaign cap. So, you can decide to keep a fewer number of more expensive armies using these units or have more armies with an elite core (cataphracts, elephants, immortals…) supplemented with levies.

Franks – Not much changed campaign wise, units have just been updated to have more armoured, defensive axemen (more like my beautiful axe heerbann and fransisca heerbann from barbarian invasion) and more specific frankish rather than germanic units

Ostrogoths – Can recruit Roman style units now rather than straight up Roman units (though they can still recruit some cav and artillery) – are available through the smith chain once settled and roman buildings. Their pike units are now dismounted lancers (pikes were a little bit of a stretch historically so this is my middle ground).

A couple of other campaign points:

Unit upgrades for land units generally scrapped for factions I have updated (except for generals) i.e. can still recruit levies in late game. Eventually I would like to do all units. AI has seemed to be fine currently but will have to keep an eye on it in future.

Elite units for all factions are capped

Noble and personally armed levies for non-Roman factions have very small recruit costs – simulating the fact that they would equip themselves. Romans have increased recruitment costs for all units due to being generally state armed and trained.

Minor plagues will go away quicker but will have more impact on economy/food production. Sanitation buildings are very expensive to build and generally have increased upkeep cost. Means you can be ok with sanitation not being perfect everywhere (haven’t quite tested though) and gives a choice – more money or sanitation

Note: I’ve taken shortcuts in a few areas, unit cards and descriptions. Most unit cards have been taken from other units in the game and same for descriptions. Therefore, some units may look a little different to their cards. If anyone likes doing unit cards and wants to make some feel free to get into contact (I’m not very good at photoshop).

Goals for future:
More faction updates
Adding more foederati units to Romans
Adding more higher tier mercs to the game

Feel free to post any feedback/issues below. This mod is more for roleplay rather than real challenge creator but I hope you enjoy nonetheless!