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The White Huns

Sweeping down from the bleached slopes of the Hindu Kush mountains, the White Huns represent a Horde faction who start in a position to directly threaten the Sassanid Empire. Alongside a revised Hunnic unit roster featuring new units and the Hunnic cultural trait Scourge of God, they also enjoy a new Faction Trait, Scourge of The East.

Scourge of The East:

• Income +100% from sacking, looting and raiding
• Integrity +1 for every war being prosecuted
• Immune to desert attrition
• Morale +20% versus Eastern Empires

White Hun unit roster:

White Hun armies are an exotic and fearsome blend of Hunnic, Eastern and Gupta Indian fighting styles. As such, they offer an incontestable counter-argument to cavalry-heavy armies.

The White Hun roster features a mixture of existing Hunnic units, new White Hunnic units, and notable additions from the Persian unit roster.

New units:

• Kindred of The Sun: General’s unit, Khanda swords, heavy precursor weapon, good armour.
• Xionite Spears: Heavy spear infantry, high missile block chance, precursor weapon.
• Yanda Spearmasters: Heavy spear infantry, heavy armour, large shield, low attack, rapid advance, precursor weapon.
• Khingila’s Khandas: Khanda sword infantry, low attack, high block chance, medium armour, high melee defence, inexpensive.
• Guardians of the Hindu Kush: 2H axe infantry, good armour, excellent melee defence, precursor weapon.
• Hephtalite Chargers: Melee cavalry, high missile block chance, precursor weapon.
• Spet Xyon Archers: Elite bow cavalry, high attack, high spear damage, light mass.

Persian unit additions:

• Sogdian Warriors.
• Sogdian Camel Raiders.
• Indian Elephants.

Alans Unit Roster Overhaul With the removal of certain units, visual and stat tweaks to those that remain and a slew of new units, the Alans unit roster has changed in a number of significant ways. Firstly, it’s no longer based on the Germanic core roster, and is unique in that the only infantry are melee infantry; crossbowmen, archers, spear and pike infantry have all been removed. There’s a greater focus on cavalry overall, and the Alans can field some unique pure anti-cav focused cavalry, plus a monstrous new anti-infantry steamroller in the shape of the insanely expensive Sarmatian Cataphract Lancers.

New Alans Units:

• Alani Warriors: Aggressive melee infantry, medium armour, sword and large shield, frenzied advance.
• Alani Swordsmen: Defensive melee infantry, medium armour, sword and large shield.
• Sarmatian Band: Inexpensive basic melee infantry, sword and shield.
• Sarmatian Mounted Skirmishers: Skirmisher cavalry, Javelin and sword, low attack, high damage, ideal anti-missile/mopping up.
• Cavalry Raiders Cavalry: Skirmisher cavalry, Javelin and sword, low attack, high damage, ideal anti-missile/mopping up.
• Mounted Sword Raiders Cavalry: Skirmisher cavalry, Javelin and sword, low attack, high damage, ideal anti-missile/mopping up.
• Chosen Raiders Cavalry: Skirmisher cavalry, Javelin and sword, low attack, high damage, ideal anti-missile/mopping up.
• Mounted Bows: Inexpensive horse archers.
• Alani Horse Archers: Standard horse archers.
• Alani Cavalry Warriors: Spear-wielding basic melee cavalry.
• Alani Mounted Tribesmen: Unique anti-cav cavalry, flying wedge formation (bonus vs cav), medium mass, no charge bonus.
• Alani Mounted Veterans: Unique anti-cav cavalry, flying wedge formation (bonus vs cav), medium mass, no charge bonus.
• Alani Heavy Cataphracts: Excellent vs infantry, poor vs cav, v slow, high health and armour, small charge bonus.
• Sarmatian Shock Cavalry: Elite shock cavalry.
• Sarmatian Heavy Cavalry: Elite heavy cavalry.
• Sarmatian Cataphract Lancers: Extreme charge bonus, very high cost, frenzied charge, excellent armour, High health.
• Sarmatian Cataphract Archers: Very heavily armoured horse archers.

Campaign Balancing

Grand Campaign Balancing Changes Below is a list of balancing changes made to the Attila Grand Campaign:

• Reduced the chance of non-Hunnic factions razing settlements.
• Most Roman units now take 1 turn to recruit instead of two.
• Reduced Sassanid income bonus from Puppet States from 200% to 100%.
• Reduced base income for non-playable factions from 4000 a turn to 3000 a turn.
• Changed corruption formula so it is much more of a curve with less severe jumps, and now caps off at 60%.
• Reduced settlement and army zones-of-control.
• Fixed public order effects from food.

These changes have had a big cumulative effect on the balance of the campaign. With less razing by AI factions, more regions are owned and contested over the course of a campaign, and less razing also means less migration and public order problems so the Roman Empires survive for longer, though their lands are still fought over. The Roman Empires are further strengthened by the changes to their unit recruitment times.

In the East the reduction of the money the Sassanids are getting from their puppets, the reduction in the income of non-playable factions (which means a double hit in the money the Sassanids are making), and the introduction of the White Huns means the balance is completely different now. Faced with a threat from the East, a strong Eastern Roman Empire to the West, and with less cash, the Sassanids are no longer the completely dominant force they were.

The changes to corruption makes expanding your empire more rewarding, and also has an impact on the Western Roman Empire at the start of the campaign, as they have less corruption throughout their provinces and more income to use to be stronger.

Changing the zone of control size for armies and settlements frees up some more room for manoeuvre on the campaign map.

Public order effects from food weren’t properly working before, so more attention must be paid to the impact of food shortages on public order in your provinces.

Battle Balancing

There are also some changes to the balancing of battles that apply across all campaigns:

• Increased the reload time of arrow towers so they fire less often.
• Reduced collision damage multiplier.
• Adjusted the flanking and outnumbered penalties in melee combat.

The change to arrow towers means lone units can more reliably capture and destroy arrow towers on their own, and more emphasis is placed on the defending force’s strength.

Reducing the collision damage multiplier has a big impact on cavalry, making their charge bonus and other stats more important in combat which helps balance combat.

Tweaking the outnumbered and flanking factors in melee combat helps balance out some areas of combat, and certainly helps with some of the balancing aims we had for Age of Charlemagne.

Known issues

• Western European Christian nation voiceover occasionally refers to Rome when referencing themselves/their enemies.