Tuskmod 1.3: Tuskflash for the beta of 1.4 is here.
Link to the tournament.
TLDR of what is in this mod:
UI Fix.
Land Battle Rules Modifications.
Reworked Slings and Bows.
Reworked Pike Movement.
Fully Reworked weapon tables.
Reworked Stances.
Unit Diversification.
Basic Cost and Recruitment modifications for campaign (Will add more.)
Altered cavalry movement.
More varied, deep, missile dynamics.
Reworked impact dynamics.
Recommended factions to try in version 1.1:
WRE, Vandals, Caledonians. Things are getting pretty nice in the west.
Steam Workshop link. - For the version that updates itself.
New Download Link. - For Tuskmod 1.3 Slower Battle Speed, and Dynamic Garrisons are now available!
Link to the Tournament and multiplayer versions thread.
Link to the steam group, where you can find other players, ask questions, or get news about the mod.
In Detail:
The role distribution of units: Units have been partitioned into subclasses, to speed future balancing efforts, and improve unit diversity. Currently, a lot of units will steer away from the general pattern as this is currently the work of one individual, over two weeks. I haven't done enough testing to get balance perfect. Hopefully, you all can help.
Abilities:
Abilities have been reworked a bit: Stamina penalties are no longer a guaranteed exhaustion, and abilities now describe how a unit springs back to life when it starts to grow tired. Expect abilities in general to be a little more powerful and exciting. In the first phase of an ability, expect rising stamina, in the second, expect falling stamina.
Expect more interesting, and counter focused side effects to abilities then there was before: For example, Frenzy reduces missile block chance, and Use the Whip damages morale.
Cavalry:
- Melee cavalry now has a greater variety of impact dynamics.
- Light cavalry don't penetrate enemy formations very far, making it easy to escape.
- Medium cavalry penetrate cavalry formations well, and unbraced infantry, making them effective against fleeing enemy cavalry, and maneuvering enemy infantry.
- Heavy cavalry will penetrate even braced formations to some extent, making escape difficulty, but allowing for some serious damage output.
- Lighter cavalry start charging at a longer distance away from the target, and reach faster maximum speeds.
- Cavalry bow precursors have had ammo increased slightly. This has been done a second time for the Huns.
- The Bonus Versus Infantry all units got if they were mounted has been moved to the Cavalry Sword and Axe, rather then being a basic rule of the game.
Ranged combat:
- Foot Archers have had attributes diversified.
- Germanic archers have good range, above average accuracy, but poor damage.
- Persian archers combine incredible accuracy with above average range, and damage.
- Hunnic archers have great rates of fire, and damage.
- Foot Archers and Slingers may gather ammunition on the battlefield. Slingers gather more ammo at once, but take longer in doing so. - This has been moved into a submod, based on user request.
- Javelin Infantry have received defensive formations to help them fill the role of early game burst damage, before transitioning into being the last line of defense in the final stages of the battle.
- Light Javelins have 95 range, Heavy Javelins have 80 range.
- Crossbowmen are practically untouched for now, as they were already very good.
- Javelin cavalry generally has Parthian shot now.
- Bow and Crossbow cavalry don't seem to need many changes at the moment, and have been left mostly unchanged.
- Fatigue negatively impacts accuracy.
- The accuracy attribute is now being utilized in a large batch of units, as an experiment.
- Friendly Fire hitboxes have been adjusted to match standard hitboxes, the vanilla friendly fire hitboxes were 144% larger.
- Archers recover fatigue more slowly when reloading and firing.
- Horse archers now have gotten a balance pass: Horse archers that lack Parthian shot have far higher reload skill and, and accuracy then those that do have Parthian shot. This helps forward only horse archers use more lethal munitions in their limited amount of firing time, such as heavy shot.
- Standard shot has an accuracy bonus.
- Heavy and flaming shot arc more, making it so they are easier to fire over friendly units.
- Firing rapidly causes fatigue, and fatigue damages accuracy.
Infantry:
- Late game one handed axe infantry no longer experiences attribute stagnation.
- Infantry weapons have been specialized further: The Roman swords have been redefined to represent swords meant to be used with stabbing, and the more standard swords reflect swords that are mostly being used for hacking/slashing.
- Units in infantry formations now walk at a much more brisk pace, especially pikes.
- Infantry formations have been diversified:
- Shield wall is the primary anti infantry formation, however, locking shields together prevents men in the unit from being able to protect their head and shoulders, increasing the units vulnerability to missile fire.
- Spear wall and defensive testudo have been made more similar, but currently defensive testudo is still completely stationary.
- Offensive Testudo is more about advancing though missiles, and has been buffed in this area, however, it is not as good in an actual fight anymore (Of course, the bugs prevented it from applying in actual fights at all, hopefully, CA will fix its behavior, as I am having a hard time finding a working behavior for it.)
- Pike Phalanxes used the back ranks of pikes as an overhead screen against arrows historically. This is now represented in game: Killing a Pike Phalanx frontally is VERY expensive, they are more stubborn when hit with charges, and more missile resistant.
- Weak/Worthless weapons have been given slight pity buffs, see the Nordic Seax.
- Bonus versus infantry is now an attribute that belongs to blunt weapons only when looking at infantry hand to hand weapons.
- Armor piercing damage ratios have been made to work more like the player would expect, rather then serving simply as a minimum damage value.
- Bracing has been made considerably stronger, bracing starts applying when units are at least three ranks deep, and greatly multiplies their mass.
- Impact damage has been increased, killing a greater number of troops who stand in silly spaghetti formations.
- Spaghetti formations incentives have been greatly weakened and withered outside of the above changes.
Faction Specific:
- Alamanic Scavengers can now scavenge javelins from the battlefield, as is their namesake.
- Gothic Archers are dedicated anti-cavalry archers, with the tooltip "Aims for the Horse."
- Visigothic Slingers have an experimental ammo type, in the form of pots of flaming pitch:
- Very effective against light infantry, and cavalry.
- Shields tend to not do much against it, but mail armor tends to perform brilliantly against it.
- Very little is better at burning down settlements then this ammo type.
- I spent a long time trying to figure out a method of generating fire that was believable, pretty, and not hard on the computer. Enjoy. (It involves using low-no damage shrapnel to simulate pitch splattering.)
- The Danes have certain naval units unlocked as land units, as an experiment.
- The Huns have almost every pattern of cavalry available to them.
- The Celtic javelin cavalry is capable in melee defense.
- The Ebdanian cavalry have been turned into melee cavalry: Five units of javelin cavalry is far more then I can figure out how to integrate into a faction.
- The Calidonian archers are a capable anti-cavalry force in their own right.
Sieges:
- Towers have been redesigned to serve as more of a passive damage source, rather then a constant source of guaranteed kills. More projectiles, but less damage and range.
Campaign:
- Unit recruitment has been tweaked in this version.
- Hordes can expect to see more fair unit recruitment compared to their civilized counterparts. For example, Bagaude are not denied to migratory franks.
- Levy units tend to have more forgiving recruitment times on the empires.
- Military ports no longer cause squalor when undamaged, but cost a small maintenance cost.
- Ships now have discounted maintenance when docked.
- The roman factions AI has been tweaked, they should like melee infantry significantly more.
- Several garrison submods now exist, which greatly alter the flow of the campaign. Dynamic garrisons is the most complicated, and balanced one.
Whats next:
The Redefining of unit subcategories is mostly done, hopefully, unit diversity should feel better with this version. Some people may feel that balance is better, but this is mostly due to separation of redundant units into subclasses.
The Next phase will be balancing out the subcategories, and resorting units based on community feedback. Additionally, in this phase, I hope to make more campaign focused improvements: Certain obsoletes will be broken, however, many will stay in place.
- Unit upgrades which represent a growing cultural identity will stay (Generic culture group unit -> Faction/Subculture unit upgrades.)
- Unit upgrades which are one unit being replaced with an elite version of itself will go (Savran Cavalry -> Elite Savran Cavalry.)
- Unit upgrades which turn one unit into a unit nothing like themselves will go (Gothic Warband -> Gothic Falxmen.)
- Unit upgrades which replace your culture specific Warband will go (Hunnic Mounted Warband -> Hunnic Horsemen.)
For now, this is a weeks work from one modder, working on building onto the vanilla experience, rather then completely replacing it. Enjoy.
Installation:
As the steam workshop will not be open for a month or two, we will need to do with a manual installation.
1. Download the Zip/Rar/Pack.
2. Find your atilla directory, typically it goes. "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Total War Attila". If you have changed it you will know where it is.
3. Enter the folder inside this location called data.
4. Unpack the .Rar into the data folder (If you get just a pack file, you can simply drop it in.)
5. Boot up the Attila launcher, and click into the Mod Manager.
6. Check the box "Enable obsolete mods."
7. This should enable you to check the box on Tuskmod (Current version: 1.3)
8. Once Tuskmod is enabled with a green box checked, you should be good to go. You will be able to toggle it on or off at any time.
9. Enjoy.