Hello! First off, thank you so much for opening this discussion board and for all your hard work—this is a fantastic mod, and in my opinion, one of the definitive ways to experience the early Middle Ages in Total War.

However one thing I sorely wish the mod would have is more historical flavor for the Abbasids, since they are an important faction and occupy a huge portion of the map.

Currently, many of the Abbasid unit names feel a bit generic, translating simply to “Infantry”, “Swordsmen”, “Light Cavalry”, etc. The real life situation was a bit more nuanced, with the Abbasid fielding incredibly complex and ethnically diverse armies.

They fielded troops drawn from a broad array of peoples—Yemeni and Iraqi Arabs, Persians, Magharibah (“Westerners”, possibly Berbers), Daylamites, Armenians, and Turks—often organized along tribal or regional lines and commanded by their own nobles. The Abbasid military system functioned almost like a feudal federation, with homogenous contingents raised from semi autonomous vassals contributing to a diverse composite army.

One of the most interesting elements was the Abna’ al-Dawla, or “Sons of the Dynasty”, a core of elite troops—mostly Arab but including other ethnicities—who were settled around Baghdad and served as the backbone of the Abbasid military.

Gameplay-wise, there’s huge potential here. Even if these dynamics were only represented through renamed or reskinned units, it would add a lot of flavor. Ideally, each major ethnic group could contribute 3–4 unique units to the overall roster. For example:
• Arabs: Light and medium infantry (swordsmen, spearmen), light archers, light and medium cavalry. The best light-medium cavalry in the Abbasid roster could be Arab units, reflecting their historic dominance in mobile warfare.
• Persians and Khurasanis: Medium spearmen, heavy infantry, medium archers, and heavy cavalry. Persian cavalry could be the elite shock units of the faction.
• Abna’ al-Dawla: Heavy infantry—only recruitable in central Iraq, adding a geographical gameplay layer.
• Other ethnic units that standout could include:
• Daylamite and Kurdish heavy infantry
• Armenian archers
• Turkic horse archers
• Berber light cavalry or camelry
• Nubian or Sudanese auxiliaries (historically attested in southern campaigns)


To top it off, adding a kind of Area of Recruitment (AOR) system if possible— that is inspired by Rome II’s auxiliary mechanic or Medieval II’s Broken Crescent mod—would add a lot to the gameplay and replay value. For instance, Persian units could only be recruited in Persian territories, Armenians in the Caucasus, Berbers in the Maghreb, etc. This would create a tangible incentive for expansion while reinforcing the Abbasids’ identity as a sprawling and multicultural empire, especially during the timeframe of this mod where they were still a regional superpower. Additionally, some alt history units could also be thrown for regions never controlled by the Abbasids, such as Spain and Greece, by allowing the Abbasids to recruit a couple of Greek or Andalusi units if they manage to hold those regions.


Mods like Broken Crescent for Medieval II really nailed this kind of design, where the Abbasids have a core roster recruitable in Iraq as well as access to many regional units across the map. I hope you can take a look at Broken Crescent’s unit roster for inspiration because it is very well researched

Thanks again for your amazing work. This mod is already something special but the added flavor would really make the Abbasids feel completely baked.

Hey, thanks a lot for all these good ideas and suggestions. That's definitely what I need, cause I dont have enough historical knowledge of the Abassids to improve the faction in a good way.

AOR is an excellent idea and I'm currently testing how to implement it, I think it should work.
I've already added regional mercenaries, as well as persian and other regional units in the Muslim roster, but they are not yet specific to a province.

I'll let you know how it works out and update the mod asap.

2 questions : what would be the units for Abna’ al-Dawla ?
How would you call the armies ? do they have area specific names as well ?

Hello, i started writing a document in which I listed all the corrections I would make to make the mod more historically accurate (even more than the vanilla AOC DLC)


• If possible, make the mod compatible with the latest 919 ad update.
• Add Alcuin of York as a priest agent from the start in Northumbria (33 years old)
• Tassilo III as duke of Bavaria (should be a frankish vassal as he was Pepin’s nephew, he was 26 year old in 768 ad).
• Add Adalhard of Corbie as a priest agent from the start in frankish lands (16 year old)
• Add Hunald II as duke of Aquitaine (new faction at war with Franks at the start) (age unknown)
• Add historically accurate roman generals Michael Lachanodrakon in Ephesos and Gregorios in Nicea (ages unknown, Michael was known to be a fanatic iconoclast, maybe we can give him a morale/integrity boost but a negative PO and minus religion influence)
• Add historically accurate Staurakios the eunuch (trait) in the roman court
• Add Nicetas I as a priest agent from the start in Constantinople (he was the patriarch of constantinople)
• Rename the Admiral in Nicea to Stephanos
• Leo IV should be 18 year old and his father Constantine V 50 year old
• Constantine V was probably married to Eudokia not Irene in 768 ad
• If you want to keep the separation between greek and latin christianity it could be renamed respectively “iconoclast christianity” and “orthodox christianity”, since the schism between Rome and Constantinople was centuries away
• The iconoclasm faction trait of the byzantine could have a diplomacy malus with latin christians, religious conversion malus but more troops morale and income (due to the monasteries properties confiscations)
• Or maybe give these bonuses and maluses to both Constantine V and Leo IV (albeit Leo IV was more moderate than his father so he should have less penalties)
• Rename Armenia ruler Smbat VII Bagratuni, the historical High Constable and Prince of Armenia of that period who rebelled in 774-775 and was killed by the Abbasids
• Rename the Umayyad ruler to be Abd Al-Rahman I
• The Aghbladis did not exist yet, if you want to keep the faction for balance reason it should be named “Governatorate of Ifriqyia” (or in arab “Muḥāfaẓat Ifriqyia”)
• Rename the bulgarian Khan to be Telerig and move the capital to Pliska
• The croatians ruler was maybe Knez (duke) Budimir (unsure, maybe a legendary character)
• Rename the duke of Benevento to Arechis II
• The duchy of pamplona was formally christian not germanic pagan, however you could give a high percentage of pagan influence in that region to represent that
• The khazars rulers and elites were probably jewish at this point but from what I understand it’s a controversial/unsure topic. However, I would add the sufficient jewish religious influence from the start of the campaign to give the player the choice to become jewish or remain tengri. (scripted events would be cool, however i know Attila can be a pain to mod)
• Lazica was under roman control, not an independent or vassal kingdom
• Makuria was ruled by king Kyriakos and they were miaphysite christians (the vanilla called eastern christianity) not minor religions followers
• Tahert could be renamed “Rustamids” or “Kharijite Ibadites” and the ruler of that time was probably Imam Abd Al-Wahhab Ibn Abd-Ar-Rahman, they were Ibadi muslims not sunni.
• The taifas did not exist yet they were under cordoban direct rule (maybe replace them with wali, or governors)
• The Obodrites were probably ruled by Witzan (or Witzin) and they should be allied with the Franks, he was succedeed by Dražko.
• Wends could be divided into multiple factions representing the documented tribes (like the Sorbs, Milceni, Glomacze and Wolinians since the Veleti are already present as a minor faction)
• The khurasan emirate should be renamed to “Governatorate of Khurasan” (or in arab “Muḥāfaẓat Khurasan”) and the governor was Humayd ibn Qahtaba
• The atropatene emirate should be renamed to “Governatorate of Atropatene” (or in arab “Muḥāfaẓat Atrubatin”)
• The kingdom of Alt Clut (or Strathclyde) had its capital was Alt Clud and was ruled by Eugein II of Alt Clut, son of King Dumnagual III
• Maybe add a celtic christianity religion for the picts, alt clut, irish and welsh factions?
• The leinster king was Cellach mac Dúnchada
• I noticed that in turn 1 the welsh have vanilla attila germanic garrison, maybe it’s a bug
• The welsh faction should be renamed to kingdom of Gwynedd and was ruled by king Caradog ap Meirion
• Having wales as a playable faction with maybe roman inspired late game units would be cool in order to roleplay as a western roman empire restorer.
• The Banu Qasi in Iberia were led by Musa ibn Fortun (he was a native visigoth/roman of islamic belief, so it would be cool if he was both in campaign and battles a visigothic general)
• The idrisids didn’t exist yet, maybe they can spawn as a scripted rebellion in the next decade, they should be replaced by berber tribes of shia islam (i know it’s a generic name, i’ll study and search but the information on this period is unfortunately scarce)
• The Umayyad ruler was Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu'awiya ibn Hisham
• Make the Umayyad emirate playable
• Bulgarians could have a faction trait that makes them resist enemy agents and lower court action influence costs, since Khan Telerig at this time discovered roman spies plotting against them


Possible scripted events that could be added

• Death of Pepin the short and the split of his empire between Carolus and Carloman by the end of year 768 ad
• War between Franks and Lombards in 774 ad
• Death of Al Mansur (775 ad)
• Death of Constantine V (775 ad)
• Rebellion ofHāshim ibn Ḥakīm “Al-Muqanna” (the veiled prophet) , 778-779 in transoxiana and khorasan
• Zaydi uprising in Tabaristan (northern iran, 793 ad, spawn a rebel shia faction)
• Death of Leo IV (780 ad)
• Synod of Frankfurt (794 ad, maybe diplomacy penalty between franks and romans, latin christianity buff)
• If it were possible, a scripted battle of Roncevaux pass in 778 ad between franks and basques rebels and a scripted battle of Oviedo in 798 between Asturias and Umayyads
• Rebellion of Elpidius (Elpidius rebelled in Sicily in 781 ad)
• Council of Nicea II 787 (should give religion conversion buff)
• Make Adelchis of the Lombard kingdom join the byzantine court if the kingdom of lombardy falls (as it historically happened, maybe giving the byzantines the ability to recruit lombard cavalry)
• Make khan Telerig of bulgars join the byzantine court if a civil war happens between bulgarians
• Kharijites rebellions in north africa (774-777 ad)
• Construction of the great mosque of Cordoba begins (785 ad, bonus to research, PO, and Islam influence)
• Idrisids rebellion in 788 in Walili (Volubilis)
• Viking raid in Lindisfarne in 793(an hostile viking army spawns in Northumbria)





ROYAL FAMILIES

-ASTURIAN FAMILY TREE

FRUELA of Asturias (DEAD in 786) – Munia
|(adopted)
Aurelius (Faction leader, probably unmarried in 768, 28 year old),
|(adopted)
Silo (age unknown, faction heir, historical successor to Aurelius despite he not being of the asturian family, alternatively he can be present in the court and the player can choose to adopt him and make him heir)


FRUELA’S ISSUE: (son) Alfonso II el Casto (Historical successor to Bermudo, 8-9 year old), (daughter) Jimena Froilaz (married to Nepotianus, historical usurper of asturias), (natural son) Roman (brother of Alfonso II, 8 year old)

AURELIUS SIBLINGS (so adopted by Fruela): Bermudo I (historical successor to Mauregatus, probably unmarried in 768, 18 year old), Numbela (16 year old, probably married to Lupus II of Gascony)

Other characters that should appear in court: Mauregatus (natural son of Alfonso I,asturian usurper from 783 to 788, age unknown maybe around his 20s)

-FRANKISH FAMILY TREE

PEPIN THE SHORT (Faction Leader,54 year old) – BERTRADA OF LAON (48 year old)
| | |
Carolus (Faction Heir, 20) Carloman I (17) – Gerberga (unknown age) Gisela (11)
|(natural son) |
Pepin the Hunchback Pepin ;brother; (unknown son)

Notes: if not already present, Roland as a general

-LANGOBARD FAMILY TREE

Desiderius (Faction leader, 48 year old) – Ansa (age unknown, probably 50)
| | | | |Anselperga (40?) Adelchis (faction heir 28) Adelperga (28) (Liutperga 18) Desiderata(unkn)

(married to Arechis II) (married to Tassilo II) duke of Benevento duke of Bavaria




-ROMAN FAMILY TREE

LEO III (died at 56) – MARIA (unknown age)
| |
Anna (probably still alive, 53) – Artabasdos (usurper, dead) Constantine V (FL, 50) - Eudokia
| |
nine unknown children Leo IV (18) – Irene; Nikephoros; Christopher; Niketas;Anthimos; Eudokimos;Anthousa (18 or 11)

Notes: Leo III had also two children: Kosmo and Irene, their age and date of death is unknown, could be added nonetheless as characters

Notes: the brothers of Leo IV seemed to be involved in conspiracies since they were blinded, their tongues were cut and they were exiled, so they could appear as characters with huge disloyalty malus.

- ABBASID FAMILY TREE

Father: Muhammad ibn Ali (died at 69) - Mother: Salihah (dead)
|
Caliph Abu Ja‘far al-Mansur (around 56) Ruling Caliph in 768 AD - Arwa bint Mansur al-Himyari (dead in 764 at 29)
|
Ja'far ibn Abdallah al-Mansur (dead in 767); Al-Mahdi (24 year old heir apparent, later third Abbasid Caliph, r. 775–785) - Rayta bint al-Saffah
|
Musa Al-Hadi (4 year old) – future fourth Abbasid Caliph (r. 785–786); Harun al-Rashid (3 year old) ; Abbasa bint al-Mahdi (2 year old)

Let me know If I made any errors or inaccuracies 👌I love history but I'm here (like anyone else I assume) to learn more.

Nota bene: i still need to look at the british factions family trees, and I also noticed that Steam undid the formatting I did to the family trees, I'll try to represent them as visually clear as possible when I have time.

Originally posted by ZmZ:

2 questions : what would be the units for Abna’ al-Dawla ?
How would you call the armies ? do they have area specific names as well ?

A lot of mods that feature the Abbasids make the Abna’ fully armored heavy archers that are also equipped with swords and buckler and good in melee, so they will pepper opposing units with arrows before engaging in melee, which I like because it makes them unique and versatile as a unit. However historically speaking they likely functioned as heavy cavalry and infantry. Personally I would prefer them to be heavy infantry as the Abbasids would have access to a lot of cavalry

As for the army names, I struggle to name them myself when playing as the Abbasids, because that’s not really how their armies worked. They had standing contingents belonging to nobles who were combined into task forces on essentially an ad hoc basis, so they didn’t have standing formations like armies.

However, one thing I’ve done instead of this is name them by their geographic region, which makes more sense IMO as the Abbasid armies were essentially units grouped together from all over a certain country, so I would usually name my armies “Army of Egypt, Army of Yemen, Army of Persia, Army of the Caucus” etc etc and then I would confine them to near their home region.



Also, I had a couple other suggestion for the Abbasids.

First off is a really minor one and a non issue really but I would suggest renaming the town of “Zubala” in Arabia Magna to “Kufa”, not sure what Zubala is but in vanilla TWA the town is called Hira which is only a few miles south from the town of Kufa, which was a super important town during this time. Kufa was basically Hira refounded further south when the course of the river changed.

Second off, this would be a buff and I don’t know if the Abbasids need more buffs, but I would really also suggest modifying the Qanat network town sanitation building to make them give bonus fertility.

This time in history for the Abbasids was a time of great prosperity and productiveness, as they oversaw something called the Arab agricultural revolution, which improved yields and produced and disseminated invaluable literature about agriculture all around the world that benefited everyone as far as China and Western Europe. Read more about it here -> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Agricultural_Revolution

In game however most the regions the Abbasids start off with are poor or meager, even historical breadbaskets like the Persian plateau, even Egypt and the Levant under produce IMO when compared to how rich they were supposed to be in history. Currently, if you fully upgrade your starting regions you will wind up with a food deficit, which IMO shouldn’t be a thing because the Abbasids oversaw highly urbanized societies and didn’t really suffer from production issues like that

IMO making the level 3 or 4 town sanitation building give +1 fertility, allowing you to stack +2 per region, would really solve a lot of these immersion breaking issues in a historically accurate way, and would also further the Abbasid’s unique identity and gameplay mechanics.

Thank you again for all your work 🙏🏻

Hey guys, thank you so much for all these ideas and suggestions.
I’ve carefully read all of them, and I wanted to try implementing some before giving you an answer.
Good news is I managed to implement AOR recruitment for Abassid caliphate, after much brain grind, which will be a big improvement gameplay wise

What I already added :
- Area of recruitment for Hispania, Persia, North Africa, Africa, Armenia/Caucasia, and Egypt(Abassid caliphate only) + Italia and southern France.
Each of these region has one or several specific units, except Hispania and Italia (will add it next)
- Abna Al Dawla elite unit recruitable only in Baghdad city, Varangoi elite unit only in Constantinople
- Complete Persian and berber roster for Persian and North African factions (factions not playable but it gives more campaign and battle diversity) factions playable in custom battle as Khurasan and Ifriqyia
- Renamed factions

What I will implement soon :
- Proper faction leaders and historical characters names and ages
- Regions fertility fixes
- Spanish/muslim regional roster

What I can’t implement due to startups limitations :
- New playable factions
- New family trees members (not 100% sure)


Tell me what you think about this and if you'd like me to share the updated mod for testing !
Cheers

a 2x unit mod would be greatly appreciated for this mod!

i will also happily test any updates as well just let me know

In my opinion the latinikon infantry and akritai swordsmen need to be buffed, right now they have no real advantage over skutatoi axemen or even standard skutatoi

Furthermore I can't see the hetaireia as a recruitable unit

I suggest adding Iconoclasm as a faith and rebranding the normal Christian faith for most of Europe as "Chalcedonian Christianity", that is the most common and I guess accurate way to represent the situation. Maybe also find another nation trait for the Romans other than Iconoclasm, so if they convert to Chalcedonian Christianity again, as they did historically, and not long after this start date, they have nation trait which won't contradict.

Also, if you go for a similar apporach, maybe retain a large following of Chalcedonian Christianity in the Roman provinces to 1) cause religious tension in the Empire for the player difficulty pluss because thats also how it was irl. This will also make it possible for the player to convert back again.

Add Greek fire ships too maybe?

Seeing that there are no garrison buildings I think garrisons should increase in size as well as quality at higher tiers.

thanks for the feedback guys.
@Marzio Tbh I'm not very comfortable with editing unit stats, since I dont know how it will affect game balance at some point. For now i stick to vanilla stats.
@tani, good idea, it's easy to edit (I actually think it as implemented at some point and the file got dropped somewhere)
@Autarch what do you mean no garrison buildings ? Atm high tier garrisons should have almost 20 units for each culture, other users asked me not to increase more, to avoid AI standing still in campaign

I'm surprised no one mentioned it since they're basically in the title, but the Kingdom of Frankia faction have some bugs

-one of the generals is bugged and doesn't appear in the Other Nobles tab

-some of the generals, including Charlemagne, have a massive bodyguard of cavalrymen, the size of a typical infantry unit

-two of the generals have incorrect and normally inaccessible bodyguard units: one of them an infantry noble bodyguard and the other an standard mounted bodyguard different from the others

-after the first turn, the report tab mentions that the Duchy of Karloman have become a puppet state of the Kingdom of Frankia, even when it didn't spawn yet

On the other hand:
The Croat faction problem is even worse on my side, at least I didn't anyone reporting it, after the first turn they automatically loose the main settlement in Dalmatia to the Romans and the two minor settlements to the Avars, turning the faction into a single army faction without settlement roaming around slowly dying of attrition. This happens in every single campaign I started regardless of version. I always assume they'll eventually corrupt my save once they're eliminated like the other players reported