Attila 1st Impressions

[oz_wwjd]

That's great but as as the Jutes, an entire unit - Drekkar Dragonship Nordic Marauders is actually unrecruitable most of the time....why?

Because early on you unlock a technology that upgrades Nordic Marauders to Nordic Heavy Marauders. The tech for Drekkar Dragonships is much, much later than that on the tech tree - so when you do finally get there and build a level 3 Military port - the ship cant be recruited!!

You have to wait another 20 turns or so to get the next tech along and then upgrade the port AGAIN to get Drekkar Dragonship Nordic Heavy Marauders - which means 1 unit and 1 building tier is actually pointless.

Did Ca actually consider the unit upgrade system before implementing it, I may ask?

[I_damian]

I have been seeing these complaints about unit upgrades and frankly I am confused. I do not see a difference between Atilla and Rome2 in this feature. As Rome when I researched the tech for legions I could no longer recruit Hastati/triarii etc., but I could keep the existing unit as long as I wanted. In Atilla as ERE it works the same way, I do not have to upgrade my existing Limitani but I cannot recruit new ones after researching the tech. This to me is simply a way of showing progression from older tech to newer. Are some of the unit upgrades illogical? Perhaps but the basic mechanics of it seem the same to me. Is it different for other factions or am I missing something else?

Firstly, lots of the unit upgrades in Rome 2 were there to represent the progression of soldiers over a period of almost 3 centuries. For the Romans this was the Marian reform. For Gauls and other "barbarians" it was to represent the reforms they went through after facing the Romans. The Gauls especially really tried to reform their armies to meet the Romans toward the end, before Caesar subdued them. Armour got heavier, as did tactics. Greece and Macedonia went through some pretty heavy reforms after fighting (and losing badly) against Rome as well. For Greece they leaned more heavily of peltasts, which are basically legionaries once you put some chainmail on them (which they did) and Macedonia did the same - their main battle line was the Phalanx but they increased the numbers of more mobile units. Seleukids, toward the end, relied heavily on a kind of imitation legionnaire, a heavy peltast. Also when they came in to contact with the Parthians their cavalry went through a reform and got mega heavy. Carthage and the Ptolemaic Egypt also reformed after getting humiliated by Rome.

What's this supposed to represent in Attila though? Was there really huge military reform of everybody from 395 AD to 415 AD? Did Rome all of a sudden stop being able to recruit the typical late legionary and replace them with an ultra elite herculian megaman, then forget all about the bread and butter of their armies? Why would the Steppe nations start paying double the upkeep for a horse archer that has 3 more melee defence than the previous iteration? Or the Germans paying twice the upkeep for a new noble infantry unit that only has a couple more melee attack than the last one? And why would any nation all of a sudden be forced to recruit only the new elite unit but forget entirely about the mid-range, bread and butter unit that it replaced?

When did any army ever have more than about 20 or 30% elite troops? None, to my knowledge. The Romans in the late empire barely even had any legionaries. The core would have been legionnaires, the rest were "barbarian" allies, especially the cavalry. Yet the WRE can't even recruit foederati at the start of the game. I unlocked the whole first section of the military tree and all it gave me was an slightly upgraded border unit and legio, a cohort but with a couple extra melee attack and defence. But by the end I'll be recruiting almost entirely Herculiani elite troops.

[Slaists]

@Jacque and Slaists, yep, some time after I wrote that post, I realized that the reason I couldn't move into that desolated capital was because of the exorbitant cost to do so (16K+ in this case). Which also explains why no one else has moved in to fill that vacuum. I guess I'm more content now with the concept of this particular mechanic...but still wonder if maybe they should fine-tune it by tweaking the cost down a bit.

There is a trick to colonizing: the larger is the size of the army you are colonizing with the smaller is the cost for doing so. The mechanic is that part of your army settles in the colony and drives the cost down. So, a full stack of the cheapest yet largest size units (avoid cavalry, dogs, etc.) you get is the most cost efficient way to do so (the cost is around 8K for me).

I can see how early impressions of things like sanitation, family tree size, and a whole host of other things would be completely different for the big factions, compared a single-town-start faction like Saxons. Although I do think it's weird that Slaists' Geats (also a small-start) apparently had a more robust starting family.

For comparison's sake, I started with 3 male family members (one FL, one son FH, and one son-in-law), two of whom had wives (and I managed to fumble away 2 of the 3 guys in the early going, as earlier mentioned). I infer, Slaists, that your Geat family was larger than that?

Yes, my Geats start with quite a large family (several members idle) + some marriage age ladies to spare. I believe, several of king's offspring had their own children at the start of the campaign already.

[edyzmedieval]

I'm considering purchasing Attila, haven't pre-ordered because I wasn't sure whether my computer would hold up to it, but my question revolves around the ERE.

How balanced is the unit roster?

Back in the RTW BI times, they were equal to the Sassanids.

[edyzmedieval]

All right, I purchased ATTILA. Hopefully it will be a blast and that the Byzantines / ERE will be at least as much fun as they were in RTW:BI.

[Slaists]

All right, I purchased ATTILA. Hopefully it will be a blast and that the Byzantines / ERE will be at least as much fun as they were in RTW:BI.

Brace yourself ;) for the Sassanid spam.

[edyzmedieval]

Sassanid spam was actually present in RTW:BI as well, 75% of my battles were fought with them. So yeah, I have previous experience.