Attila - pulled the trigger at 50% and I'm glad I did...

[easytarget]

Well, finally picked it up at 50% off sale they just had on steam. Played prologue, bit glitchy but then that's the nature of CA prologues, so it felt right at home.

Then turned to GC and started as the ERE. No particular reason. Under attack from the first turn, barbarian hordes everywhere, and dear god who pissed in the Sassanids cheerios, I've got full stacks, multiple full stacks, coming at me from the desert that are slaughtering me, not to mention they had half the freaking map as puppet states who are all now coming into the picture for a bit of fun as well. I don't honestly know if I can turn all of this back, I'm losing territory pretty much everywhere.

And wtf is going on with sanitation, disease keeps popping up, and to build almost anything of use contributes to this problem, to say nothing of the cost of being Christian (why would you make it more expensive to be Christian? Is this CA just insisting that you go ahistorical and turn the ERE to Roman Paganism? Hardly seems like the way I'd design them, you'd think some level of encouragement would be designed in to play a faction as they actually existed in history).

I like the battles better than Rome 2, the pace and the interface just feel better to me, and the performance at least for me in tactical and strategic is better, I've got the whole thing maxed and it works fine. Love having politics back, although I've absolutely no idea what I'm doing with it yet. And even though I complained about religion above, I do like having it back in, just griping about why it would be Christianity is set up to be so expensive for the one empire you'd obviously expect to be played that way.

The activity of the map is fantastic, there's so much shit going on everywhere every turn, this is what I wanted Rome 2 to be, active, engaged, instead R2 just sat there like a dead fish head staring at me like I was supposed to supply all the entertainment.

Ok, to net it out, I've only played 15 hours, I'm going to lose this campaign I'm pretty sure, and I think Attila is just fantastic.

[Myth]

I think I'll get it off the Halloween or winter sales since I'm getting a new viedo card anyway...

FYI I started a new campaign in Rome II and it's defintiely not a dead fish any more. One wrong move can mean restarting early on.

[easytarget]

Yep, I'd say pick up Attila when it comes along on sale again. On the vid card front, I found Attila ran better than R2, your experiences may vary, I was surprised as I've seen a fair amount of complaints stating just the opposite.

As for R2, meh, perhaps I'll take another look. Trouble is for me, the very core of the game design is rotten, one year per turn kills everything it touches, combine that with no turn limit for victory and I will always likely consider R2 flawed at best, at least for the GC. I will qualify my disappointment by saying all the companion campaigns are great!

[Myth]

Hmm, which one should I try first? I have them all, didn't get around to them yet.

[Hooahguy]

Hmm, which one should I try first? I have them all, didn't get around to them yet.

For R2? I loved the Imperator Augustus campaign, still gotta get around to finish my AAR. If I had the time. Which I dont.

[Cazbol]

I've played them all and enjoyed them all. Somewhat to my surprise, I got the most kick out of Caesar in Gaul, where I played as the Arverni. Being this much weaker than Rome and having so many factions around that I needed to have on my side in the rebellion against the empire, was a source of some very interesting strategy making. I started out by largely avoiding Rome, except where I found them weak. Instead, I focused on diplomacy with the other Gallic factions. I always came to their aid in their wars with non-Gauls and thus became a champion among them. This led them to join my faction, one by one. I balanced this with some careful maneouvering of armies and agents in and around the alpine passes to try to keep the Romans south of the Alps. Once I felt I was strong enough I started moving against the Romans. Little did I know that.... well, that would be a spoiler... you'll find out.

I'd rank the Imperator Agustus campaign second, where I played Egypt, which has the interesting position of starting out as a vassal state.

I really recommend not missing out on any of these, if you're into Total War at all.

[Phil of Loreauville]

I have thoroughly enjoyed Attila and the improved Rome II. I just wish I had more time to play!
One quick comment though, Humble Bundle has some awesome offers and from time to time, the Total War games come up for sale at ridiculously low prices (I think there is one going on right now as a matter of fact).
I picked up basically every Total War Title plus a few Rome II DLCs for a $15 donation. I had most of the games, but this completely finished it off for me. They didn't offer Attila, but there was 66% off coupon for it.
Definitely worth a look if you've been waiting for THAT sale you can't pass up.

[easytarget]

So, following back up on this thread at about 25 hours in and still loving everything about Attila.

I completely got wrecked as the ERE, I was getting invaded by so many different barbarians I can't even name them all, didn't get to year 400 before I threw in the towel and decided I need to learn the game better before taking on the wrecked remnants of the once great Roman Empire, this place I inherited was a mess, no order, no sanitation, no money, wrong religion and barbarians everywhere - realize that's the whole idea, but thing is, you need to of mastered the mechanics of how to address the infrastructure or you don't get enough time to survive to counter punch the hordes back out. I enjoyed it a lot, and I'll return to pick up the mantle of ERE in the future once I've gotten a grip on things.

So, turned to Sassanids, figured if they were one of my biggest problems they'd likely make a good beginner campaign that would allow me the ability to learn what the military units strengths and weaknesses are and what buildings I need to build to balance things properly. So far so good, certainly nice to start w/o a horde inside your border, also nice to have income coming in from all those puppets. Just about to crest year 400 in this campaign and I've commenced hostilities with ERE, it struck me as inevitable because where I'm sitting in the desert all that green fertile property ERE is sitting on strikes me as just too enticing a target to ignore, besides, if I headed west I'd mostly just run into my own puppets.

I like the menus, the UI is a bit clicky but for some reason I like it anyway, can't really say what I think of the unit mix as it's too early to tell, I do however like the battle speed (not slow and not fast I guess is how I'd describe it), the research and unit development options feel better fleshed out, love the governors assignments and the fact you can't assign an edict w/o one, and of course it's nice to have a family tree back and the time to groom them w/o that idiotic R2 one year per turn BS.

Big thumbs up on this one. Revising my jump the shark estimation for CA, I'd say at this point they ran straight into the shark and got bit with Rome 2 and Attila was a stitch job holding the patient together. Hope they don't tear the stitches out w/ Warhammer.

[easytarget]

Ok, so at the 400 mark, got the cool little movie announcing Attila's born. Naturally my next question since I'm busy taking over the ERE is this: how long do I have before the endless parade of hordes led by the imperishable Attila show up? And is it possible to buy this guy off or do I have to commit stacks to the never ending waves?

[Cazbol]

I don't remember when he becomes king but once his hordes get going there's nothing to say he'll be going for you. He may focus on a completely different area of the map.

I've only played one campaign, but it seems to me that he isn't made to target the player specifically. He seemed more interested in the Romans. Still, he showed up at my heavily defended eastern border (roughly where Poland is today). With, much effort, an agent that wounded Attila, more agent use and a scary, shocking battle that I just barely managed to win with just a few surviving men, I was able to turn them away from my borders. They then headed south towards the Balkans and from there to the Po Valley. My continued war with them was mostly fought on the soil of other empires.

As the Sassanids, I suspect you won't see the Huns heading your way but if you take over the lands of the Eastern Roman Empire, I predict you'll see a lot more of them. They seem reluctant to attack well defended and fortified cities, so it's not your only option to throw armies at them in some mindless open-field bloodbaths.

[Visor]

So, following back up on this thread at about 25 hours in and still loving everything about Attila.

I completely got wrecked as the ERE, I was getting invaded by so many different barbarians I can't even name them all, didn't get to year 400 before I threw in the towel and decided I need to learn the game better before taking on the wrecked remnants of the once great Roman Empire, this place I inherited was a mess, no order, no sanitation, no money, wrong religion and barbarians everywhere - realize that's the whole idea, but thing is, you need to of mastered the mechanics of how to address the infrastructure or you don't get enough time to survive to counter punch the hordes back out. I enjoyed it a lot, and I'll return to pick up the mantle of ERE in the future once I've gotten a grip on things.

So, turned to Sassanids, figured if they were one of my biggest problems they'd likely make a good beginner campaign that would allow me the ability to learn what the military units strengths and weaknesses are and what buildings I need to build to balance things properly. So far so good, certainly nice to start w/o a horde inside your border, also nice to have income coming in from all those puppets. Just about to crest year 400 in this campaign and I've commenced hostilities with ERE, it struck me as inevitable because where I'm sitting in the desert all that green fertile property ERE is sitting on strikes me as just too enticing a target to ignore, besides, if I headed west I'd mostly just run into my own puppets.

I like the menus, the UI is a bit clicky but for some reason I like it anyway, can't really say what I think of the unit mix as it's too early to tell, I do however like the battle speed (not slow and not fast I guess is how I'd describe it), the research and unit development options feel better fleshed out, love the governors assignments and the fact you can't assign an edict w/o one, and of course it's nice to have a family tree back and the time to groom them w/o that idiotic R2 one year per turn BS.

Big thumbs up on this one. Revising my jump the shark estimation for CA, I'd say at this point they ran straight into the shark and got bit with Rome 2 and Attila was a stitch job holding the patient together. Hope they don't tear the stitches out w/ Warhammer.

Thanks for buying it ET :p. I was wondering your opinion on Attila given your stance on R2 - this pushes me over the edge to pick it up.

[Veho Nex]

Thanks for buying it ET :p. I was wondering your opinion on Attila given your stance on R2 - this pushes me over the edge to pick it up.

If you want to pick it up Ive got a 66% off coupon you can use.

[easytarget]

Thanks for buying it ET :p. I was wondering your opinion on Attila given your stance on R2 - this pushes me over the edge to pick it up.

No problem, sounds like Veho Nex can hook you up with a deal too! And you're right, I went in expecting not to like this one since I loathe R2 GC (I like the DLC campaigns quite a bit though), and so far I'm having a great time with this one. Quite pleasantly surprised, usual disclaimer that you're mileage may very of course.

[easytarget]

Ok, I've come across a "ruined city" that is part of Arabia Magna, I or a puppet control the other two, so naturally I assumed this province capital that just says desolate in the province screen was one of those places razed or it started that way when the campaign started. I sent a 20 stack over there through the desert suffering sever attrition for the express purpose of rebuilding the place, as I understood this was one of the new mechanics of the game, sure it costs a lot (I don't care I have 200k and 20k coming in a turn) and yes you lose some of the army to populate the place, but whatever. Here's the problem, when I move to "attack" the place I just get a red X where the province capital should be and no option in the menu comes up to allow me to rebuild it.

Little help here on what I'm doing wrong?

Oh, and wtf is w/ the deal with negative traits, I've no idea where they come from and some of them are really rather annoying, my King started with harsh (-1 public order all provinces) and just picked up another trait called justice for none that just added -2 more public order loss for the entire empire. I assume this last one triggered from an event where someone was drunk on watch, I had the guy flogged, since that kind of shit can't be tolerated in an army. So how am I supposed to know where these come from and what if anything can be done about them? Don't tell me let me guess, it never occurred to CA this was a tad OP and should wear off or something at some point, right? Lovely

[easytarget]

Oh come on, someone must still be playing this...

[Visor]

No problem, sounds like Veho Nex can hook you up with a deal too! And you're right, I went in expecting not to like this one since I loathe R2 GC (I like the DLC campaigns quite a bit though), and so far I'm having a great time with this one. Quite pleasantly surprised, usual disclaimer that you're mileage may very of course.

I already bought t. :( oops.

Oh come on, someone must still be playing this...

I started a Hun game and things went bad to worse with losing armies. So I restarted as the Saxons... and things went even worse.

I took Camlundum (sp?) with my naval army and then the franks destroyed that army. I moved out my capital army and then it got sunk by the franks turn 1. I built up a full army and sent it to the frankish capital and fought a massive battle where I ended up with 300 men and they had 200 - but I lost. Then they destroyed that army. But I rebuilt up again took the Frankish settlement, then moved into the Roman territories and occupied a few, sacked and razed others. Brought back Gaul. Eventually sacked all of Iberia - rebuilt/colonised Gaul, invaded some of the Isles (Britain ended up taking over some of the land).

Its been fun, but pretty easy since the Franks died. Might up the difficulty above normal for the next game.

[Cazbol]

Ok, I've come across a "ruined city" that is part of Arabia Magna, I or a puppet control the other two, so naturally I assumed this province capital that just says desolate in the province screen was one of those places razed or it started that way when the campaign started. I sent a 20 stack over there through the desert suffering sever attrition for the express purpose of rebuilding the place, as I understood this was one of the new mechanics of the game, sure it costs a lot (I don't care I have 200k and 20k coming in a turn) and yes you lose some of the army to populate the place, but whatever. Here's the problem, when I move to "attack" the place I just get a red X where the province capital should be and no option in the menu comes up to allow me to rebuild it.

Little help here on what I'm doing wrong?

Frankly, I have no idea what you're doing wrong. I rebuilt every settlement that was razed in my game and never had any problems with it. I just right-clicked on it with an army, just like you, and got a prompt asking me to confirm it. Once in the city I would just start building. Your army is not in forced march stance, is it? Pardon the question, but I can't think of any other reason.

[easytarget]

Yeah, I don't get it either, subsequently in the province just a stones throw away that was wrecked by one of the barbarian tribes wandering through I had no trouble bringing it back to life, just takes money and it soaks up half your troops in that stack. I'm thinking maybe I did have it in forced at the time.

On to the traits. Damn those things are wicked. I had my king running one of my stacks so he'd have some influence handy, but after all the negative traits I'm moving to plan B with him and making him a statesman and sitting the war out. The traits piece seems a bit random and I don't know how to control them because I don't know what causes them.

[easytarget]

I already bought t. :( oops.

Glad you picked it up, hope you're enjoying it as much as I am!

[Slaists]

Ok, I've come across a "ruined city" that is part of Arabia Magna, I or a puppet control the other two, so naturally I assumed this province capital that just says desolate in the province screen was one of those places razed or it started that way when the campaign started. I sent a 20 stack over there through the desert suffering sever attrition for the express purpose of rebuilding the place, as I understood this was one of the new mechanics of the game, sure it costs a lot (I don't care I have 200k and 20k coming in a turn) and yes you lose some of the army to populate the place, but whatever. Here's the problem, when I move to "attack" the place I just get a red X where the province capital should be and no option in the menu comes up to allow me to rebuild it.

Little help here on what I'm doing wrong?

Oh, and wtf is w/ the deal with negative traits, I've no idea where they come from and some of them are really rather annoying, my King started with harsh (-1 public order all provinces) and just picked up another trait called justice for none that just added -2 more public order loss for the entire empire. I assume this last one triggered from an event where someone was drunk on watch, I had the guy flogged, since that kind of shit can't be tolerated in an army. So how am I supposed to know where these come from and what if anything can be done about them? Don't tell me let me guess, it never occurred to CA this was a tad OP and should wear off or something at some point, right? Lovely

The prob is not that no one is playing this but that folks rarely visit here nowadays.

As to that not being able to repopulate a city issue: most likely, like others said, you have waltzed up to it in forced march stance. You have to be able to "attack" to repopulate.

As to harsh and no justice traits: those are really annoying. I heard harsh comes from the behavior of the king in the battlefield. Supposedly, if you refuse to chase down every router (by ending the battles when the option comes up), the king should be "kinder". Then again, I've had the king sit as a governor and he still got the "harsh trait". Go figure. Maybe the behavior of other generals comes into play too. I most definitely get that trait if I autoresolve most my battles.

On a different note, those desolate areas serve as nice buffer zones between you and your enemy hordes.

[easytarget]

Thanks for the response, good to know I'm not the only one being annoyed by these traits, I guess I'll just have to man up and tolerate them as I don't have any way of predictably knowing what triggers them. Odd thing though is, we all know these are just coded in, so it's not like CA doesn't know what triggers them, yet as many times as this topic has come up in the main forum they never pop in to clarify. A behavior all too common for CA I'm afraid. It's as if they don't enjoy talking to their own customers about the games they make, which to me is just bewildering.

[Cazbol]

Regarding the inability to rebuild, was there by any chance a Hunnic horde in the province? Their presence in a province prevents armies from replenishing troops, so I'm hypothesizing that they might prevent the rebuilding of settlements.

[easytarget]

I don't believe there was, I think at this point I'll have to go with the stance hypothesis since I was subsequently able in regular stance to fix the neighboring province.

But thanks for mentioning that, I was not aware of this Hun trick and it'll be good to know that when I run into them, both from a rebuilding perspective but also just from a battle engagement perspective as I was not aware of that because luckily I've not run into them yet.

[Cazbol]

To correct myself, the Hunnic block on replenishment affects the region, not the province, as I previously mentioned.

[easytarget]

I know this much after playing most of one full campaign, the Sassanids need to be toned down. Or change the name of the game from Attila to Revenge of the Sassy empire as they are a much bigger problem in this game than the Huns. They produce way too many stacks and have puppets that are zombie like loyal with their own endless wave of stacks.

[easytarget]

Stopping back by for one other observation: does it strike anyone else as a bit odd that the victory conditions (I've only seen one so far mind you, so perhaps this isn't true for all of them, like the roaming tribes) include a deadline you must survive to? While I've not played enough campaigns to know for sure, it feels like I'm likely often to complete the rest of the conditions for victory (as I have in my current campaign) and then just be left waiting for the clock to run down. From a game play perspective it feels like it only encourages boredom at the back end of a campaign, something CA often struggles with anyway....

Thoughts?

[Slaists]

Thanks for the response, good to know I'm not the only one being annoyed by these traits, I guess I'll just have to man up and tolerate them as I don't have any way of predictably knowing what triggers them. Odd thing though is, we all know these are just coded in, so it's not like CA doesn't know what triggers them, yet as many times as this topic has come up in the main forum they never pop in to clarify. A behavior all too common for CA I'm afraid. It's as if they don't enjoy talking to their own customers about the games they make, which to me is just bewildering.

Regarding the harsh and unjust trait: I did a bit of experimentation. Seems, taking captives into your army and killing them (both options) trigger the two traits. In my last Aksum campaign, I religiously sold captives instead and my 70 year old ruler (a level 10 general too) is free of the nasty traits despite me auto-resolving left and right.

It seems, you have to abide by this captive approach with all your generals and admirals though. I integrated captives a couple times with non-ruler generals while still having my original ruler and he became both unjust and harsh. I completely avoided integration or killing with my second ruler and he seems to be doing fine still in the old age. P.S. If you constantly sell captives, integrity can potentially become a problem. I guess, this was designed that way - as in, you can keep bad traits from your ruler, but your integrity will suffer.

Another nasty trait is "unfavored" and this one seems to trigger both, in reasonable situations (being passed on for promotion, for example) and .... when a general enters a town to garrison it; especially, if entry is done right after a battle. I reported this in the bug forum way back when Attila came out. CA acknowledged it (sort of) then did nothing about it. I guess, works as intended. Garrisoning a rebellious town is a disgrace.

Here is an old discussion of this topic; things seem to be the same at this point: http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...eader/page4#40

As to Sassanids, it seems, the key to dealing with them is "holding the line" (if you have a direct front) and then, sneaking some stacks into their back-yard. Burning Sassanids down results in all vassals abandoning them.

As to the Hun trait that prevents replenishing: some of the desert tribes have it too. Himyar, for example, has it.

[easytarget]

Ok, well, I can live with the traits, I just find them annoying I guess because it feels like most of what you get is negative not positive (it would be ok if it was balanced but it doesn't feel that way to me). Thanks for the experimentation, least I know how to avoid that one trait which strikes me as particularly harsh.

As for that unfavored trait, doesn't sound like I'll be able to avoid that one, I mean who can? Of course the general who just successfully attacked is going to be the one that has to sit in and subdue the place, I mean what on earth is CA thinking there? Again, often feels like they don't play test these enough to see what they did in action.

Finally, on Sassanids, I remain completely convinced they are unbalanced as hell. The idea of giving them so many provinces along with like 8 or so puppets right out of the gate means they have insane resources. Not only is it historically wrong it's game play design wise not in line with what TW is about. If you are anywhere in their vicinity you have no choice but to deal with them as if they are the only opponent in the game, rather ironic given the name of this one is Attila and not Sassy, haha. And it virtually insures ERE get destroyed almost immediately due to barbarians and Sassanids carving them up. While your strategy works, it's flawed from a game design stand point because immersion is based on what if and not getting channeled down one path. It needs a tweak.

[Cazbol]

Stopping back by for one other observation: does it strike anyone else as a bit odd that the victory conditions (I've only seen one so far mind you, so perhaps this isn't true for all of them, like the roaming tribes) include a deadline you must survive to? While I've not played enough campaigns to know for sure, it feels like I'm likely often to complete the rest of the conditions for victory (as I have in my current campaign) and then just be left waiting for the clock to run down. From a game play perspective it feels like it only encourages boredom at the back end of a campaign, something CA often struggles with anyway....

I most definitely feel that this seems out of place. It only means a victory cannot happen before a certain time. It seems to be there to allow the split into chapters but ends up just being odd. But then again, pretty much all but one of the victory conditions in every campaign seems nonsensical. The only victory condition that makes sense to me is the one stating how big you must be.

As much as I admire Creative Assembly for bringing me Total War, I cannot help thinking that the making of the victory conditions is outsourced to a lunacy asylum. Make this building that I don't want, have these units I don't need, do this, do that, call your mom, wipe your butt. It's a list of random things that you're supposed to do because they put it in a list of random things to do. It has made me totally ignore the victory conditions. I've completed the main campaign and the last Roman campaign in Attila by holding every single province, yet I have supposedly failed to win, because they made this list... that I refuse to complete.

The missions in most campaigns seem to be outsourced to the same loony bin. Every now and then, you get told to do something entirely random, like raising a fleet, even though none of the remaining factions have a coastal region. Somewhere, someone thinks that being told to do random meaningless things is engaging and providing guidance. The silliest missions I have seen so far, were the chapter missions in Rome II, Hannibal at the Gates (which was a nice campaign). As Carthage, I first got some objectives regarding North Africa, which was logical enough. I was then told something about strengthening my position on the Iberian peninsula. However, I adopted the more efficient strategy of attacking Sicily and move north from there, simply ignoring Iberia. This was as unexpected to the Romans as it was to Creative Assembly, because soon after I'm besieging Rome and then receive the next chapter objective. It tells me that now that I've secured much of Iberia, I can start preparing to move into Gaul, and if I succeed there I may be able to starting thinking about moving into the northern part of Roman lands. Thanks.

I therefore ignore the missions, like the victory conditions. The exception being the missions in the Last Roman campaign. They were actually good and not this random nonsense. It was a bit different because I played Belesarius as fully loyal to Justinian and did everything he asked. There was a story behind the missions, which worked, even though its connection to my family tree was bugged, but that was a minor oddity. Still, the victory conditions in the Last Roman are still the same nonsense, after reclaiming all the lands of the empire, you're expeced to change your armies into shops that sell stuff to hordes of slingers. I ignored those as well and enjoyed the campaign.

[easytarget]

Well good to hear I'm not the only one that finds them a bit odd. I think I definitely preferred the simpler approach used in Shogun 2, and I definitely preferred a deadline be set by which you needed to hit your province count that meant if you were aggressive you were rewarded with victory sooner than in Attila where I've achieved every objective for a minor victory 25 years before the deadline and now I just have to hang about and hit the turn button. It's really piss poor game design mechanic that has your player do jack all but hit a button and wait.

Oh well, this is CA, I expect occasional glaringly stupid game design issues to be intermixed among what is over all a very good game. So over all I'm not sweating it much, it's a minor quibble, but it still stands out as it is the last thing you as the user experience every single time you play Attila, assuming you are playing it to win.

I've said it before many a time, and I'll say it again, CA needs to play test their own games better and use NDAs to actually test out what they come up with before release, a free testing fan base exists and they make no use of it, dumb. No other word for it.