Attila would be a great game... without the Huns.

I'm just going to throw this out there. Without the Huns this would be a really wonderful, challenging, dynamic game. The AI is good, the mechanics for provinces, balancing the centre with the outskirts and the relationship, forcing you to defend "minor" towns or see your empire starve, great. The battle system, lets be honest not as good an interface as Rome 1, some wobbly pathing but, again, the AI is very good, it actively seeks out hidden units, it responds appropriately if you present it with a tactical problem.

Then we have the Huns, stack, after stack, after stack. It's 423 and I'm just sick of them, their latest trick is spawning with large onagers to flatten my armies. Right now about 75% of my military is concentrated in Illyria to hold the Huns even remotely at bay, even then one of their stacks managed to pass my settlement after I got dragged into a battle by a friendly horde, the Huns didn't actually assault the city but they are apparently able to break the Limes just by fighting nearby. There's no actual fighting here, I'm just parking three stacks in the settlements to prevent attacks, if I do face the Huns in battle I just bring two stacks and auto-calc, being so sick of fighting them

It's got to the point where I would actually say that if you play either Roman Empire then it's better to cash in everything on turn one, build some-Hun killer stacks and remove them from the equation before the start of chapter two.

If you're playing any other faction then I'd just run to Hispania or North Africa and hide.

The thing is, there's no satisfaction here, I already have a big Empire, I know I can hold it, it's peaceful and I don't think I'm actually going to run out of food once everything is a wasteland, surprisingly. So, fighting and defeating the Huns is the only thing that, I, the player can really look forward to, but you know that for every Hunnic stack you kill another will simply sprout from the ground like Demons from Hell, you know you can't afford to leave a settlement undefended and go on the offensive because the Huns will raise it to the ground. So, unless or until you can face and kill Attila it's just sit and wait behind your walls for the Huns to disperse.

Ill agree they are incredibly annoying

Sounds like pretty typical failure to play balance by CA. Not like we've never seen that before. Show of hands for anyone who has ever witnessed them issuing an NDA and getting people to play test their work before release. <crickets>

This last patch did tone them down a bit, in the early game at least. Huns haven't been much of a factor in my current campaign, although Attila recently became FL and so I'm starting to see more Hun stacks now (about 140-150ish turns in).

They'll still be a pain in the rear for the next 80 turns or so, much as described above, but it's better than the release version where the Huns started becoming a threat almost at the very beginning. So they're at least moving in the right direction.

The basic point remains though; it's easy to defend against the Huns, but pointless to do anything strategically offensive against them. That gets pretty old after a while.

Apparently, you have to kill Attila (several times) in battle to stop Hun spawns.

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Originally Posted by easytarget

Sounds like pretty typical failure to play balance by CA. Not like we've never seen that before. Show of hands for anyone who has ever witnessed them issuing an NDA and getting people to play test their work before release. <crickets>

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I take it all back, CA announced today an open beta for Kingdoms. Bit ironic really, they finally decide to do one and pick this pay to win POS as the one do it for. :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by easytarget

Sounds like pretty typical failure to play balance by CA. Not like we've never seen that before. Show of hands for anyone who has ever witnessed them issuing an NDA and getting people to play test their work before release. <crickets>

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If it's an NDA then they wouldn't be able to raise their hands. As for witnessing it...

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Originally Posted by Veho Nex

If it's an NDA then they wouldn't be able to raise their hands. As for witnessing it...

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Yeah, actually I was just joking really, I'm mainly just amused at the idea of an open beta for something as stupid as Kingdoms when no SP main TW game in my memory has a proper beta.

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Originally Posted by Bramborough

This last patch did tone them down a bit, in the early game at least. Huns haven't been much of a factor in my current campaign, although Attila recently became FL and so I'm starting to see more Hun stacks now (about 140-150ish turns in).

They'll still be a pain in the rear for the next 80 turns or so, much as described above, but it's better than the release version where the Huns started becoming a threat almost at the very beginning. So they're at least moving in the right direction.

The basic point remains though; it's easy to defend against the Huns, but pointless to do anything strategically offensive against them. That gets pretty old after a while.

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Pretty much, add these large onagers they're lugging around which seem to slow their stacks, give them an easy way to slaughter your infantry AND never get used for a siege and your best bet is to just swamp them. Meanwhile all the Germanic factions love me because, after the Huns destroyed their settlements and forced them to Horde I went and punched said Huns in the face. Then throw in the fact that the Great Migration tends to crumble between SPQR and the Huns and what you get is just not all that great.

On a related note, what's with these wonky dates and stuff Attila becomes King in 420, except he doesn't, and he dies in 445 and not 453?