Attila 1st Impressions

[easytarget]

Since I'm waiting to hear what others who pulled the trigger on this one thought I figured I'd help things along seeing that no thread had been started yet for this.

So, what do you think so far?

[Hooahguy]

Played about 30 minutes before work. Performance is pretty good at least battle-wise, no real bugs that I can see. Campaign and battles loaded rather quickly, havent tried playing a turn yet so I cant comment about the turn length. Night battles actually look really good. Not as dark as I would like it but still a massive improvement over Rome 2's night battles. Love the campaign improvements. The family tree just reminds me so much of the Rome 1 family tree, if not better as its more interactive. The UI is just gorgeous, especially love the seasons wheel. Battle AI doesnt seem dumb as a rock, when they were outnumbered they fled into some woods and hid until I came closer then they sprung something of an ambush. It was pretty nice actually, though I wish units stuck around longer before routing.

Have to work now but I will probably play a bit more later. Overall Im rather pleased.

Music is also top-notch, love the Mongolian throat-singing!

EDIT: another small complaint, I wish we had the banners like we used to have were on the campaign map. On the battle map Im ok with the new icons but on the campaign map I think the older ones were better. Easier to see at a glance how strong the enemy is. Also when you press K to remove the UI I wish the banners were there. This is important for AAR purposes really.

[Paradigmatic]

Played 1 turn as the WRE on N/N. Saxons raided Camulodunum. I had only had a vastly outnumbered garrison, but they actually put up a fight: resulted in close defeat. I then managed to easily wipe out the Suebi in a single battle.

The campaign map is beautiful. The family tree and various administrative positions is a major improvement over the simplistic cursus honorum of Rome 2.

I'm not yet sure how hard managing food/religion/public order/squalor/power/dominion/control will be. Off the bat, with something like the WRE, it seems awfully complex but it might be enjoyable. Just expect the first few turns to be rough as you adjust to dealing with a massive wreck of an empire and various new gameplay mechanics.

Overall though, I'd say it's promising.

I intend to run a legendary WRE campaign soon enough (if only to fail miserably, as it should be).

[Kamakazi]

Cant install it as my steam was hacked....... its one thing after another for me lately

[Slaists]

Played about 30 minutes before work. Performance is pretty good at least battle-wise, no real bugs that I can see. Campaign and battles loaded rather quickly, havent tried playing a turn yet so I cant comment about the turn length. Night battles actually look really good. Not as dark as I would like it but still a massive improvement over Rome 2's night battles. Love the campaign improvements. The family tree just reminds me so much of the Rome 1 family tree, if not better as its more interactive. The UI is just gorgeous, especially love the seasons wheel. Battle AI doesnt seem dumb as a rock, when they were outnumbered they fled into some woods and hid until I came closer then they sprung something of an ambush. It was pretty nice actually, though I wish units stuck around longer before routing.

Have to work now but I will probably play a bit more later. Overall Im rather pleased.

Music is also top-notch, love the Mongolian throat-singing!

EDIT: another small complaint, I wish we had the banners like we used to have were on the campaign map. On the battle map Im ok with the new icons but on the campaign map I think the older ones were better. Easier to see at a glance how strong the enemy is. Also when you press K to remove the UI I wish the banners were there. This is important for AAR purposes really.

Regarding the army icons on the campaign map, check this page out:

http://attila-enc.totalwar.com/#/man...oard_shortcuts

It seems, we just have to retrain our eyes. The info is still there.

[Hooahguy]

Regarding the army icons on the campaign map, check this page out:

http://attila-enc.totalwar.com/#/man...oard_shortcuts

It seems, we just have to retrain our eyes. The info is still there.

Not really what I meant.

This is what I meant:

Here is the current system:



Here is what happens when you hide the UI:



You can see why this is a problem, since you cant tell anymore how large an army is like you could in previous TW games.

[Slaists]

Thought you said, the banners don't display army strength. They still do.

But I get the point about the hidden interface.

[Bramborough]

Noticed last night just before going to bed that the pre-load had unlocked and was ready to play (after some add'l updating). Decided to stay up for one custom battle. Went with a field battle Saxons vs Franks.

- Unit management in battle seemed pretty much the same.
- My Saxon archers' stats looked okay, but they did diddly-squat for damage. I think the 4 units managed a combined 10 kills or so.
- On the other hand, the Frankish artillery (I think they were ballistae) was devastating.
- Saxon mid-tier spear infantry was sketchy, but pretty effective melee infantry. Which seems to make sense.
- The Saxon cavalry appeared to outclass their Frankish counterparts, which seems kinda backwards. Could've just been the specific unit mix though...I didn't see exactly what kind of cavalry the AI Franks were using.
- The Battle AI seemed to make good use of terrain; ran from their starting position to line up along a subtle hillcrest.
- Didn't notice any performance issues compared to R2
- All in all, pretty happy with the battle side of things, at least as far as open-field goes.

About to get into a campaign now, am sure will have some other comments in a few hours...

[ichi]

So I tried the Prologue, just to get the full exposure experience, and it has been a while since I've TW'd, and so far it has run without a hitch.
Graphics look more like S2 than R2 to me, the interface and icons are much improved from R2 (not a high bar to beat but still), there is more complexity in the management, and the basic starter units performed just as I'd like, although everyone routed in one battle when Chiefy died despite having a clear advantage in numbers and position.

All in all day one no regrets

[Seyavash]

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?


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[easytarget]

Did you read the thread linked above?

[Seyavash]

Did you read the thread linked above?

I read a bit of it, it's gotten a bit long. I agree that some of the details don't make sense where units completely change weapon types etc. But I still don't see how the basic mechanic is different. You didn't get to keep recruiting Hastati so why should you get to keep recruiting Limitanei?

[Bramborough]

I read a bit of it, it's gotten a bit long. I agree that some of the details don't make sense where units completely change weapon types etc. But I still don't see how the basic mechanic is different. You didn't get to keep recruiting Hastati so why should you get to keep recruiting Limitanei?

It's true that the Attila mechanic works just the same way that the Roman legionary mechanic worked in R2. In R2, however, only Roman legionary infantry (and I think a cavalry unit also?) worked this way. It was a faction-specific mechanic meant to reflect a particular historical event: the Marian Reform. It wasn't the norm; other factions' unit rosters didn't progress in the same manner. So the main difference in Attila is that most (maybe all?) factions' militaries seem to upgrade that way now; it has become the norm.

Overall, I'm not sure I have a huge problem with it. It does affect my basic playstyle a bit. In R2, I would have high-end armies for conquest & hot-spot defense, and other low-end armies composed of earlier cheaper units, mainly for public order. A good place to put opposing-family generals. And a good way to avail myself of the maximum number of armies allowed by imperium level, without putting undue strain on my economy. It'll be a little harder to maintain my "high/low" mix of armies in Attila, since many of the earlier/cheaper units will have disappeared from the recruiting menu in the mid-to-late campaign. But I'm sure I'll figure out a way to do it.

[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?

[Bramborough]

Not really sure these fit as "First Impressions". But this still seems an appropriate place to mention new wrinkles discovered while playing through first Attila campaign...

First, Imperium level now also increases by tech research, in addition to territorial gains. And imperium increase seems to be triggered either by completing one of the eight research sections, or possibly by researching one of those few key techs which require money rather than time to unlock. In my case, two of those techs also happened to be the last tech in the section I was researching, so not sure which specific action caused the imperium jump.

Second, land-locked settlements have gained an extra building slot, compared to their R2 predecessors. Non-port capitals and towns now have 6 and 4 slots respectively, rather than 5/3 as in R2. So port settlements are no longer inherently more valuable because of that extra port slot. This makes good sense to me. In R2, we had to juggle Food and P.O. Attila adds Sanitation as a 3rd ball we have to keep in the air, so that extra building slot is a big help.

[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.