Attila tips and un-/under-documented features

[Slaists]

It seems, we do not have a topic like this for Attila. So, I decided to start one. Here are a couple starters:

Agents

It seems, it is very easy to train agents to be effective killers of generals in Attila (even more so than in R2). So, the tip is: look for the weakest stat a general has (authority, cunning, zeal) and use the appropriate agent to kill the general. The replacement captain will have all attributes at 1 allowing for very high success rate for any type of further sabotage using your other agents.

On a related topic: beware of low global food surplus (in the range of 10-20). The AI agents know how to look for this and will induce famine in your provinces leading to army starvation. A surplus in a couple hundred area is much safer. Hordes settling are especially vulnerable as they tend to have almost no food at the start of the settlement process.

Immigration

High military activity in an area causes a lot of immigration potentially leading to nasty (-20 and more) PO hits. One way to drastically reduce immigration is to raise taxes to very high for a few turns. Immigrants get scared away.

Assault-Withdraw Cycle

In Attila, we can assault a city, withdraw from the battle resulting in a "draw" battle resolution while maintaining siege. Use this to your advantage to gradually reduce the city's defenses as in: assault, destroy the walls and towers until your ammo runs out then withdraw. As you maintain the siege, the damage to the walls will stay through the turn. There is an exception to this: damage to the highest level Roman city walls seems to self-repair even if the siege is ongoing.

You can do this once per turn with a land army; there seems to be no limit as to how many times per turn you can do it with a navy.

Oh, and while withdrawing your land armies, make sure your onager withdraws first (completely off the field) or at least, does not withdraw last. If the onager is the last unit off the field, the garrison will capture it.

Defending coastal settlements against naval (transport) assaults

Use your garrison ships to take out the assaulting general while he is at the sea. A marine ship can take out most generals quickly while they are sea-sick. Once the assault army lands, they will be already wavering from the loss of their general.

Other things come to mind?

[Hooahguy]

Great post! With the various tips threads we have going with regard to the economy, missiles, and planning, it should be organized into one thread.

[Bramborough]

Yep, spies (and other agents) seem to be a bit better at assassination this time around.

I can attest to the "kill general afloat" tactic. Another option, if one is available, is to use an artillery ship to sink their general's transport; pulled that stunt against the Varinians last night, lol.

I understand what you're saying about assault/withdraw...but I don't quite get the underlying mechanic. Do the walls take additional damage merely by going to battle? Or are you talking about damaging the walls with artillery and then withdrawing once ammo is exhausted?

[Slaists]

Yep, spies (and other agents) seem to be a bit better at assassination this time around.

I can attest to the "kill general afloat" tactic. Another option, if one is available, is to use an artillery ship to sink their general's transport; pulled that stunt against the Varinians last night, lol.

I understand what you're saying about assault/withdraw...but I don't quite get the underlying mechanic. Do the walls take additional damage merely by going to battle? Or are you talking about damaging the walls with artillery and then withdrawing once ammo is exhausted?

I meant withdrawing from battle once ammo is exhausted (if you do not have a sufficient breach for an economic assault). Often you need to destroy several towers before you can create a safe path to the city center.

[Slaists]

Recommendation: do not assassinate enemy generals before a battle.

The reason is simple: it appears, troops care much less about the captain that comes as a replacement to the assassinated general. If you kill a general in the battle, the whole enemy army switches to "wavering" state. However, if you kill the replacement captain: enemy troops show as eager (not being bothered too much about the captain's demise).

This is especially apparent on legendary.

[Hooahguy]

Ok but what if the general is super powerful giving big benefits such as better melee and stuff like that? Then the net gain is better than the net loss.

[Slaists]

Ok but what if the general is super powerful giving big benefits such as better melee and stuff like that? Then the net gain is better than the net loss.

Then you kill him in the battle (as you'd do with any other general). The effect is huge there.

This is especially easily done when playing as Huns. You have to skirmish anyway. If the AI is chasing you, the heavy enemy general will lag behind inevitably: a prime target for your heavy arrows.

For infantry based factions: probably easier to assassinate the general before the battle though.

[Bramborough]

I usually don't try to assassinate a general immediately before a battle. If I expect him to try retreating, I misdirect instead, so that the targeted army can be chased down. Otherwise, I kinda like hitting them with the Fatigue de-buff.

That said, multi-starred generals are a favorite target for my spies as they just run around making general mischief. A broad standing policy of making sure any enemy faction's 2+ rank leaders are continuously in the hospital or the morgue. So it's pretty rare that I go into battle against more than a greenhorn enemy commander anyway.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

OK, I have a suspicion that the Huns spawn new stacks if you knock them down to 1. I can't confirm yet, but twice I was sure I'd got all but one of their stacks, they dropped from fourth to eighteenth and the next turn were back to fourth rankings wise.

Anybody else seen this?

[Hooahguy]

Is Attila still alive? Apparently they spawn more stacks until he is killed, you cant kill them otherwise.

[Slaists]

OK, I have a suspicion that the Huns spawn new stacks if you knock them down to 1. I can't confirm yet, but twice I was sure I'd got all but one of their stacks, they dropped from fourth to eighteenth and the next turn were back to fourth rankings wise.

Anybody else seen this?

Once I played in the North as Longobards and by mistake went for one of the Northern win-conditions outright. Little did I know: it was the spawning ground for Hunnic stacks, LOL. It's the most North East province on the Baltic sea. They probably spawn in other places too but they definitely spawned several stacks there.

As to tips

Benefiting from guerilla deployment units

I have seen many folks say guerilla deployment units are pretty useless (for them).

The trick is, most guerilla units (especially cav) have much longer spotting range than normal units. Some (elite scouts) are able to clear the fog of war from half the field. Here I use them: deploy them (usually I have 1 unit) as far on the opposite side of the battlefield as you can; preferably in some trees. You'll be amazed how much more you can see before the battle even starts (or after it starts).

Here is an example of an elite scout:

http://attila-enc.totalwar.com/#/unit/att_nom_unnigarde

1700 spotting; that's more than 2x for regular cavalry.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Is Attila still alive? Apparently they spawn more stacks until he is killed, you cant kill them otherwise.

Ah, I looked this up.

Apparently they will continue spawning until you kill Attila TWICE as High King - and he won't become High King until the end game.

So it doesn't matter what you do - the Huns will be around until 450 AD. In view of that the Limes is the only concern for the WRE, both the Rhine and the Danube.

TWC has a bit on this: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...royed-outright

[Paradigmatic]

My experience with the Huns, as the WRE, is that, though at war and spawning stack after stack, being the no 1 military power and having smallish (8 to 12) unit armies in the 3 cities in Pannonia, as well as 2 similar armies in Raetia et Noricum, the Huns very rarely ventured inside my borders.

I don't know if the AI reacts to garrison troops, because those cities also had about 10 to 12 unit garrisons (so the total defending forces in each was around 20 units - so around 60 units in the province).

Basically, the Huns, even under Attila with his epic stacks of epicness, basically ravaged the Germans and left me alone for quite a while.

Most enemy Germanic hordes were similarly always on the borders, but never attacking. The only hordes that did pose problems are those who hated me but were not at war. They'd wander deep inside my territory and eventually declare war (unless I shadowed them with a similar size army).

I believe, the AI basically reacts to a show of strength (at least locally).

[Bramborough]

Same experience with Ostrogoths (and Saxons before that). Huns (and other enemies for that matter) perfectly happy to swoop in and trash a garrison-only minor settlement...but (almost) always stay away from army-defended minors, and walled cities with decent garrisons.

Huns cannot be destroyed during campaign chapters I-IV; their stacks simply respawn. Attila dies a scripted death at the beginning of Chapter V (445AD), and at that point the Hun stacks stay dead when you kill them off, and their faction can be destroyed.

As far as I can tell, Attila cannot be truly killed before Chapter V. I've "assassinated" him tons of times; my agents always had their typical chance of wounding, but always "0%" crit chance for the kill. I've also never seen him die in battle; even if the rest of his army is annihilated and I've gotten "Their general has fallen!" message, his 8-person bodyguard manages to escape.

I've read elsewhere that he must be be wounded a certain number of times (7?) pre-Chapter V, and the becomes actually kill-able...but I don't know if that's true or just "TW folklore".

Footnote: one can get the "Attila the Dead" achievement by merely wounding him...which seems rather anticlimactic to me.

[Paradigmatic]

Yeah Attila can be killed. I've killed him in my 2 WRE campaigns. In the first I wounded (killed) him in 2 different battles and some northern faction actually killed him. In the second one, I killed him twice in 2 different battles. I don't know if any other faction had killed him in between. I never saw him die from a script.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Same experience with Ostrogoths (and Saxons before that). Huns (and other enemies for that matter) perfectly happy to swoop in and trash a garrison-only minor settlement...but (almost) always stay away from army-defended minors, and walled cities with decent garrisons.

Huns cannot be destroyed during campaign chapters I-IV; their stacks simply respawn. Attila dies a scripted death at the beginning of Chapter V (445AD), and at that point the Hun stacks stay dead when you kill them off, and their faction can be destroyed.

As far as I can tell, Attila cannot be truly killed before Chapter V. I've "assassinated" him tons of times; my agents always had their typical chance of wounding, but always "0%" crit chance for the kill. I've also never seen him die in battle; even if the rest of his army is annihilated and I've gotten "Their general has fallen!" message, his 8-person bodyguard manages to escape.

I've read elsewhere that he must be be wounded a certain number of times (7?) pre-Chapter V, and the becomes actually kill-able...but I don't know if that's true or just "TW folklore".

Footnote: one can get the "Attila the Dead" achievement by merely wounding him...which seems rather anticlimactic to me.

Wait...


He's scripted to die in 445? Well that's a bug because he died in 453 in real life.

[Bramborough]

Yeah Attila can be killed. I've killed him in my 2 WRE campaigns. In the first I wounded (killed) him in 2 different battles and some northern faction actually killed him. In the second one, I killed him twice in 2 different battles. I don't know if any other faction had killed him in between. I never saw him die from a script.

Maybe I used a poor choice of words, and should have said "permanently killed". Sure, Attila can be assassinated or felled in battle, multiple times. My spies popped him at least 4 times during Ostro campaign. But he keeps coming back; Attila will continue reappearing until after Chapter IV is completed. At least that is my experience thus far.

[Paradigmatic]

I mean permanently killed. There's a little pop-up saying he's dead and the Huns are cutting their faces, tears of blood and all. You just have to kill him several times in a row to make him truly dead as of the moment he becomes king and appears on the campaign map.

[Bramborough]

Ah ok. Based on that, kinda sounds like successful agent assassination attempts don't increment towards his eventual "perma-death", only battle kills.

[Paradigmatic]

To be specific: you kill Attila in battle once during a single turn, his campaign avatar will retreat. If you kill him again during the same turn (not sure if it makes a difference, but that's how it happened to me), you get a message about Attila fearing defeat more than death and his campaign avatar disappears like a wounded general/agent. He eventually respawns out of sight (can be a few turns I think, like a wounded general/agent). If you kill him again after that, he's permanently dead.

Maybe the number of times he has to be wounded varies with difficulty level? I can't say I paid attention if this happened differently in Hard and Normal. But I'd say, off the top of my head, no.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

To be specific: you kill Attila in battle once during a single turn, his campaign avatar will retreat. If you kill him again during the same turn (not sure if it makes a difference, but that's how it happened to me), you get a message about Attila fearing defeat more than death and his campaign avatar disappears like a wounded general/agent. He eventually respawns out of sight (can be a few turns I think, like a wounded general/agent). If you kill him again after that, he's permanently dead.

Maybe the number of times he has to be wounded varies with difficulty level? I can't say I paid attention if this happened differently in Hard and Normal. But I'd say, off the top of my head, no.

I've heard everything from two to seven times but I suspect the truth is you have to annihilate his army twice, which would likely mean "killing" him up to four times.

[Paradigmatic]

Sounds about right.

[Slaists]

I gave legendary Huns a fresh spin after yesterday's patch. Sorry to report, but the experience was a tad underwhelming. I guess, the tweaks to imperium, AI attitude and big empire survival have made the game way easier than it was before patch 1.2.

For one, WRE and ERE do survive better. As a result of that, the multitude of stacks rampaging around has diminished. AI WRE and ERE defeated several Germanic hordes and minor factions in the first 20 or so turns. As a result, my Hunnic armies waltzed into untouched Italy raking in huge amounts for starting campaign (10-20K/turn) from raiding Roman trade routes. WRE threw a few stacks at me, but then ceased to resist and all of Italy went belly up since WRE was fighting Northern barbarians somewhere else.

Before 1.2, I'd meet a multitude of successors in Italy's area all yielding a good number of stacks. Hostile hordes would be running around as well. Adding to that: there'd be no Roman trade to raid (so, much less cash).

Hmm, not sure which way is better, LOL.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

So what's the deal with the WRE's Constant Immigration trait?

I'm about 100 turns in and immigration is causing -9 PO everywhere. If that gets any higher then not amount of PO buildings will save me - the well managed and prosperous WRE will implode because of "reasons".

So my question is - what does "Constant Immigration" mean?

Edit: Half the ERE is a smoking ruin, I wondered what the Huns were doing - they've got as far as Egypt now and they raised the entire Levant, if that's what's causing all this immigration then I think I'll keep plugging away, otherwise might need to leave it because if immigration gets any worse I won't be able to sustain the Empire.

[Hooahguy]

The constant immigration thing actually kinda makes sense, even from a historical view. With so much chaos outside their borders, the Romans, both East and West, had a huge flow of refugees coming in looking for safety, and that caused a lot of instability as the Romans couldnt handle the huge influx of new immigrants.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

The constant immigration thing actually kinda makes sense, even from a historical view. With so much chaos outside their borders, the Romans, both East and West, had a huge flow of refugees coming in looking for safety, and that caused a lot of instability as the Romans couldnt handle the huge influx of new immigrants.

I've been reading up, looks like you need to Round Robin with the Auxillary Support, province by province, until you've evicted the majority of the immigrants. Currently they're contributing -9 PO to every province, if I knock that down to -2 I can raise taxes to high and keep them there, which should slow the flow somewhat and net me more cash.

Overall though I'd say the current 90% immigrants across the Empire is too much, it means you're basically constantly maxed out, which means you COULD try to build around it because it's a constant -de-buff. It would be much better if the effect was dynamic, so that the WRE got 200% immigration, meaning potentially bigger shocks to the system. As things stand I can get every province to around +1 and then start systematically loweing the immgrant population.

[Slaists]

It seems, the immigration has something to do both with conflicts around your borders and your tax rate. Not playing WRE exactly, but with Ostrogoths, I got immigration down from -20/turn PO hit to 0 with very high taxes. Once I lowered taxes back to normal, immigration stayed at close to 0%.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

It seems, the immigration has something to do both with conflicts around your borders and your tax rate. Not playing WRE exactly, but with Ostrogoths, I got immigration down from -20/turn PO hit to 0 with very high taxes. Once I lowered taxes back to normal, immigration stayed at close to 0%.

WRE has "constant immigration" which means your immigrants never assimilate and raising taxes to "High" just maintains status quo. I'm going to make a save point and see about raising to "Very High", see how that pans out. Then I'll go back and try to use governors to lower it, then raise taxes to "High" and see if it stays there.

WRE is basically a juggling act, knowing how to balance food and PO buildings, knowing where to place armies and fleets, and also apparently knowing when to start fighting immigration.

[Slaists]

LOL, played with the Huns for a while and find that they have completely spoiled me. Found out yesterday I cannot fight with conventional armies anymore. The Huns are almost invincible.

Against the AI that is...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

LOL, played with the Huns for a while and find that they have completely spoiled me. Found out yesterday I cannot fight with conventional armies anymore. The Huns are almost invincible.

Against the AI that is...

Fighting against Christians you get a -10 to the ENEMY morale, and on top of that even your horse archers scare them. Unless the AI has top-level units with the "encourage" trait they'll buckle.

Don't be fooled though, Hunnic armies are powerful mainly before they can attack the enemy morale rather than their raw killing power.

Want a real challenge - learn to defeat the Huns with a Roman army, much more satisfying.

_________

Now - about the WRE's "Constant Immigration" trait. After some experimentation I've deduced that the WRE basically operates "one level" above other factions when it come to immigration - so where normal taxes would have a neutral effect for other factions then encourage immigration for the WRE and where high taxes bring you to 0 (excluding external factors). Immigration can up to -9 PO, which high taxes causes only -6 on top of the normal - 4. What this means is that the WRE is better off grinding down immigration using governors and then setting taxes to high. With that set up you should be able to get to 0% immigration and you'll be better off PO wise, the higher taxes will compensate your the loss of immigrants and it grees up your governors to do other things.