Attila 1st Impressions

**Slaists** · 02-17-2015, 22:29

Originally Posted by 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.

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** · 02-17-2015, 22:46

Originally Posted by Slaists

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** · 02-17-2015, 22:59

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

But I get the point about the hidden interface.

**Bramborough** · 02-17-2015, 23:02

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** · 02-18-2015, 06:25

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

**Patricius** · 02-18-2015, 12:22

A futile defence of Camulodunum was also my first experience. The interface and map are very well made. Perhaps the help could explain offices. I turned it off as before. It only seems to tell me things that are obvious. Next I turned to playing the ERE. A fairly big slice of the West is devastated. It is utterly stable for me and whatever the default settings are, work without any slowdown or other problems.

**Jacque Schtrapp** · 02-18-2015, 17:40

I played about 30 turns last night. It was slow going as I learned about the changes in the game. I started as the Eastern Roman Empire on Hard. I confess I found it a little overwhelming. You are stretched very thin, short on funds, your provinces are generally unhappy, and there are hordes wandering all over Thrace and Macedonia. Battles are fairly straightforward, but there are some nice changes to technology and offices. I found offices to be confusing, though like Patricius said, it is probably explained by the Advisor (the first thing I turn off when I play a new TW title).

My first battle was against a Visigoth horde that I pinned between a garrison and my faction leader's half stack. Numbers were evenly matched. The battle opened with my main army at the base of a hill facing the Visigoth horde. I repositioned half way up the hill, hoping the Visigoths, with their temporary numerical superiority, would attack me up the hill while I waited for my reinforcements. No dice. The moment my reinforcements marched in on the side of the screen, the Visigoths shifted their formation into an "L" facing both of my armies with half of theirs. I must say my first Attila battle was a rude shock. I didn't realize that archers do not begin battles with skirmish enabled (as it always was in the past) and the Visigoth cavalry hit and routed an archer unit from each army before I realized what was going on. Archers are weak and AI cavalry is overly aggressive. After they routed my archers, my spears routed both of their cavalry units off the map. As my two armies closed on their one, they shifted forces again and sent all of their melee (basic pike units) against my main army and then turned all of their archers to fire on my second army. Despite hitting all of their pike units in the flanks or from behind, they rather quickly annihilated most of my spear units. I had to pull my two cavalry units from attacking their archers and send repeated charges into the rear of the pike units to finally break them. Throughout this entire time, the enemy general (a spear unit) refused to engage. Once general melee began, he marched to the edge of the map and sat there while his forces were eventually destroyed. I killed half his unit with archers and then he routed when faced with the remnants of my forces.

My second battle came about as a result of a request from the Western Romans to relieve a siege of one of their cities on the edge of our borders. This siege was also being conducted by a Visigoth horde. Again my forces were made up of two armies, a small WRE garrison and my army. We marched 90% of the way across a completely flat map (no trees, no shrubbery), unable to find the Visigoths. Just before reaching the edge of the map, the Visigoth horde appeared out of nowhere, almost in melee range. Literally. Again, their pikes ripped through my spears units, one of which was my general who ended up dying almost immediately. My whole army routed in the first few minutes before the WRE forces could even cross the map to help.

At this point, I decided to start a campaign as the Sassanids on Hard. Much easier. It gave me time to learn about promotions and integrity and such. There are still hordes to deal with, but the Sassanids don't have the same provincial happiness issues as the Romans. They get a bunch of rebellious client kingdoms instead. There are still things I am learning about and don't fully understand such as integrity. My best general leads an army that has to be continually parked in a city and repeatedly be decimated because their integrity drops so low that I get rebellion warnings over and over. This despite the fact the general has no negative integrity traits. I also get low loyalty warnings, though I haven't figured out how to increase loyalty effectively. Things must be grim to the west, as 30 turns in, I was seeing an Italian faction and WRE Separatist faction.

I really like the complexity of the family tree and governors/offices offers some deeper immersion than previous games. Assigning retainers and deciding what clothing your generals and governors wear (clothing has trait effects, such as a governor getting an architect robe from completing a lot of buildings) also adds variety. It hasn't all been rainbows and unicorns though, I have had some issues. The end of turns seems to take longer than I expected it would and I have had issues with mini-freezes, usually right before I receive a low loyalty warning. I did have one CTD right before finishing playing for the night. Strangely, battles play out seamlessly, while I have noticed slowdown on the campaign map. I have a high end PC and am playing at Ultra setting which was recommended by the game itself. I've also had some issues with constant flickering along the roadways on the campaign map and an artifact of some type that looks like a small DOS window behind both of my priest agents. The only other issue I have noticed so far is that my faction leader has two traits that should be giving influence points per turn, yet his influence stays at 15. This is a problem since most promotions and events require influence points. If you don't have enough influence points, you lose control points. I went from 70% control down to 34% control due to a lack of influence points (mostly being unable to handle rumors/assassinations). Another thing I didn't really improve of was the interaction of my client kingdoms. Despite the tooltip saying that they gain your protection while losing most of their independence, they will almost all cancel their trade agreements with you at the start, and, perhaps most confusingly, they can and will go to war with each other forcing you to choose a side and lose a client. I'm not sure I agree with that level of independence.

I'm happy with the game so far. It's not perfect, but no game ever really is. It does contain enough new content to keep me looking forward to continuing to play.