Total War: Attila

[Jeivar]

I'm wondering what to grab on the Steam Holiday Sale, and Rome II and Attila caught my eye, particularly the Age of Charlemagne expansion to the latter (because Vikings!).

I played Medieval II a while back, but have enjoyed Rome I more. The more savage and colourful setting appealed to me, as well as being able to field Germanic berserkers and encounter cultures I'm less familiar with through pop culture.

How do the new games compare?
One thing that really annoyed me about the older games was the near-useless diplomacy system. I was NEVER able to get an ally to do anything useful, and they turned on me out of the blue as inevitably as the tide, even if I married into the royal family and showered them with gifts. Has the diplomacy system been reworked?

Oh, and do generals still pick up traits along the way? I will never forget my English king, Rufus the Mauler, who degenerated into a horribly scarred psychopath whose pre-battle speech basically went "I will have blood, BLOOD BLOOOOD!"

There was never any public disorder when he was in town. :)

[Jeivar]

So, ah, anyone? Has anyone here played Attila and/or Age of Charlemagne?

[veti]

I've played every Total War game from Shogun to Napoleon, and I'm tempted by Attila. I miss the pre-modern-era warfare, and I still haven't installed Medieval II on my new PC (because SecuROM), so Attila could fill a gap in my playtime.

"Generals gaining (and growing) traits" has been a part of the series for as long as I can remember, I don't see that going away.

What worries me most is - well, the Attila effect. I have too many memories of trying to hold back vast unstoppable hordes in other games of the series (the Huns and others in Rome: Barbarian Invasion, the Mongols in both Medieval games) - and in my experience, it gets harder with each successive generation of the game. I'm not sure I have the heart to go through that all over again.

For your specific questions, I suggest looking here (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?2087-Total-War-Attila-General-Discussion).

Edit: Diplomacy has royally sucked in every version. And I see people are still moaning about it now, so I suspect it hasn't changed that much.

[Crow]

Attila is more survival-oriented than other Total War games. It was a nice change. I played Rome 2, and it just didn't catch on for me, even though I loved Rome 1 (Oh and btw diplomacy was still useless). The narrative, apocalyptic atmosphere, and feeling of the world tearing itself apart in Attila was a lot of fun. The Charlemagne add-on is fantastic. It introduces some new mechanics such as war-weariness, and the diplomacy was revamped and actually pretty solid. In my opinion, Charlemagne is the best Total War "game" in a *very* long time. Some have complained about a lack of unit variety in Charlemagne, which more resembles units in Shogun 2; and sadly they haven't introduced any of the Charlemagne features into the main Attila campaign.

Also, don't play Attila as the Selucids. Most of the people who didn't like Attila played their first game as Selucids; who are big, relatively stable, and play in a pretty boring part of the map.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Seleucids are in Attila:smallconfused:

I tried Rome 2 when there was a free weekend on steam and found it pretty dull but I've never enjoyed a Total War Game. Attila sounded interesting but I already have too many Total War Games I don't play (I bought Shogun 2 when it was new and found it a buggy slow to load chore).


The more savage and colourful setting appealed to me, as well as being able to field Germanic berserkers and encounter cultures I'm less familiar with through pop culture.

Pity all those weird units were completely made up nonsense (bersekers? seriously:smallannoyed:).

If a medieval game isn't colourful something wrong is going on.

[Crow]

Seleucids are in Attila:smallconfused:

Their successors, what is left of them, yes; and as I said, they are frightfully boring to play compared to just about any other faction in Attila.

You finding Rome 2 dull is not out of the ordinary. It is, even if you like color of the time period it takes place in. It just wasn't executed well at all. If you want that period, play Rome 1 instead and maybe find a mod you like along the way.

[Closet_Skeleton]

I own Rome 1 due to a steam bundle, never installed it.

I'd like a good migration era game, but Atilla is the most boring part of the era despite being its most famous character. Charlemagne isn't boring but he is basically the historical equivalent of the boring part of a bad 4x (the "I've already won due to building the best economy, now I just have ton of busywork annexing everything" stage).

[Vitruviansquid]

Their successors, what is left of them, yes; and as I said, they are frightfully boring to play compared to just about any other faction in Attila.

You finding Rome 2 dull is not out of the ordinary. It is, even if you like color of the time period it takes place in. It just wasn't executed well at all. If you want that period, play Rome 1 instead and maybe find a mod you like along the way.

Are you referring to the Sassanid Empire?

The Seleucid kingdom was a successor kingdom, a kingdom built by one of Alexander the Great's generals after Alexander died. It was Hellenic.

The Sassanid Empire is Persian and Zoroastrian. They were not at all Hellenic in any way.

The most recent patch also sought to make Sassanid gameplay more interesting by adding the White Huns, another Horde faction that was placed to attack and destabilize the Sassanid Empire. I haven't played it recently to figure out if it's actually achieved its goal, though.

As to the original topic: Attila is both a very good game and a very weird game. I can assure you there is strategic depth, balance, diversity, and all that good stuff. However, all that good stuff is buried under a lot of stupid and unintuitive stuff, like hidden stats, lack of explanation for important parts of the game, and *some* design decisions that make no sense that anyone could discern. But underneath it all, it's a pretty good game.

[Crow]

Ah yes, Sassanid sorry.

[thorgrim29]

I'd like a good migration era game, but Atilla is the most boring part of the era despite being its most famous character.

You can play Atilla, but he's more useful as a plot device in the game. Since the winters get progressively longer during the game, the western Roman empire is slowly (or not so slowly) breaking down and the Huns are on the warpath with everybody it's all a lot more dynamic than what we are used to from a Total War game.

But yeah, I agree that it's a weird game. I can see how all of it should work and it kept the best parts of Rome II (which ended up being a very solid game once the Emperor edition was released) but I never really got into it. I might have to give Charlemagne or Belisarius a try one of these days though since I hear good things about them.

[Martok]

I think which game you prefer might come down to which era(s) you're more into.



I hated (with the fire of a thousand suns) the original RTW, but I love Rome II. It was admittedly in poor shape when it was first released, but a ton of patches & updates (culminating in the Emperor's Edition) have since made it a winner for me. It's still far from perfect -- I'll never claim otherwise! -- but for me, the "fun factor" outweighs its flaws by a hefty margin.

The release of the Wrath of Sparta DLC (despite its cheesy/horrible name) was also a big plus, as I'm an amateur enthusiast of ancient Greek history, and the Peloponnesian War in particular. (Playing as the Athenians is a real b****, though! :smalleek: ) A pity it doesn't do a better job with the naval combat (it's basically the same as in the base game), but I would've been honestly surprised if it had gotten that correct.



Attila, I think, is the better game both technically and mechanically. It seems to run better, it has some neat features & mechanics that Rome II could've really used (and/or sorely lacked), the AI seems to be a much more formidable opponent, etc. Now I personally don't care for the game as much because I'm not into the late Roman period -- I prefer my Romans (and Greeks) from the more traditional Classical era -- but if you're someone who *is* into that part of history, then this game is very probably one that you'd enjoy.

That being said, I have been playing Attila more as of late, now that the Age of Charlemagne DLC has been released. I'm also a big fan of medieval history (the original Medieval Total War remains one of my top five PC titles of all time), and there are few strategy games covering the very early part of the Medieval period. It's been fun to get back into that era, and with Attila's technical and gameplay improvements, I suspect my playing time will come to rival the amount of time I've spent playing Rome II.

[thorgrim29]

Yeah Charlemagne is pretty fun, really captures how resource-starved the empires of that period were when your elite troops are the equivalent of roman tier 1 troops from the main game. I won a short game with Mercia pretty easily (left Northumbria alone while I gradually got rid of the other english kingdoms and conquered Ireland, then killed Northumbria and built up forces and cash for a massive invasion of the Frank kingdom. I quickly captured 3 provinces, beat back the counterattack, took another province and reached imperium 7 AKA victory.

Now I'm giving the Danes a try and it's much harder. I need to attack England to get rid of a bunch of debuffs but I also need to expand to the south and beat back the Franks. Even with a few very heroic defenses I lost the first go around and I'm trying again. It helps that the Frankish army is very heavy on cavalry and javelins so defending a few choke points with spear and shield walls works wonders.

[Jeivar]

BEHOLD MY POWERS OF NECROMANCY! MWAHAHAHAHA!

Anyway, I did go ahead and grab Attila during the holiday sale, but I haven't gotten around to playing it yet. Now Age of Charlemagne is on sale, so I'm going to give Attila a try, to see if I should grab AoC.

What are the major management/gameplay changes from Rome 1 that I should keep in mind?

[Dienekes]

So, did they ever get rid of that idiotic capture the flags thing in their battles?

[Crow]

BEHOLD MY POWERS OF NECROMANCY! MWAHAHAHAHA!

Anyway, I did go ahead and grab Attila during the holiday sale, but I haven't gotten around to playing it yet. Now Age of Charlemagne is on sale, so I'm going to give Attila a try, to see if I should grab AoC.

What are the major management/gameplay changes from Rome 1 that I should keep in mind?

Age of Charlemagne and the grand campaign in Attila are really 2 different games, so I don't know if you can necessarily tell if you will like AoC based on Attila. If you haven't played since Rome 1, here are some important things to know about Attila.

- If you play as the Sassanids, your game will be boring and you will probably walk away with a poor opinion of the game.
- On some factions, Attila plays as more of a survival strategy game with RPG elements. It won't play exactly like a normal Total War game.
- Three or more settlements (regions) make up a single province. Each region has limited building slots, but shares its benefits with every region within the province.
- Every force must have a general or admiral, and you have a limited number of these available (though this limit has never been a problem for me).
- Every settlement has a garrison determined by the building that are present within.
- Armies left out in the field during winter will suffer some serious attrition.
- Regions have Fertility, which means some regions with a farm will produce more food than other regions with the same farm.
- Settlements can be razed and wiped from the map (near) completely. After a while their fertility will replenish and the region can be recolonized. In the grand campaign, the AI uses the raze option a lot (some say too much), and by late game, Europe will look like a bit of a wasteland. This does however fit with the apocalyptic theme of the game. I kinda liked it.
- Things catch fire during battles, and the fires can spread rapidly.
- Taking a faction's last settlement doesn't eliminate them. Their remaining armies will wander the map and attempt to capture a new home. Once all of their armies and settlements are dealt with, they are destroyed.

AoC has a few more changes.

- Generally more simple (easier) settlement building.
- Some buildings can spread their benefits not just within a province, but into neighboring provinces.
- More focused unit rosters.
- War weariness. Factions who stay at war too long will begin to suffer penalties. Long stalemates will generally see one or both sides vying for peace after a while. Factions at war with several other factions will try to make peace with some of them.


So, did they ever get rid of that idiotic capture the flags thing in their battles?

You mean the ones like from Shogun 2?

[Dienekes]

You mean the ones like from Shogun 2?

Dunno, never played Shogun. I only remember playing a game of Rome 2 at a friends when it first came out, and the only battle I played involved getting these victory flag things on the battlefield to win. Which is the dumbest thing I've ever heard for a total war game. The reason why I loved Rome 1 was because I could field an army and crush my enemies, not play capture the flag with my soldiers.

[Vitruviansquid]

They got rid of victory flags in Rome 2 and Attila, except during sieges where the attacker could claim the flags to win.

[Dienekes]

They got rid of victory flags in Rome 2 and Attila, except during sieges where the attacker could claim the flags to win.

Oh, thank goodness. Seriously, what were they thinking with that?

[Crow]

It was designed to prevent people from going up to the corner of the map and camping in multiplayer.

[endur]

I really liked Shogun 2 and Napoleon. I have not yet enjoyed Attila. Im not sure why. Map is much larger than in those games. Objectives and events seem less story oriented.

[Jeivar]

Well, I'm playing the tutorial campaign and I've come across a very annoying feature: I arrange my army in neat, thought-out battle lines . . . and when I order them to move up they scatter to the four winds.

Am I doing something wrong?

[thorgrim29]

The game defaults to a weird formation for groups, you need to manually select line formation for them to go to useful places

[Jeivar]

The game defaults to a weird formation for groups, you need to manually select line formation for them to go to useful places

And how do I do that?

[Crow]

And how do I do that?

No no.

Once you have them in your thought out formation, select them all and press G to put them into a group. After that if you select the group they will all try to stay in formation when you march them.

[Jeivar]

No no.

Once you have them in your thought out formation, select them all and press G to put them into a group. After that if you select the group they will all try to stay in formation when you march them.

Ah, thanks.

[Crow]

Also if you select a bunch of units and hold Crtl when you click to attack, each will try to attack the units nearest in front of them. Very useful for commanding multiple units to attack other groups of multiple units.

If you select a group that you have made and click attack, I believe they do the same even without holding Crtl. I can't remember.