Total War: ATTILA- Dev Blog

**Joey CA** · December 01, 2014, 10:33 AM

Hi all,

Have you ever wondered how marriages work in Total War: ATTILA or how the role of agents will change?
Then today is your lucky day, as we've got a brand new installment of our Total War: ATTILA Development Blog with answers to these burning questions for you, fresh out of the proverbial pen of our very own Peter Stewart.

Read more here: http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/The_Finer_Points_of_Conquest

Enjoy,

Joey CA

**Le_Swede** · December 01, 2014, 10:56 AM

This game starts to become more and more promising for every bit of info you guys gives us!

Edit: Allthough, shouldn't an emperor of the Sassanid Empire be a bit more hairy? I myself like my persians bearded.

**juanplay** · December 01, 2014, 11:21 AM

No such thing as a sassanid emperor, just the king of kings.The game is looking more interesting.

**Le_Swede** · December 01, 2014, 12:08 PM

Originally Posted by juanplay

No such thing as a sassanid emperor, just the king of kings.The game is looking more interesting.

I see your nitpicking and raise it with my own. The term "emperor" can be, and is frequently used to refer to people of a similar standing as that of an roman emperor in other states. Similary, the term "empire" have been, and is used to describe states of a certain grandness. Thusly using the term "emperor" to refer to the official leader of the Sassanid "empire" is not incorrect in describing that single individual's status within that society.

**Forward Observer** · December 01, 2014, 12:18 PM

Thanks for the post

In the brief descriptions of the abilities of each agent--is the second sentence concerning a spy a typo since it seems to partially contradict the first sentence?

"My spy (Investigator) can act upon enemy armies and deceive enemy agents, slowing them down. No actions can yet be used on armies or settlements. "

Cheers

**Sherm** · December 01, 2014, 12:25 PM

The only good gameblog is the one where was said "These feature will be implemented also in Rome II and not only in Barbarian Invasion II"

**RGA** · December 01, 2014, 12:30 PM

By all means, "emperor" did mean "king of kings" by Medieval standard. It is thus a translational equivalence. The same as how everyone calls Chinese emperor, well, Emperor though he refered himself as "golden king" in Chinese.

Back to the topic, I hope that marriage would be a little bit more dynamic than in Shogun 2, i.e. it should have both pros and cons. Hostile factions of the betrothed side should hate you even more. Declining marriage should lead to a minor diplomacy punishment. There should also be a chance that a non-married member of the betrothed side would turn up hating your faction. In case he ends up being the faction leader, the whole marriage endeavour would prove completely miscalculated.

Other thing I would love to see is if an assassination attemp on faction leader is disclosed, war could be declared without any diplomacy punishment, regardless your current treaties.I remember once trying to assassinate the Holy Roman emperor in M2TW only to be detected. He immediately declared war on me.

**Strattios** · December 01, 2014, 01:16 PM

Originally Posted by Forward Observer

Thanks for the post

In the brief descriptions of the abilities of each agent--is the second sentence concerning a spy a typo since it seems to partially contradict the first sentence?

"My spy (Investigator) can act upon enemy armies and deceive enemy agents, slowing them down. No actions can yet be used on armies or settlements. "

Cheers

The spy can't affect your armies. They are distinguishing between good and bad. Think not increasing your armies line of sight or movement points.

I hope CA gives agents (namely spies) the ability to perform framing actions. Meaning I would like a new method to decrease the standing between AI factions. Few things are as annoying as ending up surrounded by allies of allies preventing growth without losing hard won connections. I would like the ability to push favor towards my faction so that when war starts, the divides are where I want.

**VINC.XXIII** · December 01, 2014, 03:55 PM

Perhaps back to MTW1 spies?
-They were able to fabricate fake evidences, and further a fake judicial action(according several parameters, the general or agent you didn't want anymore was condamned or not....)

**The Outsider** · December 01, 2014, 04:11 PM

Im not going to pre order this game or anything - the wound of rome 2 is too fresh but man! Parchements! My beloved parchements! I missed them soo much since medieval! This brings back soo many memories, its good to see them back.

**craziii** · December 01, 2014, 04:15 PM

as long as ca previews can show me the new UI n features in video form, uncut, I am sold. I would just pre order it and get the dlc for free. when I am done with witcher 3, I would start playing attila. it really doesn't matter to me the state of the release as I wouldn't be playing till at least 3 months after release date anyway. but from what I am seeing, it looks pretty good. the only regret I have is rome 2 vanilla would never get the improvements. such a waste of the good time period.

**NostalgiaFan** · December 01, 2014, 04:35 PM

Originally Posted by The Outsider

Im not going to pre order this game or anything - the wound of rome 2 is too fresh but man! Parchements! My beloved parchements! I missed them soo much since medieval! This brings back soo many memories, its good to see them back.

Its weird seeing so much taken from the original medieval total war. I didn't think CA would look into them again, much less use them for Attila. It sounds really great.

**nameless** · December 01, 2014, 05:06 PM

My priest (Magus) can affect my own provinces by acting on them, and can also act on other agents to try and convert/neutralise them. He can also encourage dissent or, if he’s lucky, revolution in foreign settlements. He is, currently, unable to act in any way on any armies – neither mine nor foreign forces.
My spy (Investigator) can act upon enemy armies and deceive enemy agents, slowing them down. No actions can yet be used on armies or settlements.
My champion can attack any foreign character (that is, agents or generals), and also can perform military training on my own armies. They cannot act on enemy settlements or enemy armies.

So if I'm reading this right that means that even if they are fully upgraded the agents' roles are no longer overlapping which is a great thing I mean have you seen the mods on the workshop that literally cuts the agent limits to 1 or 0? It's so bad when you got 12 various agents doing the same thing over and over again and shutting down your empire.

Agents have been OP since NTW (I lost count of how many generals I lost to spies) so it's good if they make them more specific.

**PointOfViewGun** · December 01, 2014, 05:25 PM

Originally Posted by craziii

as long as ca previews can show me the new UI n features in video form, uncut, I am sold. I would just pre order it and get the dlc for free. when I am done with witcher 3, I would start playing attila. it really doesn't matter to me the state of the release as I wouldn't be playing till at least 3 months after release date anyway. but from what I am seeing, it looks pretty good. the only regret I have is rome 2 vanilla would never get the improvements. such a waste of the good time period.

They already had a twitch stream where they showed the features shown in EGX video in real time. There might be a video of it somewhere.

**paradamed** · December 01, 2014, 06:00 PM

I hope we can use spies to spread plague like in RTW and M2TW

**Fredrin** · December 01, 2014, 07:14 PM

If anyone wants to take the surveys on their opinions about this and Attila pre-order DLC, check out this quick 2 minute survey here:

Attila and Rome II Mini-survey

**craziii** · December 01, 2014, 07:45 PM

Originally Posted by Setekh

They already had a twitch stream where they showed the features shown in EGX video in real time. There might be a video of it somewhere.

it was the same video(content wise) I think + some QA(which was great) at the end. a lets play video that shows us the game. the video has to be the almost finish build, not the EGX special demo build. as close to the retail release version as possible. hell, show us the retail version, ca would have a gold version at least few weeks before release date right? Show us the new changes, no need to show everything but enough(up to ca to decide what is enough) something like what lusted did for rome 2 but in uncut video form! show us a video of devs playing the campaign, not just talking about the campaign. Show off the new UI + features in action. THAT would shut every critic of attila up 100% at least you would have the sensible posters on your side after something like that. I know there are those who would never be satisfied or just plain dumb. is ca confident enough in it's product to do that?

shadow of mordor had zero reviews besides the 1.5 hour long dev video showing off the game, I bought the game base on that video alone. it showed skills, stuff the devs thinks is cool, missions/quests. 50% of the video was about the nemesis system, their most important feature, in detail. it sold the game to almost everyone who watched the video I bet.

**PointOfViewGun** · December 01, 2014, 09:05 PM

Originally Posted by craziii

it was the same video(content wise) I think + some QA(which was great) at the end. a lets play video that shows us the game. the video has to be the almost finish build, not the EGX special demo build. as close to the retail release version as possible. hell, show us the retail version, ca would have a gold version at least few weeks before release date right? Show us the new changes, no need to show everything but enough(up to ca to decide what is enough) something like what lusted did for rome 2 but in uncut video form! show us a video of devs playing the campaign, not just talking about the campaign. Show off the new UI + features in action. THAT would shut every critic of attila up 100% at least you would have the sensible posters on your side after something like that. I know there are those who would never be satisfied or just plain dumb. is ca confident enough in it's product to do that?

shadow of mordor had zero reviews besides the 1.5 hour long dev video showing off the game, I bought the game base on that video alone. it showed skills, stuff the devs thinks is cool, missions/quests. 50% of the video was about the nemesis system, their most important feature, in detail. it sold the game to almost everyone who watched the video I bet.

It wasn't a video. They simply played the game live online showing the same features. It wasn't pre-made.

**craziii** · December 01, 2014, 11:00 PM

Originally Posted by Setekh

It wasn't a video. They simply played the game live online showing the same features. It wasn't pre-made.

it was the twitch event with qa at the end right? cuz they only played the battle just like the EGX event. introduced the UI stuff and not actually using it on the campaign map. unless you are talking about something else they did after the twitch stream in question.

**PointOfViewGun** · December 01, 2014, 11:11 PM

Originally Posted by craziii

it was the twitch event with qa at the end right? cuz they only played the battle just like the EGX event. introduced the UI stuff and not actually using it on the campaign map. unless you are talking about something else they did after the twitch stream in question.

They showed the same stuff from the EGX video but in live usage of the game. This included the UI as well. The part 2 of the stream for example: