Attila, the game the community asked for

[VanGoth]

First if u hadnt noticed thats FOTS tournament, and FOTS was less glitchy and exploitive than STW2 even at release, later tournaments started using custom battle and not avatar battles for reason of veteran units alone. In the end i could say STW2 (-FOTS) had the same amount of tournaments as RTW2 so in this aspect STW2 wasnt anything special. Avatar campaign event though it was nice and fun addition brought nothing to competitive mp in fact it thwarted it .

Second mp has to be fair for veterans and noobs alike so this means not XP, no veterans, no locked units, no general skills.

Third ur saying u had 1200h and then stating that avatar wasnt a grind at all - hypocrisy at the highest level... or u cant look at things more objectively.

Fourth I have seen pretty much all skilled players from STW2 later in RTW2 tournaments including Duck that played in your link above.


Lastly since this topic was debated many times before i will just quote this guy who sums it up pretty well



------



Horde mode in Attila is smt quite different - u can live, fight and upgrade your horde entire campaign if u want and that wasnt possible in rtw1

You are, again, coming to some strange conclusions. When i said that i invested a huge amount of time into that particular game it doesn't mean that i spended this time with "grinding", i simply and actually were playing the game...i just enjoyed the hell out of it. Crazy, i know...

I don't make any severe distinctions between Shogun II and FotS since it was possible, and quite interesting, to fight modern armies with traditional armies in MP, another aspect which i really enjoyed.

Balancing, oh well...i guess we would derail this thread if we really tried to go deeper on that matter. The one thing i want to say is that i never had the feeling that Shogun II and/or FotS had severe balancing issues, if that would've been the case i wouldn't have spent so much time with those games. There are more ways to balance a game than to give the players mirror arrangements. I'm no competitive player btw. so take my opinion with a grain of salt on that matter.

Thanks for the link by the way, i see your point and hope that you can see mine as well. Let's just agree that we disagree.

[Sharpe]

The community is more or less killing the game to an extent. I understand when CA lets us down, but when we bash it for every minuscule thing it really does kill a game. We're so needy, up to barebones details that can't be satisfied ubiquitously. It's a shame, really.

Aye.

[Laz3456]

A personal view on Attila total war
For me Rome 2 was the most anticipated and least enjoyable TW game ever.

The reasons why:

Land Battles were just plan dull with masses if infantry blobbing together in a way you can never do if cavalry is a threat. It was nearly pointless to coordinate units as it is just as effective to mass blob the enemy.

Sea battles were an absolute joke, where transport ships beat naval vessels every time.

The old total domination slog, aren’t people board of this yet as we have scores of games that already do it? This is where you conquer neighbouring lands and add them to your ever expanding and absurdly large empire.

No character development or relationship (family tree) context for generals and no reason to care about them as they die all the time and can always be replaced.

Rome when CAI controlled always seemed to get squashed before it did anything and hell I like having a challenging Rome to sack and pillage.

The awful 3d character portraits.

Pointless diplomacy that had very little bearing on what you did.

The economic system didn’t work at all and the insane missions that you just ignored.

The weird graphics that looked really poor with clouds and fog everywhere despite having an easily good enough rig.

All of the above could be mitigated by Mods but none of them to my taste could lift this game any higher than its knees.

Attila on the other hand feels to me a massive return to form.

This is why:

CA did listen to the fans and this game really feels and plays like a superbly modded version of Rome 2 that wasn’t so lame.

You have a family tree to you can see who relates to who, who is loyal, who needs to have their loyalty improve or removed, who needs to be married and who to side line. – I must say I have am loving this bit of the game, especially sending off disloyal family members to raid faraway lands and keep them out of trouble.

It has two Huge Roman empires to sack pillage and grind into the dust.

Combat seems way more dynamic with the need to co-ordinate spear, melee and cavalry to win but also adapted to the different enemies fighting Germanics, Romans and Huns does feel like a different experience. Hunnic horse archer is very difficult to fight against if you do not have powerful bows in you faction.

You can turn off the awful 3d animated portraits.

The coming winter puts a pressure on food and squalor preventing you from just playing like risk and sitting on one area building up and rolling forward like a wave.

The dynamism of migrating peoples making it hard to develop water tight cordons around your lands.

I know people have complained about razing settlement but if you use this mechanic to create a buffer zone you can then build up behind it can be really superb. I also like the fact that if you have had a particularly bloody and agent heavy war with assassination and counter assassination of family members you just want to raze the blighters and not rule them!

The campaign feels more fluid and challenging with fighting off and dodging the Huns hordes and other factions.

In all I think Attila is a great Total War game and one that really deserve its place in the series.

Thank you CA for listening I fully appreciate what you did with Attila.

[Samariten]

TS forgets the reason of the unleash of the golden horde against RTW II. It was because Rome 2 was not a finished game in the first place. The diffrent opinions about victory points, unit cards, red and yellow squares are just minor things.

As a consumer i expect a finished product when i pay for one. Not a product thats missing parts that will be delivered next week or month.

Being content about a product that is not finished doesnt send any good signals at all. To be on your toes hopefully gives a better product in the end. So please, there is a diffrence in bashing and what the bashing was about.

[shnukshnuk]

i agree with everything you have said i also think rome 2 is the best total war game ever made.

everyone on this forum is mostly salty old nostalgia freaks. I have been with total war for 12 years and played every game. and still rome 2 is my favorite.

[Sharpe]

i agree with everything you have said i also think rome 2 is the best total war game ever made.

everyone on this forum is mostly salty old nostalgia freaks. I have been with total war for 12 years and played every game. and still rome 2 is my favorite.

There is nothing wrong with nostalgia, I love the originals too, but I love the new ones as well and I seem to be a pariah because of it.

[GoTW Kubee]

Rome 1 was very accurate relative to its time and to the field of games it was competing with...as the years go on, everyone gets better at artistically depicting historical settings. After all, that is what you are referring to: artistic depictions (unit skins); something that was very easily modified and fine-tuned by a whole slew of modders (Rome Total Realism, Europa Barbarorum). And let's be honest, many of the units depicted in Rome 2 are not actually based on history but are rather an amalgamation of historical warriors or were simply artistic interpretations of them. Here's a little hint, most kingdoms/tribes outside of the Romans and some of the Greek and Phoenician and Mediterranean cultures didn't really have organized armies and didn't really have different types of 'units.' A lot of the Gaulic and Germanic tribes simply had warriors (some of more noble birth, and others with lower stature).

But when it comes to core game mechanics, most Total War fans would agree that Rome 1 (and Medieval 2 for the same reasons) was a better and more accurate game.
Unlike Rome 2, Rome 1 allowed:
- player management of the family tree (as did happen in real-world history).
- unit collision which physically depicted much more realistic battle scenarios.
- more realistic morale settings (units would waver and route more readily when put in bad situations).
- full player control over settlement construction (also allowed the player to set it on auto-manage).
- more realistic individual actions within the unit (multiple soldiers within a unit would gang up on a single enemy fighter, unlike Rome 2)
- do I really need to continue?

I've never let nostalgia blind me to the weaknesses of that game. Diplomacy, naval warfare, Battlefield AI for certain situations, have always been an issue (including in the current games). But the core of that game was definitely a more finished product and more accurate in my mind.

When modders took Rome 1 and produced Rome Total Realism and Europa Barbarorum, they took a great game and made it even better.

When modders took Rome 2 and produced (I dont know what Rome 2 mods are even popular on a comparable scale to RTR and EB), they took a turd and made a half-decent game.

Really good post.

[GoTW Kubee]

I'll respond to the more important aspects of this discussion:



No it doesn't. Rome 2's engine, which is a brand new engine from the Medieval 2 and Rome 1 games, does not have unit collision. They fiddled with the programming to make units not run through each other and form disorganized blobs (like they used at release), but they do not have unit collision in the same way that Medieval 2 and Rome 1 did. See the below videos, which provide a very in-depth analysis of this issue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXkWfEIALxM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy5GRaHzFnI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmE9-e0M45o



I remember the morale system in Rome 1 and Medieval 2 being very logical and also much more clear to the player. Flank/rear attacks, fire arrows, presence of a general all had effects, and you could determine how your units were being affected simply by looking at the unit card (which you couldn't do initially in Rome 2, at least not as easily due to their configuration). In medieval 2, it would even tell why your men were experiencing morale issues (it would say 'being flanked', or 'surrounded'). Rome 2 doesn't have nearly the same clarity when it comes to seeing how your units are being affected (a lot of that has to do with how unit cards are displayed).



Again, No they don't, at least not the way they used to in previous games. The combat system is based almost exclusively on unit 'kill moves' which have to be executed. In Rome 1 and Medieval 2 units would naturally flex in the battle and combatants would find themselves in various situations (1v1, 1v3, 2v3, ect.) and the outcome of individual fights would be determined not only by unit stats but also by how many combatants were involved. Whereas in Rome 2, the combat is being determined by choreographed kill moves which mostly occur on a 1v1 basis...the new patches have allowed some 2v1, 2v3, ect. scenarios, but not to the same extent that the previous games did. Again refer to the videos above to see what I am talking about.

I get it. A lot of people put time and money into this game, so they don't want to hear that it has major issues. The fact is it has been ranked lower than Rome Total War: Alexander by the average user/player:
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/total-war-rome-ii
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/ro...-war-alexander

Anyone who isn't paid-off reviewer at one of the big gaming media groups pretty much acknowledges that this game was a broken piece of crud at release, and has only been made playable due to the numerous band aids that have been put into place...the game engine was never truly fixed, but rather made adequate enough to play.

Another very good post.

[Emperor Arcturus Mengsk]

about unit collision they have fixed that with entity mass mechanic, which I think works fine.

For example I've never seen my lines break if I have good quality infantry in any kind of shield wall/testudo formation, the fights get a bit more chaotic if I countercharge, but that's only natural, no?

[surg3on]

There is nothing wrong with nostalgia, I love the originals too, but I love the new ones as well and I seem to be a pariah because of it.

Forums tend to be on the negative side (TWC general in particular). I agree with you though, Attila is a lot of fun with just a couple mods.

[Darios]

Having gotten sick of the constant desynchs associated with playing Attila in MP, a friend and I reinstalled Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai and fired up a campaign. I know that this subject has been beaten to death on TWC but I seriously wondered what happened to CA between FoTS and R2.

FoTS has nice graphics yet still runs smoothly. Sure they're not R2/Attila quality but they do not need to be. I care way more for gameplay/fun factor over badass graphics. For some reason, Attila is a resource hog and has terrible framerates.

Most factions can only afford to field a single full stack unless they have more than 2-3 settlements. Why is it that in Attila we still have to deal with factions like the Garamantians, Angles, and Maurians running around with three full stacks and only a single settlement?

You can only transport troops across seas only with navies. Whose good idea was it to change this for Rome 2 and Attila?

The campaign is immersive and tells a wonderful story with lots of side quests/intrigue. CA seems to have rediscovered this with "The Last Roman."

There are lots of little things I could write here but my point is that I feel that CA peaked with Shogun 2. Rome 2 was epically bad and while 17 patches have polished it up nicely (MP battles are super fun!), it is still a structurally flawed game that does little to inspire me in the campaign. Attila seems be improving on this, but it does still present many of the flaws that originally plagued Rome 2 and it really makes me wonder about the disconnect between the Shogun 2, R2, and Attila teams. Problems that did not exist in S2, that did exist in R2 (but were patched out), for some reason still exist in Attila.

[Abdülmecid I]

The OP suffers from a clear bias in favour of Rome II and against every other game that's not like it. It's true that Attila isn't as popular as its predecessor, but that's not surprising at all, imo, because of a variety of reasons, like the much more modest marketing campaign, the fact that Attila is essentially an expansion, the disappointment over Rome's II release and the obscurity of the Late Antiquity period. Personally, I like it more and I find it an enjoyable game, although less enjoyable than FotS and Rome I. My biggest problem is the mediocre CAI (desolation, ganging up, akward cruises to the northern atlantic and so on) and the totally unrealistic way they implemented the ice age and the hunnic invasion.

[shnukshnuk]

lol rome 1 more realistic then rome 2? you are joking right?

[Sir_Pee_Alot]

lol rome 1 more realistic then rome 2? you are joking right?

Read before post, He never talked about RTW 1 being more realistic then RTW II

[Man o' War]

I enjoyed the aspects of mastering Rome II, bit by bit. Having most of the games complexities hidden away.

Now please explain to us blokes that have played TW games for years which complexities you have managed to unravel with your superior intellect that us idiots have failed to see.

[Legio X Gemina]

Rome 1 was very accurate relative to its time and to the field of games it was competing with...as the years go on, everyone gets better at artistically depicting historical settings. After all, that is what you are referring to: artistic depictions (unit skins); something that was very easily modified and fine-tuned by a whole slew of modders (Rome Total Realism, Europa Barbarorum). And let's be honest, many of the units depicted in Rome 2 are not actually based on history but are rather an amalgamation of historical warriors or were simply artistic interpretations of them. Here's a little hint, most kingdoms/tribes outside of the Romans and some of the Greek and Phoenician and Mediterranean cultures didn't really have organized armies and didn't really have different types of 'units.' A lot of the Gaulic and Germanic tribes simply had warriors (some of more noble birth, and others with lower stature).

Except in relation to games today Rome II still maintains its position as one of the more realistic games. You can't possibly say that there's a game out there that does better than Rome II, can you? Sure, Rome II has a ton of historical discrepancies, but it still strives to preserve some of that realism in history. Other games with different game engines can't even begin to replicate that. Civilization V takes incredibly iconic units without any battle formation. Hegemony is the same way. I've yet to find a comprehensive game like those developed by The Creative Assembly.

Sure, there are a ton of problems, but to conclude that Rome II is any less realistic in proportion to its contemporary games as opposed to Rome I is just non-sequitur. There is no solid evidence. If there is, I'd be more than happy to acknowledge it.

On top of that, if you take a look at any historical mods for Attila or Rome you'll find that adding historically accurate units is no problem at all.

But when it comes to core game mechanics, most Total War fans would agree that Rome 1 (and Medieval 2 for the same reasons) was a better and more accurate game.
Unlike Rome 2, Rome 1 allowed:

Your conclusion is too generic (in both generalizing most of the fans of the Total War series and the assertion that Rome I is a "better and more accurate" game). This statement is in dispute. If you need any further evidence, just browse around on the forums. Sure, there have been plenty of complaints, but Google your results and you'll find that Rome II in its current state is often noted as a fun and definitely playable game.

- player management of the family tree (as did happen in real-world history).

This point is fine. I have no qualms about it.

- unit collision which physically depicted much more realistic battle scenarios.

I have definitely seen that the collisions in Rome I and Medieval II are more punchy than those seen in Rome II. Though this error seemed rectified in Attila.

- more realistic morale settings (units would waver and route more readily when put in bad situations).

I don't agree with this. I don't know if you recall, but if you ever charged a unit of Hastati in Rome I into a unit of Iberian Infantry the Iberians get slaughtered and route before 15 seconds of battle have began.

- full player control over settlement construction (also allowed the player to set it on auto-manage).

While this feature was great for Rome I, where there was no building tree, you can't implement this in Rome II. There are just way too many variables. Do you want buildings that go for happiness? What about medium happiness in favor of military buildings? Medium happiness in favor of non-military buildings? How about minimum happiness with cultural buildings? There are way too many paths that can be taken with the construction tree as it is, and if you want an auto-construction implemented in Rome II then that should be requested by the community. I found that the AI for auto-construction in Rome I was incredibly simplistic. It seemed to upgrade the city if that was available, otherwise just randomly pick a building and add it to queue.

- more realistic individual actions within the unit (multiple soldiers within a unit would gang up on a single enemy fighter, unlike Rome 2)

I agree with this. The team should try to work on this feature. It was fine for Shogun 2 where 1v1 duels were more commonplace. There are mods that remedy this, however. And mods are the things we've been screaming for for a very long time.

- do I really need to continue?

I haven't found anything of significance of the evidence you provided above. Most of it is negligible and doesn't cover the things that need to be covered about Rome II. It just seems like a generic piss-on Rome II that you can find anywhere else. There are things that need to be addressed in Rome II, and very critical things. The development of Rome II and the implementation of many new features such as simultaneous naval and land combat was great. Yes, removing the family tree was definitely a no-no, but we can't blame them for trying to approach things in a new way, can we? Well, maybe we can, but then that means Rome II was yet another game that tried to innovate the series so that the company can go on and try to rectify things in the next sequel.

Let's be honest here. Living up to Rome I's expectations for a sequel is difficult. Rome II definitely screwed up, but at the same time I can discern a glimpse of what was going on during production.

I've never let nostalgia blind me to the weaknesses of that game. Diplomacy, naval warfare, Battlefield AI for certain situations, have always been an issue (including in the current games). But the core of that game was definitely a more finished product and more accurate in my mind.

I would say there is an element of nostalgia in your posts, as I have found in mine from time to time; however, I would have to remark that diplomacy is tons better than Rome I's. I find Rome I's AI incredibly predictable. It was so easy to manipulate, and other times it didn't make any sense. Granted Rome II's AI does that from time to time, it's nowhere as simple as that found in Rome I's.

Battlefield AI is also smarter (as of the current patch in Rome II), and the AI in Attila seems very responsive indeed. Attila took the highly exaggerated crisis in Rome II and improved on it. The AI now snipes your general, flanks with cavalry (and infantry), and intercepts your own flanking maneuvers. There's actually thinking involved.

Remember, more bugs is not tantamount to worse AI. The more complex a program becomes, the more bugs will appear. It doesn't make it any worse than a simple program. And to hate on bugs generated by a more complex program is just inconceivable. Granted Rome II definitely had way too many bugs we still cannot draw a conclusion from that event that the AI in Rome II is worse than that in Rome I. More buggy? Yes. Worse? No.

When modders took Rome 1 and produced Rome Total Realism and Europa Barbarorum, they took a great game and made it even better.

Non-sequitur conclusion that has almost 0 evidence that supports a "great game." What great game? Made it even better? You're making a conclusion based on the arguments you provided above; however, those arguments you gave don't really add up to anything tangible. We can literally boot up Rome I and Rome II at the same time to test out the AI. I guarantee you, the AI is shoddy in Rome I.

The only reason why Rome II's AI is criticized so heavily is because they attempted to make the AI more complex, and thus that yielded more hiccups than those found in Rome I, whose AI was probably coded to march on ahead. Maneuvers are hard to program, and even harder to implement with a game that relies heavily on the changing of tactics.

When modders took Rome 2 and produced (I dont know what Rome 2 mods are even popular on a comparable scale to RTR and EB), they took a turd and made a half-decent game.

Same fallacy as above. Your conclusion is way too soon and falls short of any significant evidence.

[LordInvictus]

The awful 3d character portraits.

You can turn off the awful 3d animated portraits.

If I'm not mistaken, you could do that in Rome 2 as well.

Really good post.

It's always nice to have other people confirm your beliefs, no matter how false.

Another very good post.

Maybe if you don't actually know what you're talking about...

Land Battles were just plan dull with masses if infantry blobbing together in a way you can never do if cavalry is a threat. It was nearly pointless to coordinate units as it is just as effective to mass blob the enemy.

I'm slightly confused on the complaints about blobbing. Is blobbing considered to be the lack of fighting in formation or the clipping of soldiers as they compress together. Both happen in Rome 2, but also in older games.

[DeVrie]

With so many people being outspoken critics against Rome II i thought it was interesting to see how CA responds with the release of Attila. From my POV Attila was in my ways a step backwards, the UI was made less efficient but more user friendly.

In many ways Attila was a continuation on Shogun 2 a game loved by most. Me personally, have always been outspoken for innovation. I enjoyed the aspects of mastering Rome II, bit by bit. Having most of the games complexities hidden away.

When Attila launched, i saw the praise train chu-chu through but i knew from playing Attila, that this expansion wasn't going to be an hit, it was simply to boring, and many of its aspects was a downgrade from Rome II.

So how does the game hold up?

http://steamcharts.com/app/214950
RomeII
6,930 playing an hour ago 11,218 24-hour peak

http://steamcharts.com/app/325610
Attila
2,864 playing 43 min ago 4,476 24-hour peak



Rome II is older, and this "broken mess" is holding on as the 27th most played game on steam some two years later.

Now this bothers me. It bothers me that CA listen to the community this well and can clearly show that the community does not represent the majority. CA is changing, with Warhammer and Halo wars on the way the total war community has and have had the most sway on this company. They respect us, they care about our opinion and they want to please us, this much is clear. You can hear it in the assurances given by Bickham when he assures us that spells won't be too powerful and that the cavalry animations will be cleaned up.

In the future, we cannot afford to make a blunder like we did with Attila, we cannot expect things to stay "the same" and we need to stop living on Nostalgia.

The community betrayed CA on Attila... Attila was a game made for us and people said meh, I'm bored. Warhammer will be different, just as we should all hope that the next Total war is innovative and not a safecard. If we get a lackluster new Total war, you guys can say bye bye to the historical part of the franchise. Innovation or death is our only options now and we should pray that the next total war share a lot more with Rome II then it does with Attila.

Who could have thought that making a franchise towards older historically interested men could be so hard? xD

lol. They're probably playing DeI or some other major overhaul.

EDIT: Also, there's no accounting for taste. You seem to enjoy Rome2 more as do a couple of other people in this thread. I like R2 with DeI. I also like Attila, but I have to admit I didn't really give a frak about TW by the time Attila was released anyway. I'll probably give Attila a more in-depth chance somewhere down the road.

[Winston Smith]

I've always been amused by the selective memory of this part of the TWC, of the ignoring of successes and the overplaying of failures. This is particularly apparent when it comes to Attila: yeah, sure, the game needs more patching and so forth. But people attacking Attila for, say, the Greek Fire ships for instance, and praise Shogun 2 in the same breath, always seem to forget the latte game had sterotypical ninjas deployable on the battlefield, as well as what amounted to Rocket-Propelled-Grenades.

And to make a wider point, yeah, Rome 2 was ed at launch. But now, even unmodded its rather good. And that raises a second point. People complain about needing mods to make R2 enjoyable. But from what I've seen, mods have been needed for every Total War game. Now, one could make the fair point that the game should have features in it already, without the need for mods and so forth. But to raise this as a criticism for Rome 2 and Attila exclusivly seems a little unfair.

Finally, and this is more related to the community rather then the games per se, but A LOT of the criticism of Rome 2 amounted to "they changed it, now it sucks". And before I continue, a lot of the game did legitmatly suck at the beginning. Those stupid capture the flag things, broken ass turn ends, etc. But things like the family tree being removed and stuff, well, it never bothered me, and I know many who weren't bothered either.

That's my peice at least. My two remaining pet peeves from Rome 2 are I wish the map was far more detailed (no Byzantium? mainland Greece being just Sparta and Athens?!) and path finding.

[Laz3456]

Hello LordInvictus,

I have not played Rome 2 for ages and have uninstalled it from my machine as it was so bad but judging from what you have said they must have added the feature to turn off the 3D ports in a later release.

With regards to the blobbing infantry this could also be something CA has fixed since I stopped playing Rome 2, I might check it out again as it sounds like they have fixed a lot of stuff but at the moment I am very happy playing Attlia.