What do you dislike the most about Attila Total War?

[Darios]

Title says it all. While Attila has come a long way since release, there has to still be a few things that people might like to see improved upon.

For me it would be these three things:

1) Lack of Roman walled settlements. I understand that CA did not really put much effort into settlement diversity for all factions, Romans, Sassanids, and Barbarian alike but it is most telling for me in regards to the Romans. By the 4th century, most Roman cities had undergone a period of "castrumization" where formerly great economic trading cities had become castra in the face of barbarian threats (biggest example: the construction of the Aurelian Walls in Rome). Don't really get why do the Romans should have barbarian style mud-forts, especially in the eastern part of the empire. I simply feel that Roman cities should probably have a different developmental style compared to other cultures in the game. High walls should come at a tier two city for the Romans.

2) The CAI's penchant for gathering 3-4 armies via forced march before attacking your position. Simply doesn't make things fun in my opinion. Having to fight 1-2 enemy armies at the same time is one thing....but when they gather more, I feel like taking a break from the game. It's not the fact that I cannot defeat them, it just makes things very tedious.

3) Enemies staying at war with you to the point of suicide. AoC does a great job with War Weariness but I feel that the Grand Campaign should have something similar implemented. If I smash half of the Alan horde in battle, you'd imagine that the remaining remnants would be willing to come to some kind of terms.

[Fanest]

I will go with these:

• captured towers exploding
• battles a bit too fast paced (GC, AoC is great in this regard)
• cav gets no impact damage/reworked battle balance (GC, AoC is good in this regard)
• i wish for more music variety

[FrozenmenSS]

Both of you guys are right.

But the Elephant in the Room is The Huns are nothing what the Huns were back in those days. In the Game they are Mongoloid looking people with modern Hungarian Names.

Creative Assembly Tried To balance the Huns between the modern Hungarian and Turkish Nationalistic Origin Hypotheses(outdated Theories disregarded by at least 40-100 years ago) and ignoring the Bulgarian Origin Hypothesis ,that has the Strongest and most supported by actual documents,archaeological dig sites, linguistic and so on undeniable facts.

And the outcry from the players from the Bulgarian customers was huge... There were tons of bans on the Total War Facebook page on people who spoke in each of CA's posts and so on when the game came out. Creative Assembly became again a laughing stock where they create a TW game for the Huns, where the Huns ingame got nothing to do with the Huns what they were in real history. And Lets not forget - there are Magyars from the 800ad in a Game that starts in 395ad.

Here is a Hint why TW:Attila Grand Campaign is a game where you add a fantasy themed Badguy that his nation got nothing remotely close to do with the historical Huns and what was their Background. The Project Manager of TW:Attila is Hungarian.And Due to Creative Assembly wants more sales they want for the Fast Grab from Hungary and Turkey (where the game is even translated to Turkish) and went for the old Stereotypes instead to go read 3-4 scientific works on the subject... Another Example close to this Move from CA is when every 2nd British or American Documentary Movie (HBO,BBC and so on) About Rome the Romans from All Periods - from the early Republic to the Fall of WRE are all in Segmentata Armor.

Its Ironic - UnCreative Assembly creates a game with the Huns as main players ,where they dont resemble even remotely to what they were in real history in the first place...

And they fu cked it up big time.

[zsimmortal]

1) Armies being able to outrun your armies forever. Played my first Slav campaign, having hordes wardec, attack and lose to poison arrows then just run away from my only decent sized army trying to erase them, just to buy a full stack of mercs to attack again once I give up chasing is just plain obnoxious.

2) The endless list of little things : Non-Arian Visigoths, missing building slots in 4 places, Thracian unit line in the Gothic armies that are designed to take over Western Europe, non-settling nomads, goat/bovine/camel farms being infinitely better than any other farm type (the minor sanitation buildings giving +fertility mod is really good), Romans not being able to make a single ally, Barbarians (regardless of religion) only have Germanic symbols in their towns, Eastern/Desert kingdoms all have Iranian sphinxes and Zoroastrian braziers regardless of religion, etc.

[Darios]

But the Elephant in the Room is...

I quite agree. In many ways, CA wrecked Eastern Europe in this game.

1) By the 5th century, the Huns were far removed from being Asiatic looking nomads after having absorbed the Alani and the Gothic tribes. The Hunnic roster in game is a fantastic rendition of BADASS! that omits the Sarmatian and Germanic elements in the Hunnic Confederacy in order to make them look more scary and exotic.

2) Bastarnae in the 5th century AD? o.O Even worse is that they are another copy-paste Germanic faction in the game. The Carpi would have made a lot more sense in Petrodava region.

3) The Magyars, Budini, and Roxolani have no reason being in the game at all....this point has been made a million times.

4) Thracian and Agathyrsi units in the game brandishing falxes?
a - By the 5th century, the Thracians had been completely Romanized. Our so-called Last Roman, Belisarius, was a Thracian. Emperor Justinian was either Illyrian or Thracian. In any regard, what are the Goths, the inheritors of Rome, doing with Thracian units?
b - The Agathyrsi date to the time of Herodotos. I almost get the impression that a certain head developer tried very hard to skirt around anything that could have been labeled as Dacian to the point of digging a thousand years back in history for "content."

5) Where are the Germanic Heruli? They would have made for a really interesting faction due to their excellent cavalry/steppe traditions

6) Why is Celtic paganism a local tradition in Dacia? By the 5th century, Graeco-Roman paganism (despite the Aurelian withdrawal) or Greek Christianity would have made far more sense.

I'm sure I can think of other things....just following up on your point.

[Bingbangbong]

I'd also like to add 1st turn city damage when under siege to the list of dislikes.

As somebody who enjoys turtling it drives me nuts when the AI besiege my settlements and everything immediately breaks and stops producing food/sanitation, even if I chase them away at the first possible opportunity next turn.

Also strongly agree with your point about 4 stack spam. I'm doing a hunnic legendary campaign aiming for 'this is total war achievement' while remaining undefeated/no auto resolving. I've literally had to keep all 3 of my armies on the move and grouped together since turn 2 and even then I had to orchestrate an undignified retreat from 3 Sassanid stacks that appeared out of nowhere after I razed Ctesiphon.

On the other side though, as the white huns I had a 6 stack financial horde that I encamped along a tripartite provincial border by Western Dacia (legendary again) and not even the huns could build up a large enough force to attack. I literally camped out there for 350 turns without being attacked once. People tried to build up armies to attack just outside movement range, but they would end up moving on pretty swiftly once the snows came and I sent my agents to harass them.

When it comes to ahistorical features, the feature that bugs me most is that hordes are by far the best faction to choose for people who like to actually build things. Each horde stack gets 14 build slots, while each town gets 3 or 4 and each city gets 5 or 6.

EDIT: Regarding making peace, the AI seems to subscribe to the Zapp Brannigan philosophy:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

If you go to war with their enemies, they will shower you with gold for a peace treaty.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[crucify_ego]

Both of you guys are right.

But the Elephant in the Room is The Huns are nothing what the Huns were back in those days. In the Game they are Mongoloid looking people with modern Hungarian Names.

Creative Assembly Tried To balance the Huns between the modern Hungarian and Turkish Nationalistic Origin Hypotheses(outdated Theories disregarded by at least 40-100 years ago) and ignoring the Bulgarian Origin Hypothesis ,that has the Strongest and most supported by actual documents,archaeological dig sites, linguistic and so on undeniable facts.

And the outcry from the players from the Bulgarian customers was huge... There were tons of bans on the Total War Facebook page on people who spoke in each of CA's posts and so on when the game came out. Creative Assembly became again a laughing stock where they create a TW game for the Huns, where the Huns ingame got nothing to do with the Huns what they were in real history. And Lets not forget - there are Magyars from the 800ad in a Game that starts in 395ad.

Here is a Hint why TW:Attila Grand Campaign is a game where you add a fantasy themed Badguy that his nation got nothing remotely close to do with the historical Huns and what was their Background. The Project Manager of TW:Attila is Hungarian.And Due to Creative Assembly wants more sales they want for the Fast Grab from Hungary and Turkey (where the game is even translated to Turkish) and went for the old Stereotypes instead to go read 3-4 scientific works on the subject... Another Example close to this Move from CA is when every 2nd British or American Documentary Movie (HBO,BBC and so on) About Rome the Romans from All Periods - from the early Republic to the Fall of WRE are all in Segmentata Armor.

Its Ironic - UnCreative Assembly creates a game with the Huns as main players ,where they dont resemble even remotely to what they were in real history in the first place...

And they fu cked it up big time.

Stop with the bulgarian b.s. you revisionist

[FrozenmenSS]

Stop with the bulgarian b.s. you revisionist

good criticism mate. + Rep.Really valid points,I see your logic here,here and here.I understand your point of view now mate...

Btw I dont have time to reposting walls of text or videos from older post of mine,defending what is white and what is black on the subject.



For the post Darious made I agree,but i understand why some factions are missing in the Carpatian mountain passes. Too much Tribes near the Huns at the start,it would have been a clusterf uck for the CAI in the first 10 turns.

BTW The Thracian Rhomphaia/Falx was used as late in the 8-9th century AD in Modern Southern Bulgaria in the Rhodope mountain by the locals(we can even speculate that they were still used in the rule of emperor Alexios I Komnenos ),when reading What archaeologists have Found in the ancient city of Perperikon in the last 10-15 years ,led by the archaeologist Nikolay Ovcharov.
.

[Lucem Mundum]

Both of you guys are right.

But the Elephant in the Room is The Huns are nothing what the Huns were back in those days. In the Game they are Mongoloid looking people with modern Hungarian Names.

Creative Assembly Tried To balance the Huns between the modern Hungarian and Turkish Nationalistic Origin Hypotheses(outdated Theories disregarded by at least 40-100 years ago) and ignoring the Bulgarian Origin Hypothesis ,that has the Strongest and most supported by actual documents,archaeological dig sites, linguistic and so on undeniable facts.

Alright let's not head to nationalism here....and let me guess those "evidence" you mentioned are from Bulgarian scholars and archeologists. Btw you think Hungarians and Turks are teaming up against Bulgars....lol.

anyways here is the list of things I don't like about TWA

1) desert factions using Roman defectors, seriously couldn't CA come up with some heavy desert units?

2) the East is bland and empty

3) AI waging wars on you for no reason

4) many cost ineffective units, especially the Sassanids.

the rest was mentioned by people above.

Edit: btw nothing against Bulgarians, heck my gf is Bulgar, and no I am neither a Turk or Hungarian. I just didn't see sense in your post.

[Gronndar]

1) it takes too long to achieve military etc. victories and so you miss "story". If you know your stuff, game becomes easy during time when Attila becomes of age. They just raid in mountains and take attrition.
2)morale is just a mess. Enemy germanic slingers has morale -100, couple of men left and yet, they will not rout. Maybe its higher difficulty, but battle difficulty is just on hard setting.
3) some settlements has lesser ammount of those building slots.
4)Auto accuracy what AI has, its insane. In fair missile fight, you lose every time. I always cry when wall catapult destroys mine large onagers. I guess i could list all of those battle buffs AI gets. Next time i just try normal battle difficulty.

[bigdaddy1204]

My main objections to Attila:

1. The Towns and Cities are far too generic. Seeing Babylonian/Persian architecture for all "desert" cultures, even in Arabia etc is inappropriate and unrealistic; likewise the lack of a "Muslim" town type in the Charlemagne campaign undermines the Emirate of Cordoba campaign.

2. Battles are (sometimes) too fast. By that I mean, the animations of the individual soldiers fighting are too fast. As an example, soldiers throwing javelins are way too fast and it looks like you're playing on 4x or 8x speed. Walking speeds are fine, and the actual duration of the battles is fine - I just want the combat animations slowed down slightly

[Bingbangbong]

Retreating armies are also totally broken. Literally no discernible logic behind where/how far they retreat and 3 grouped stacks won't all retreat to the same place, even if they're hit from exactly the same direction.

Drives me mad the number of failed campaigns I've had because I decided I didn't want to fight a winnable battle, retreated and the AI just went on to cluster the nearest stack, which was now out on reinforcement range of the others.

[geala]

There are some very good points made in this thread. Historical mistakes or small diversity must always be seen before the restricted game background, so I will stay with game mechanic: collapsing towers, wracked buildings in walled cities after a one-second siege, some too fast animations, all are really bad, and to add one, the still missing guard mode button, usually makes my archers suffer many casualties. So nice we have it back in TW:Warhammer.

[Regvlvs]

I personally miss the lack of a simple freeform "world conquest" mode of just holding regions where ever (whether or not including home-region).

[stevehoos]

Easy:

CA's utter disregard for fixing little bugs (4 missing building slots as mentioned above) and informing us what they are doing. The fact that the mods tools are still broken is evidence of the lack of quality and care in their work. If you are going to create mod tools what exactly is the point if they don't work? Take some pride in your work; CA is sloppy, lazy, and their DLC is some of the worst on the steam market.

Remember folks, these are the same developers who thought that capture points in open land battles was a prudent idea. That's what we are dealing with here. They really can't get out of their own way i.e. Auto collapsing towers.

Attila is basically an apology for the travesty that was Rome 2, and it fails to make that up for me.

[Imperator Artorius]

There are lots of little things, most already mentioned, but I'll go instead with CA's design philosophy.

I know they wanted to focus on the apocalypse theme but imo, CA absolutely and needlessly butchered the 5th Century to pursue this, when imo the game would have been far more interesting if they had adhered more to history.

So firstly, the Huns. Im not going to get into their racial characteristics or whatever because tbh, I'm not that clued up and just from this thread alone it looks like a minefield. My first issue, is that the Huns in game want to destroy everything. End of. To me, that is just absolutely ridiculous. I cannot think of any civilisation that wanted to destroy for the sake of it. Even for the Mongols, the destruction served a strategic purpose, and then, whilst on an unprecedented scale, was not total. From what I've read, the Huns were mainly about extortion and vassalisation, not wanton destruction. Whilst you can to an extent focus on the former as a player a) it doesnt to my knowledge fullfill the campaign objectives and b) the AI Huns don't adhere to this, and as for the latter, vassals in the long term strike me as counter productive in my experience.

Secondly, the whole thing with respawning stacks. While that in part is just blatant AI cheating, its obviously a massive misrepresentation, not that it was intended to be otherwise. But I would have argued, in terms of pure gameplay the strength of the Huns should come from vassal tribes,like the Sassanids function. Although this is horribly balanced in vanilla.

My other big issue is to do with the depiction of the Roman Empire and its soldiers. Now in game, early Roman infantry units are near useless. Again from what Ive read, this is a huge inaccuracy. The big problem to my knowledge facing the Roman armies at the time, was not quality, but lack of manpower especially in the west, due to losses suffered in the civil wars between Theodosius, Magnus Maximus, and Eugenius, and stingy nobles not willing to send men away from their estates. It would have been far better to have massively restricted recruitment (in line with general rebalancing to nerf the power of random 1 province tribes etc) whilst buffing the units.

Secondly another big feature of the time was 'barbarian' nobles seeking to enter the Empire and gain military rankings to bolster their own wealth and prestige. There are numerous examples of 'barbarian' warlords being given ranks in the Roman army, such as Alaric and even Attila at one point I believe. As much as the game likes to depict, not every tribe was out to completely ruin and pillage the empire.

I apologise for the long post but its missed opportunities like that that really hold the game back imo.

[Basileos Leandros I]

From my side, I do wish one feature was retained - offering settlements / provinces to other factions.

It makes it really hard to prop up the Western Roman Empire as the Eastern Roman Empire with just money - gift them provinces and money and they can restore the empire.

[stevehoos]

From my side, I do wish one feature was retained - offering settlements / provinces to other factions.

It makes it really hard to prop up the Western Roman Empire as the Eastern Roman Empire with just money - gift them provinces and money and they can restore the empire.

Sure, that's how wars have always started and ended; territorial disputes ad infinium. Russia demanded territory from the Fins prior to their invasion in 1939. The French and the British fought over the Ohio country in North America during the Seven Years War. Give us this or we will war with you, give us this and we will stop warring with you. It's stamped all over history like a sore thumb used for braille patterning. It's absurd that it is not included. The argument that it is an exploit for the player against the AI holds no water. Just implement the same standard the AI has for trading with the player.

[Rhinelander]

As a horde faction it pisses me off that I need to build all the damn buildings for each army instead of having one big camp for my whole faction. Buildings do take long to build and are expensive so you won't actually get to build buildings for your horde as you also have to recruit new units.

[Basileos Leandros I]

Gifting provinces to other factions would really help you as well, as you would prop up your allies and you could also create protection zones against hordes.