Can someone explain to me how the Hell the economy is supposed to work in "The Last Roman?"

[gathomas88]

So, I'm 30-something turns in, and playing a pretty "straight and narrow" expedition play through. Then, the game basically just straight up torpedoes my whole campaign all of the sudden, by siccing a famine and -1000 incomes on my ass for like a year straight. I'm broke, my core armies are gutted from having to desperately disband units, my integrity implodes, all the rest of my assigned armies mutiny, and there basically isn't a damn thing I can do about any of it.

I'm sorry, but what the Hell? How is that fair? I'm not the one actually managing the economy for my faction (besides setting taxes, for some weird reason), so how am I supposed to prevent something like that?

You can't even disband units from the new armies you get assigned to reduce upkeep, for God's sakes. So, you basically wind up having to gut your main two armies to the point where you can't actually fight anything, and are royally screwed if the assignees mutiny.

[Darios]

Attila is not a particularly fair game. It's largely designed to give you a hard time, regardless of how well you play.

I played a MP campaign once with a friend. He played as the Ostrogoths and I as the Romans. He spent so much effort building up his armies and infrastructure in Italy only to see everything collapse once the climate change event occurred.

[Theramines]

So, I'm 30-something turns in, and playing a pretty "straight and narrow" expedition play through. Then, the game basically just straight up torpedoes my whole campaign all of the sudden, by siccing a famine and -1000 incomes on my ass for like a year straight

At some point in the expedition campaign support from Constantinople is reduced or ceases altogether (been a while since I played). By then you should have been playing similarly to a typical horde from the GC: you need to have encamped at times and built up various horde infrastructure so that you're able to survive with a minimum of disbanding. I assume you haven't done this as it's the only rational explanation and you didn't mention it in your post. You may be able to salvage your campaign if you do this with one stack, and raid and sack with the other for a while.

[Diocle]

I hate games that establish a set of rules and then they break and contraddict them. It's higly unfair, it's immoral and it's not a good show for a game designed for the friuition of young and/or very young people. I know that the show must go on, the business is business and similar crap but .. I don't like this cultural policy, I don't like it in any way, it's like saying: "Rules are there just to be broken! What counts in life it's just getting the position and the rank enabling you to break the rules, life is a big cheat and the people of success are cheaters!" This is not the truth, the world goes on directly on the shoulders of millions human beings respecting the rules, they are not idiots, they are the flesh, muscles and bones of our society, cheating is a crime and with this kind of gaming design we do a bad service to our Western Civilization.

Sorry for the rant, but they were years I wanted to write down few lines on the subject, now gathomas88 has given me the chance to write what I think. Thanks and +Rep.

[Anna_Gein]

First case you should disband troops except two middle sized stack. At this point you should control Africa with Bycance. Settle for a while and improve your economic infrastructure.

Attila is sadly a punishing game.

[gathomas88]

At some point in the expedition campaign support from Constantinople is reduced or ceases altogether (been a while since I played). By then you should have been playing similarly to a typical horde from the GC: you need to have encamped at times and built up various horde infrastructure so that you're able to survive with a minimum of disbanding. I assume you haven't done this as it's the only rational explanation and you didn't mention it in your post. You may be able to salvage your campaign if you do this with one stack, and raid and sack with the other for a while.

Yeah, I DID eventually figure this out, and even manage to save my campaign after a bit of frustrated save-scumming. It would have been nice if the campaign had explained that dynamic ahead of time.

I've actually never played the main campaign of Attila. I came to The Last Roman directly from TWH2, simply because it happened to look like an interesting premise. A lot of the features kind of took me by surprise as such.

The Warhammer games have been cut down and streamlined quite a bit from RTW2 and Attila, it seems... both for better and worse.

[douglas]

I didn't particularly care for the The Last Roman campaign, mainly due to the horde style required. I have pretty much stuck to the main campaign, having completed campaigns to the first victory condition for 22 different factions, several more than once, and 5 through all victory conditions. Good basic game overall.