Would full historical authenticity work in Total War: ATTILA ?

[Butan]

Discuss.





In my opinion, there is more room for realism in ATTILA, with improved battle artificial intelligence, more semi-realistical features to play around (fire spreading, siege escalation, climate, sanitation, general/army loyalty, faction leader diplomacy... etc) and the political/family aspect of each factions, and of course the inherited modding knowledge from Rome 2 and modding tools.

When I say would full historical authenticity, I mean 0 "gameplay" balance.
And when I say, would it work? I mean would the AI be able to deal with it? And would it still give balanced battles and campaigns (as in, challenging, relative to difficulty level).


Examples of changes could be:

- every weapon range changed to their respective realistical range (effective range= maximum distance a sling/arrow/javelin can travel according to sources)
- extremely polarised seasons (agricultural income in 1 or 2 season only, industry/animal husbandry steady but low income, movement null in winter, recruitment heavily season dependent too... etc)
- extremely faction leader dependent diplomacy (their mood define their diplomacy, their death changes everything)
- realistical morale/casualty ratio (extremely rare bloodbaths, lots of capturing and lots of retreating)
- realistical sieges (destruction by riots/plagues through encirclement, or assault using siege engines)
- whatever happened back then


After playing some Attila in the last days I really have good hope realism is doable and if like me, you think reality provided its own "enjoyable" balance, then why couldnt it work with Attila?

[Fredrin]

I would love to see an option in the campaign start screen which you could choose "realism mode" so you could play a game with these kind of balancing adjustments built in.. and maybe a few unique features/events to add to the historicity of that setting.

The likelihood of them being put in the vanilla game seems low because it would be too radical a departure from what is deemed fun to play by the majority. And there might have to be a few concessions to gameplay balance, or battles would last literally for hours!

[Garensterz]

I will not touch multiplayer for a very long time if this one happens, even if the AI is bad at least the single player will be much more interesting with these authentic feels.

[AnthoniusII]

1st : You can not have 100% historical authenticity or 100% realism in a game. Why? Simply because there are some features AI can not hundle that humans can.
Example: There is no unit in a game that can use entirely diferent weapons the same time. I explain. You can not have a unit that uses archers, spearmen and slingers together. This may look silly to some people eyes but its essential to authenticityand realism. The 1st compromise is the devide units in to imaginary separations like swordmen, spearmen etc...
We can have models of warriors that can carry multiple weapons but game engines have serius limmitations.
For example in M2TW engine that had more complicated animations than Rome II (and seems Attila also) when we tried to create Spearmen that could be swordmen as well we encountered a problem on the proper use of spear or sword. This looked quite natural in cavalry units but prevented infantry units to behave in battle properly.
Having this in mind we see that battle realism will be always far from accurate.
Ofcourse modders (developers do not care about such issues), sometimes find compromissing solutions in many cases.
I am not sure if in the new kind od game engine that Rome II and Attila work, allows some animation combinations like in M2TW. But there were very succesfull weapon combinations in the same unit like two handed axes and suitch to sword use at will!
Another issue is the personal sense of each one of the players about what is historical authentic and realistic. Lets supose that you as a modder find a way to portay as many as possible , historical units in the game. Many people will doupt the authenticity of your creations even when you will provide everything to prove your work right!
Do you believe that players would like to exclude (in Attila as example) siege equipment from all barbarian factions as realy was in history?
Do you believe that all those that praise CA for the famous siege escalation would like to have bloody and almost impossible attacks of fortified settlements?
Do you beleive that most of the players here would like to see Franks without horsemen and all factions without pikemen as realy was in history?

We can not have 100% accurate games. But this is not an excuse to have imaginary based "historical" games too!
Game's limmitations can be also a tool of 90% accurate presentation of the warriors of that time.
M2TW modding creations lead the way.... Lets suppose that you study history and you encounter 2 units of similar nature.
Lets supose that those ywo infantry units used both swords and spears (as naturaly human warriors used both). The options are:
Create two versions of each unit and name them:
Unit 1 swordmen, Unit 1 spearmen, Unit 2 swordmen and Unit 2 spearmen. That consumes unit pool places without any clear benefit.
The 2nd option is to create the unit 1 as swordmen and the unit 2 as spearmen and in their describe texts you can explain why you did that separations and how were these units in reality.

Unforthunatly , realism is so borring for many players that create unit rosters in imaginary basis! You see steppe pikemen, steppe macemen, frank cataphracts etc...

[Bongfu]

While we are not recreating the era in which Attila takes place we are certainly in the same line of thinking with our mod, Ancient Empires. There will be no such thing as faction balance, just purely what each faction had historically. I have been doing a lot of really indepth analysis of faction rosters and I find that a lot of the units CA (and other modders for this matter) include are ahistorical.

Check us out. We have a long way to go, but we are working hard!

[AnthoniusII]

While we are not recreating the era in which Attila takes place we are certainly in the same line of thinking with our mod, Ancient Empires. There will be no such thing as faction balance, just purely what each faction had historically. I have been doing a lot of really indepth analysis of faction rosters and I find that a lot of the units CA (and other modders for this matter) include are ahistorical.

Check us out. We have a long way to go, but we are working hard!

Don't count to much in this...
A mod can not have totaly leathal arrows or javelins for example!

[Butan]

And there might have to be a few concessions to gameplay balance, or battles would last literally for hours!

Thats for sure! But there is so much between vanilla and realism, than even a realistically handled battle that last half an hour could be deemed "historical"

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

1st : You can not have 100% historical authenticity or 100% realism in a game. Why? Simply because there are some features AI can not hundle that humans can.
Example: There is no unit in a game that can use entirely diferent weapons the same time. I explain. You can not have a unit that uses archers, spearmen and slingers together. This may look silly to some people eyes but its essential to authenticityand realism. The 1st compromise is the devide units in to imaginary separations like swordmen, spearmen etc...
We can have models of warriors that can carry multiple weapons but game engines have serius limmitations.
For example in M2TW engine that had more complicated animations than Rome II (and seems Attila also) when we tried to create Spearmen that could be swordmen as well we encountered a problem on the proper use of spear or sword. This looked quite natural in cavalry units but prevented infantry units to behave in battle properly.
Having this in mind we see that battle realism will be always far from accurate.
Ofcourse modders (developers do not care about such issues), sometimes find compromissing solutions in many cases.
I am not sure if in the new kind od game engine that Rome II and Attila work, allows some animation combinations like in M2TW. But there were very succesfull weapon combinations in the same unit like two handed axes and suitch to sword use at will!
Another issue is the personal sense of each one of the players about what is historical authentic and realistic. Lets supose that you as a modder find a way to portay as many as possible , historical units in the game. Many people will doupt the authenticity of your creations even when you will provide everything to prove your work right!
Do you believe that players would like to exclude (in Attila as example) siege equipment from all barbarian factions as realy was in history?
Do you believe that all those that praise CA for the famous siege escalation would like to have bloody and almost impossible attacks of fortified settlements?
Do you beleive that most of the players here would like to see Franks without horsemen and all factions without pikemen as realy was in history?

We can not have 100% accurate games. But this is not an excuse to have imaginary based "historical" games too!
Game's limmitations can be also a tool of 90% accurate presentation of the warriors of that time.
M2TW modding creations lead the way.... Lets suppose that you study history and you encounter 2 units of similar nature.
Lets supose that those ywo infantry units used both swords and spears (as naturaly human warriors used both). The options are:
Create two versions of each unit and name them:
Unit 1 swordmen, Unit 1 spearmen, Unit 2 swordmen and Unit 2 spearmen. That consumes unit pool places without any clear benefit.
The 2nd option is to create the unit 1 as swordmen and the unit 2 as spearmen and in their describe texts you can explain why you did that separations and how were these units in reality.

Unforthunatly , realism is so borring for many players that create unit rosters in imaginary basis! You see steppe pikemen, steppe macemen, frank cataphracts etc...

You pointed much of the problems of such a thing Anthonius. We are of like mind, but I'm a tad more enthusiast: I think there is thousands of people in the TW playerbase that would enjoy such realistical gameplay, and even though sources/history buffs always fights each other we can easily agree on 90% of what reality was in Attila timeframe (the remaining 10% will be forever clouded in mystery and subject to point of views).

As you said in your premise, the AI is still not able to perform as a human would, so there are limits in what we can propose in a single player mode. But we dont have to wait for SkyNet before enjoying some good old TW full realism mode either, there is a lot of gameplay decision available right now even if it ends up being a bit easy as Garensterz said.

[AnthoniusII]

My friend I am one of those enthusiasts in this matter. In my small and humble modding "career" starting as researcher, I always had in mind that TW games could become exelent and pleasure educational tools.
My persistance in realism made CA members accuse me as a CA biased person too!
That is why i posted that post above. I am not saying its impossible. I am saying that is hard and there are ways of compromise that lead to exelent results.
TGC mod started under this exact prospective. In any case there are few persons in TWC with the same love for historical accuracy that we could help any modding attempt to go on.
I am not a modder of the new engines...In fact i am a low standards modder , but the expirience of creating something stricted on accuracy, could allow future modders understand the delimas that will emerge and smart solutions to go through them.
All the examples i mentioned came fro the TGC mod developement expirience.
In order the modders that would like an accurate mod in this engine i give the following example.
In TGC mod there are two main Roman Armies.
The Thematic ones
The Tagmatic ones
That system looks very familliar to Attila's Roman Limitanei/Comitances army composition.
The delimas that emerged were primarily if we had to create clone versions of certain units to reach historical authenticity in almost 99%!
That would create 400% more units that would be clone ones with diferent textures.
In a historical project/mod this delima comes with the question

does this worth the trouble?

That question is essential because for spesific historical reasons some scimilar/clone units must be in the mod.
Lets talk with examples.
In the Tagmatic Armies there are the following units:
Excubitores
Scholarii
Hikkanati
Athanati
Noumeroi
Teichiotae
The 1st 4 units were actually large cavalry regiments that all had the Roman system of Koursores/Defensores
That ment that if we would like maximum accuracy we had to model for each of those units two ingame ones , one as lancer cataphracts and one as horsearcher cataphracts!
Those 8 in total units would have no actuall reason of existance because they would all do the exact same job!
But...we could not exclude one of them from our roster because then we would have 0% accuracy.
Our solution was a compromise.
Knowing that in some point Excubitores became Pallace/Emperor's Guards we portayed them as Pallace swordmen on foot.
Knowing that Hikkanati were famous for their frenzy charges we portayed them as Defensores (lancers) and gave the role of Koursores to the more expirient Scholarii!
Athanati is the case that i mentioned above that some cloned units can not be ignored!
Why? Because in our case that unit apeared as an spesific emperor's addition to the Tagmatic Troops and they were one of the few such units that survived untill 1204AD!
The last two units had a scimilar delima. Those were two fully formed Infantry regiments that guarded the capital and the pallace. Both units had infantrymen equiped with spears, swords and bows. In that case we desided to give each unit a spesific role as well.
In our point of view -I do not claim that is the best- we reached two goals.
1st We created a number of units that follow the gameplay ways and limmitations.
2nd We included all possible units in the roster and we inform the players about their history.
I strongly believe that History is the best scenario writer! Historical accuracy opens an entire new world for the players, adding real strategic delimas and a lot of adrenaline durring the battles!
That is simply my way of view...

[Giant Death Robot]

Do we even know enough about the epoch to claim we should go for full historical accuracy? I mean, we know what the Roman empires used to a point, and general outlines like ''the Huns used horse archers a lot'', but beyond that isn't it mostly guesswork? Creating a full unit roster seems pretty hard to me when we barely know what half the factions fielded. People complain about the limited roster enough as it is, in reality it must have been even more narrow. I'm not sure what really differenciates ''guy with a spear from X part of Europe we know nothing about'' from ''guy with a spear from Y part of Europe we know next to nothing about''.

And while this would be a good idea for a mod, for a base game it wouldn't be that great. CA must at least try to achieve balance, and besides the AI struggles enough as it is with campaign map play, adding too many features would probably make it explode. This is a game, and CA will always treat it as such. Incredibly strict adherence to historical authenticity is good for serious wargames, I suppose, but Total War isn't and has never been that.

[Gaidin]

Full historical authenticity breaks a game. Pretty much because, well, you're playing a game. Games require balance. Go have fun. And watch the AI screw up sometimes.

[Butan]

I strongly believe that History is the best scenario writer! Historical accuracy opens an entire new world for the players, adding real strategic delimas and a lot of adrenaline durring the battles!
That is simply my way of view...

Indeed, reality speaks for itself, our world isnt "unbalanced" nor "impossible to enjoy". Its hard, its tough, but it make sense and there is a lot of pleasure to find in it: a game that follows the laws life apply to us cant be different and this is why I also think historical accuracy is the best storyteller.

Do we even know enough about the epoch to claim we should go for full historical accuracy?

The migration period is pretty blurry, to be sure. And personaly its the european period I know the least..
Guesswork will always need to replace what we really have no clues about, but if we cant perfectly represent which units fought, where factions were and how they were clothed, there is still a lot of common sense principles which applied to how battles were fought and how the economy/diplomacy worked that can be blanket implemented ingame. Thats what I like the most because a Total War is more about a semi-realistic sandbox (that can easily crank up to full realism) than a history book.
And I say that while enjoying some mods which uses a lot of scripted events and funnel decisions to some degrees

[Totalheadache]

Well I think in terms of units Hist authenticity wouldnt work Butan because I think a lot of them are made up....

I dont know enough to be honest but am pretty sure the rosters would be less colourfull so to speak

P.S Not that I mind. What I would like to see in re Hist authenticity is in terms of the cities/diplomacy/characters etc.

And I agree with the scripted events. I think the series might need it...well perhaps if the A.I had a scripted sheet to follow might be good. I.e The A.I as the Saxons must invade England at all costs etc etc. Yes they do attempt it this...but in several campaigns have yet to see them try again.

Why the caledonians in southern France? I mean ok my northern breathen are pretty hardcore but am sure they would want to take control of all Britain first..or perhaps happy to create a Northern Kingdom and maintain that.

[mavyalex]

Hello guys,

When playing TW Attila I though about something: I believe that soldiers could use the dead enem'ys weapons instead of their own or when some soldiers needed a new weapon. On the battlefield it wasn't rare to be able to pick up a rifle, some muntions, or other accessories that could be turned against the enemy. Capturing enemy artillery was possible too I'm sure.

This is not implemented in TW games to my knowledge. For example: a bowman could drop his bow and pick up an enemy's sword or rifle or whatever and use it. I don't think it would be too difficult to implement this feature because it already exists for siege weapons. For example artillery and ballista personnel can drop the equipement to fight in melee. The same principle could apply to regular infantry to drop their current weapons and use the enemy's weapon, and it could be implemented randomly to be more realistic and within limits (not the whole army would drop its weapons for example of course :-)...
I could go further and talk about cavalry dropping their horses and fighting in melee when forced to...

Of course the primary skills of a given soldier would be computed so that he is most effective with his pruimary weapon and much less with the "secondary weapon" (the enemy's weapon).


What do you think of this idea?

[Butan]

If it could be done it would be great. Of course then people would scratch their head: how to balance that? But like in my OP, I think we should first think of what can realistically be done!

For example, it wasnt impossible for melees to take a bow/sling/javelins and help harass the enemies in the skirmish phase where melees were not doing anything but covering themselves. And with durability, it was probably common to damage/break your weapons and you had to take a secondary or pick up whatever you could.

I dont think durability can be implemented but is the game able to consider weapons as discardable/pickable as siege engines? Maybe there is something to be done. A Men of War-like pick your stuff system (adapted for a grand army system ).
Would also be cool if ammo (stones, javs, arrows) could be recoverable (only like 50%, since some broke at impact).

[AnthoniusII]

Historical accuracy starts from the campaign scripts (see some examples in my sig). That quarantees two things.
1st continuesly challenges for the players
2nd education.
Only then historical accuracy can be completed with uinit creations and units stats ballance.
Then comes the visual part and some extra infos for each unit..

[damien007]

Full historical authenticity wouldn't work in a video game full stop. There will always need to be some compromises for gameplay. It's just a matter of how much and that differs depending on your perspective and personal tastes.

For example the new "realistic" features you described like siege escalation, familly, politics etc... also serve to enhance the gameplay so it's a win-win for both fans of good gameplay, and realism. Where as some of the changes you described like "0 gameplay balance" would probably be a bit more decisive. So really whether it works depends on the person.

I personally wouldn't want to play battles that lasted literally lasted an entire day. I think vanilla as it is right now has a fairly good balance between fun gameplay, and historical realism.

[Butan]

I wrote full for the sake of argument. As close as possible is a more accurate wording, for reasons you and others mentioned.

[PumpkinBread]

'Fully 100% authentic & accurate blah blah' and 'game' are an oxymoron. Period.

Damned if they do, damned if they don't. There's going to be unhappy people no matter what CA chose to do.