My Appraisal of Attila after a little play.
Hello, people, friends and enemies alike.
Well, I`ve had a bit of a run on Atilla and wanted to give my impressions, mainly of the Campaign side of things. First off I`ll get right to the point and say the Campaign is rather bloody good! The depth of it is more than I expected and leans definitely to a mature crowd. You don`t feel like a child when playing this side of the game.
I`ve been using the Eastern Roman Empire. I decided to start on normal difficulty.
Campaign:
What I like:
1. The depth of characters in your Faction. It grows on you more and more what you can do and know about these characters. It`s actually a joy checking up on each person and seeing what his situation is, then figuring what to do to better his station. The options like marry, assassin (which I tried, unsuccessfully) and the rest are really very good.
2. The screens are better laid out. No silly empty huge black spaces and the colour is better on the eyes, especially when you`ll be spending a while on these screens.
3. Everything is a lot easier to understand and see. Who would have thought a detailed Family tree would add so much to the game? Oh wait, the PLAYERS did. CA finally got the message there.
4.The ingame event pictures that crop up when something like desertions or disease happens is smartly done. They`re very lightly animated (and probably cheaper than the animated pics), but it really makes a difference as it adds a sense of life and motion. A nice idea.
5.The pre-battle pop up showing a map of the landscape is another very simple but brilliant idea. I find it actually very immersive. I am about to start a battle, but what is the landscape really like- Aha, there it is on my little map my Lieutenant bought me! Now I can make a proper appraisal of the situation.
6. The campaign strategic map is invaluable. The main campaign map is so graphically detailed that it is actually harder to see what`s going on, like trying to see what`s happening from a biplane and plan while flying over dense wooded territory.
7. The option to change the 3D view to a 2D view for the faces. Thankyou CA, greatly appreciated. I seriously don`t need that extra processor hungry flannel, although, I`ll admit the faces look a lot more realistic than the ones in Rome 2. Impressively so. A pity they still look like stranded fish when they talk. Also thanks for the option to NOT have men fade when close.
8. The CAI seems pretty ok so far. I am Allied to the Western Roman Empire and they`ve been pretty good. They keep dragging me into lots of wars, but they actually pay a decent amount of cash for it and they haven`t backstabbed me yet! I often sneakily make peace afterwards since I really can`t fight all these wars! The enemy Ai has also been relatively quick to sue for peace, even before I meet them which suited me.
9. The varied options to remove the lines, guides and No Timer are appreciated by me. I disable nearly all of them except the ones that show an arrow to where my troops are going when ordered, which I`ve never tried before. I even love the fact that units look more realistic so I disable the Flags as well or whatever they are now!
10. The adviser and general speech. A thousand times better. It sounds more real and serious. Heck, I even left the adviser on when I would normally instantly swith him off!
Now for the things I don`t like about the Campaign map:
1. The raze thing when the AI decides to burn out a province completely. The whole burning across the land effect is really stupid. It doesn`t feel like a land being wasted by an army, but more like a nuke being set off. This actually takes me out of my immersion. I am certain there is a better way to do this. Also, why is the entire land wasted? It should just be the cities and immediate area, showing desolation. This is one of the reasons why one gets the impression it`s a nuke because it looks like 100 miles has been blown up by a 100 megaton nuke! The sound effect doesn`t help. Now a sound effect of men shouting and people screaming and fires being being burned would`ve been much better- Change it please.
2. The campaign map is way too detailed with forests and all that graphicy stuff. You can`t make head nor tail what`s going on or even where your borders are. This is where more lush graphics does not help the game, unless you`re a spectator. However, the strategic map (which I spend almost all my time on now) saves the day.
3.Don`t like the fact that Faction Generals don`t travel to armies. They teleport. This actually makes it a little less intuitive as to where your Generals are (without searching the tabs) because half the time I end up chosing and moving a General to an army leaving a city empty of a governer since I had no real idea where he had to travel from. Crap. Also unimmersive.
4.Annoying enemy hordes that jump into the sea to escape. Yep, there he is wiping out one of my cities. I send a strong force to destroy him- he runs away and instead of stopping at the shore line like would happen in REALITY and is expected, he jumps onto the sea and away. Idiotic. Please make the AI have to stop at the shore for at least a turn or two before going to sea. In fact make armies not able to go to sea at all without proper ships, m8. This ruins some other good ideas you implemented.
Battle map.
What I like:
1. The ability to switch almost every single hud aid off. Flags, selection icons, tracers- All off. Lovely.
2. The realism mode and restriction of LOS view dependent on unit. This makes scouts ridiculously useful now. Great.
3. The speech and warnings given by your offscreen lieutenant are much better. They feel serious and immersive, also it sounds like the same guy who did the Mediaeval Total War 2 speeches! Did you sneak the original voice actor back?
4. The battle AI seems better what little I`ve tried. I had one field battle where I had two armies coming on either side of an enemy army. He split his army in two leaving one to approach my main army while the other attacked my closer reinforcements. When my reinforcements (after a tough fight) beat them, he pulled back to the centre and decided to wait us out which was fair I thought as it was harder to beat him that way.
5. Siege AI I can`t say much about yet because I`ve not had a serious siege with walls. In siege battles (without walls), the AI did as expected. It used various routes and tended to attack from two sides. However there was a hiccup in one battle (more later).
6. Seeing people walk around is nice, but...(later).
7. Fire is nice, but.. (more later).
What I don`t like about battles.
1. Silly magic abilty buttons still exist! That silly `whip my own men` button included, plus that dumb `the crow` magic button. Seriously, this takes away from the feel of realism. I refuse to use them, although Rally is ok. Please remove the rest.
2. Women in combat. yea, I know it`s not the pc thing to say, but where realism is concerned I think women in these battles is nonsense and takes away from an otherwise realistic looking battle. It`s even more dumb when their screaming actually takes over the battlefield so you get a sound of screaming girls, not a battle of warfare! One or two women, maybe, just maybe, if she disguised herself. But lots of them is ludicrous and it actually doesn`t make any sense. You`re telling me Attilla would happily allow this? The barbarian ravager of cities and people? Just extrapoloate and think- Nonsense and feminised revised history again attempting to warp impressionable minds. But the feminists are happy, right, so who cares? Please make it optional (though I doubt you ever will). That`s all I have to say about that.
3. Please add a mechanic so reinforcements can sometimes be late or not come at all.
4. I haven`t got far enough, but removed the Torches which is GOOD. However, I have heard men get through gates far too easily though you would said it would be much more difficult for them.Make gates much tougher. That said, I personally ask you to change the mechanic and complete the job by making the AI retreat and battle end when no siege weapons are available. Please complete the job, it`s ludicrous the idea you guys have that the Player or AI must just have a way to take the city even without siege weapons. Stop it.
5. Seeing people walk about is nice, but shouldn`t they be hiding in their homes at the time of battle? The army is ready, shouldn`t they have got the message? They should only appear if they have to leave a home on fire. I will observe further battles and see how it works out.
6. Fires are started way too easily. On the plus side they don`t seem to affect frame rate.
I have to play a lot more battles and sieges to get a greator impression, so it is not conclusive.
So... to sum up, the campaign side of the game is very good indeed full of depth that can keep a guy busy for quite a while. I give the Campaign an 8 (loses points for teleporting generals and insta-ship armies). This game is far better than Rome 2 and with a few changes, primarily to how sieges work it can be amazing.
Of course considering how bad Rome 2 was, that`s not really saying all that much, you`ve just listened to some of the TW user rants for well over a year (rather than not at all or staring at metacritic) for a change. Most of us has had to pay twice to get something like what Rome 2 should have been. Is that fair? Am I too harsh?
You decide.
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Originally Posted by Godless Crom
i was positively surprised by attila as well and im quite focused on and determined to finish my current campaign. it has been a blast until now with first being a horde to increase my treasury and then settling in constantinople and fighting a very defensive war against the sassanids who had strength rating 1 back then...the moral boost your troops get from defending constantinople was quite important a few times. slowly i weakened them and managed to gain a few settlements to even the odds and i am hopefully able to start an offensive movement soon to break their resistance. it has been far from any steamroll experience like in rome2. in rome2 i couldnt stay with a single campaign for that long because it got too easy after a while and the campaign features were quite bland overall.
