Hun armies, destroy them or not?

[the_mango55]

When you're dealing with an infestation of huns, and you defeat an army and have small number of remainders flee, should you

A) Chase them down and destroy them?

or

B) leave them a small and crippled force, because if you destroy them a new full strength horde will just spawn?


I guess this depends on whether the Huns have a max number of hordes or if they just spawn new hordes no matter what.

[.Mitch.]

It's a good question and the answer is a complex one: It depends on what difficulty you are playing on, what stage the climate is at in-game, how many armies they currently have and how many you could possibly be about to kill.

I'll put the rest of my post in a spoiler, in case you don't want to know the finer details of how some mechanics work.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Ultimately the lower the difficulty and the lower the climate degradation equals a lower maximum number of stacks the Huns will attempt to be kept at.

This table illustrates the max army numbers, climate level 0 is what the campaign starts at, level 4 is at its worst stage of degradation.

-	Climate 0	Climate 1	Climate 2	Climate 3	Climate 4
EASY	2	4	6	8	10
NORMAL	3	5	8	10	12
HARD	3	5	9	11	13
VERY HARD	5	7	10	12	15
LEGENDARY	5	7	11	13	16

Every two turns a check is made to see if the Huns are at their maximum level of armies, if they aren't then at most three new ones are spawned randomly in a set of locations in the east.

You can work out for yourself when it's better to destroy a stack, or let it limp away. I guess it's a matter of opinion.
Early on you can destroy a stack and be free from it for quite a while as they are limited in numbers and travel time to you might be a fair while, it's a very real possibility that destroying an army early on will split up the Huns forces and mean the horde as a whole is fighting divided. Later on they'll have enough that it won't matter though, so damaging a stack so it doesn't come back stronger may be a better option in a limited amount of circumstances (take into account their Exp that will be kept for their units though and the General himself). With that said also take into account replenishing a stack might be quicker for them than bringing in a new fresh one, so ultimately most (if not all) of the time you're going to want to destroy the stack outright throughout your campaign.

[econ21]

I'll put the rest of my post in a spoiler, in case you don't want to know the finer details of how some mechanics work.

Great info, thanks. I presume the respawning ends when Attila dies?

In my current WRE campaign, 3 Hunnic hordes are at sea stuck just sitting there... kinda sucks, making my Eastern frontier too calm.

Can you say "Ramming speed!"? Go get 'em, admiral! [Actually, be careful - the Huns morale debuff for Christians can be a real pain in a naval battle.]

[WelshDragon]

Can you say "Ramming speed!"? Go get 'em, admiral! [Actually, be careful - the Huns morale debuff for Christians can be a real pain in a naval battle.]

They are stuck in the channel between Thrace and Dacia and my fleet can't get to them for some reason... and I converted back to the gods of the glory days of Rome.

[the_mango55]

Thanks, good information.

From what I've seen, the Huns don't generally replenish because they spend all their time in raiding mode and none in camp mode. Also, at this point in the game (under 100 turns) they would not be able to rebuild new units to the same level as the ones they spawn (Nokkors, Chosen Uar, Large onagers, etc) so I think if I manage to severely decimate one of their hordes I'll try to keep it alive unless it causes me too much annoyance not allowing me to replenish.

[.Mitch.]

Yeh that's a really good point actually, how good the stack is (how good the units they spawn with) are is determined by how late in the game it is. So killing the units out of a stack and letting it live, late game, is a potent strategy for sure.

[Slaists]

Don't fight them. Play as them.

[WelshDragon]

In my current WRE campaign, 3 Hunnic hordes are at sea stuck just sitting there... kinda sucks, making my Eastern frontier too calm.

[Påsan]

Yeah navies getting stuck seems like a common problem. Both the Geats and Danes are stuck at sea in mine.

[GussieFinkNottle]

If I kill every single Hun army at once do they die as a faction? (Attila isn't grown up yet -402/3 AD). I can be certain that it would be every army because I own all the regions they spawn in, it's more like a Hun insurgency than invasion for me. I know that the new batch of replacement armies comes every two turns, but I haven't yet killed every single one by the end of a turn.

Edit: NM, they spawn full stack if you do.