The three faces of Attilla

[Greasy Dave]

I know this has been discussed to death by others...but the Celtic DLC just made me frustrated enough to write this out.

The Good

I played a VH Saxon campaign. It was pretty damned good. The Northern Europe theatre of war was pretty interesting and the game produced some flexible and interesting twists and turns. Just to challenge myself and for the Hell of it, I allied with the WRE. Not everybody hated me, but nearly everyone. It was kind of cool. The CAI seemed competent at moving its stacks around and trying to stretch my own forces and attack weak regions.

The WRE inevitably fell but they'd done enough holding up my Southern flank for me to get established and then an Italian WRE supporting rebel faction emerged and we proceeded help each other reconquer Europe. Totally unexpected and made the game feel fresh and interesting.

The only bad side ....40 hours spent fighting generic Germanic units......with Generic german units

The Bad

So I tried the Alans next. I was bored of generic germans I wanted to try a different roster and different geography. Hopefully not too many generic Germans down in the Balkans? OK, there were fewer Germans but the ERE was dazed and confused and offered zero resistance. The CAI seems to get confused when there's sea and water around. I watched it park 2 stacks of serious hard core heavy infantry in the sea in transports off Rhodes for x turns while myself and the Huns trashed the Greek archipelago and Anatolia. I stopped playing because it was so dull. True, I could have DOWed the Huns for a challenge but I just got sick of the campaign, TBH. I mean, why should I have to do something like that? Still, northern Europe had been fun. So I'm willing to let that go and head back North for a new campaign.

The Greedy and Unforgivable

Which brings me to what to play next.....well Northern Europe - a fun challenge. The CAI handled the land campaign reasonably well.

A new faction in the North....right.....let's see, who can I choose...? The Franks or the Franks? Or ........the Franks. Hmmm. I'd also like to not have to spend another 150 turns fighting the same generic units. Hmmmm. To get a reasonable choice - all three culture packs comes to 23 Euros. 23 freaking Euros! You can argue about pricing and cups of coffee or cinema tickets (I live somewhere where 7.5 euros would buy me 10 cups of coffee) - but that really isn't the point. The point is, to play another Northern Europe campaign, and not just meet the same generic units again and again and again - I have to effectively pay for a second copy of the game! A second copy?! Are they kidding?! Not cool, not respectful and most definitely not what I'm willing to do.

CA, you've lost my custom

[RGA]

Even if you don't buy faction DLCs, you can still see their units in AI's army.

[veverčák]

Not only see you can also face them. To be honest Greasy Daves you sound rather tired of whole TW then anything. I mean the Saxons are my preferred "Viking" faction simply because of starting position closer to action. Jutes, Danes and Geats in my humble opinion do not bring that much to the table. Germanic kingdoms are in base game represent by Franks. They are OK. Yes I prefer Burgundians and Allemans but again this is rather for forming Germany 1500 years early play style. Celtic factions (and Berbers/Arabic and Slavic) factions are in my opinion perfect example of dlc material - relatively unimportant, yet well known and we have only second hand information about them.

And what is that non sense about only Franks on North? Saxons and Franks in Attila vs Saxons in BI. You still have double options!

[Darios]

So I tried the Alans next. I was bored of generic germans I wanted to try a different roster and different geography. Hopefully not too many generic Germans down in the Balkans?

The whole Germans in the Balkans/Eastern Europe histography was blown out of proportion by pre-WW2 historians and has been systematically torn down since. Traditionally historians saw the Sîntana de Mures culture as "Gothic" but today we understand that there were many additional elements Sarmatian, Carpian, Proto-Slavic, etc and the Goths were more or less a ruling military aristocracy over the peoples in the region that fled west as soon as the proverbial hit the fan. The Goths (like the Alemanii) were products of the Roman frontier and had tons of "steppe" influences (Ex: Tafali cavalry)

I wish that the mercenaries in Dacia, Pannonia, and the Balkans better reflected this instead of there being only basic Germanic units. Making elements of the local Romanic populations into mercenaries (unarmored sword bearing milites, Pannonian (Keszthely culture) Romanic people(spearmen), Romanized Carpian pastorists (javelinmen/archers), etc) would be amazing.