At least the City building on the Campaign map makes a lot more sense now...

[Humble Warrior]

Attila just really shows up how fubared Rome 2 was with its city building mechanic.

I remember in that crappy game, nothing really made much sense and I would almost randomly pick anything just to stop illogical rebellions, before finally giving up. I`ve noticed while playing Attila, I`m not having that horrible confusion. Most buildings make sense and have a direct positive or negative effect which you must decide on.

It`s just a heluva lot more straight forward. Just saying.

[RGA]

Most rebellions in Rome 2 are caused by slaves or cultural differences, against which you have no specific buildings to deal with.

In Attila, the effects of migrants or religion difference are much milder and could be easily countered by buidings with PO benefit.

[PeonKing]

Most rebellions in Rome 2 are caused by slaves or cultural differences, against which you have no specific buildings to deal with.

In Attila, the effects of migrants or religion difference are much milder and could be easily countered by buidings with PO benefit.

Slave rebellions can easily be stopped. Don't take slaves, just kill or release captives. You might get some minor slave numbers from occupying I believe, but besides that it should be pretty manageable.

I'm not sure what you're talking about with Cultural differences, are you referring to religious differences? Those are self explanatory, you just build temples.

I actually disagree Humble, Rome 2 was way too straightforward. Basically every province should be a food generating province, you just balance temples and farms. One province can be a military province, which you should expect rebellions from. There really wasn't a reason to go down any money making trees, because you would eventually just make so much money from farming it didn't matter. Economics might be worth investing in early game, but it's actually detrimental mid to late game because you need to maximize food generation. It was easy, every province was the same. Sure, you might want to control trade resources for trading and some minor provincial bonuses, but everything was basically the same. I guess it got more complicated with how they changed how religion worked and the Emperor Augustus building changes, but it was still pretty straightforward.

That being said, I'm not saying it was better, because it wasn't, the Rome 2 building situation was my least favorite part of that game. Attila is harder, with the climate change, more important trade resource buildings, money being more difficult to manage, and sanitation. It's nice, because you don't NEED temples everywhere, you can still manage happiness without them, and making sanitation a separate mechanic from happiness was a good move. Playing conservatively to prepare for the climate change would be nice, but it's not really viable with WRE since you're hurting for cash and your vital provinces start very fertile. I still don't feel like I've optimized my WRE provinces which is nice, because I'm mid-late game, and I'm still trying to rebalance things, paticularly with climate change screwing over my food generation.

[Winston Smith]

My biggest problem with the Attila map is so many cities being absent. Athens being absent is a big no-no for me.

[The Dude]

My biggest problem with the Attila map is so many cities being absent. Athens being absent is a big no-no for me.

I found this one weird, what with Alaric being invited into Athens by its leadership. That was a pretty major historical event.

[L337 NUB]

Just a clarification, in R2 temples spread your culture (ie latin) rather than religion. cheers

But yeah, slave revolts were np and quite avoidable, I also didn't find the food mechanic to be very strenuous in R2 either. But as a tip to OP or someone trying to figure out P.O., the rebellion can be very good for you to stop the hemorrhaging Huge Public Order buff, just keep an eye on it so as to be in position after it happens

[PointOfViewGun]

Attila just really shows up how fubared Rome 2 was with its city building mechanic.

I remember in that crappy game, nothing really made much sense and I would almost randomly pick anything just to stop illogical rebellions, before finally giving up. I`ve noticed while playing Attila, I`m not having that horrible confusion. Most buildings make sense and have a direct positive or negative effect which you must decide on.

It`s just a heluva lot more straight forward. Just saying.

Given that the systems in Attila and Rome II are not that different this is practically an irrational attack on Rome II.

[RedGuard]

Given that the systems in Attila and Rome II are not that different this is practically an irrational attack on Rome II.

they're actually very different. Attila is far more streamlined with its three cities to a province. every province you automatically know to build up your sanitation, your food and your government buidlings and then you can start pumping out units. its far better balanced. On Rome 2 I hardly ever built up the city building past tier 2 because it was just completely illogical to go higher than that with the negative food and public order bonus (wouldn't people want a bigger city to live in?)

Attila I actually look at the building browser tab and my province tab to plan what to build next

[PeonKing]

Given that the systems in Attila and Rome II are not that different this is practically an irrational attack on Rome II.

I wouldn't say that. The systems are very similar, but their were a lot of pointless options in R2. Like, you could take slaves, but you couldn't build an economy based on taking slaves because there were no ways to directly reduce dissension due to slave population. Basically if you kept taking slaves, you were going to have rebellions no matter what, whether you tried to have a slaveless society or tried to put slave building chains in each province. There was no way to efficiently measure your slave population, you couldn't direct your slaves to certain provinces, and you couldn't even monitor your income due to slavery. If I recall, the slave trade chain didn't even enhance money made due to slavery, it was just a trade chain that reduced slave population decline. I mean, if it was harder to make money, you might have taken slaves as a quick source of income in return for having to put down rebellions, but it wasn't hard to make money in R2.

Secondly, like I said before, you could (and basically should) base your economy completely on farming. So 2 major parts of empire management, food and income, could be handled with the same types of buildings. You only really needed 1 or 2 military provinces, but there was no reason to make economic provinces because you would just be shorting yourself food in order to make more money, money that you probably didn't need because by mid game you're already making more money than you could possibly spend. There might've been some small variation in province capital buildings for things like Agent leveling buildings, but besides that, most provinces were built the same way.

You can compare that to Attila, where you have climate change affecting where you would want your bread basket provinces, squalor being separate from happiness, religion not being a completely necessary thing to control in every province, and money actually being a major concern. Despite streamlining the province sizes to 3 settlements, they actually complicated the system by making it where you wouldn't build the province of Africa the same as you would build a province in England because trade resource chains are more important and fertility factors in.

[I2ain_2_Battle]

the only thing i don't really like. is the fact that barbarian sanitation buildings give alot less province bonus to the other cities. the highest value of sanitation u can give to the rest of your province is a +4 sanitation. i think the romans have alot better sanitation buildings. which always gives me a problem. should i just build one sanitation building in my big city and put money making buildings in that. and one sanitation building in one of my towns. and that leaves one town with completely no sanitation but with a +4 carry over effects. so you have to be very careful where you build certain buildings.

[jorfik]

the only thing i don't really like. is the fact that barbarian sanitation buildings give alot less province bonus to the other cities.

I actually like this, it adds variety between the factions and gives you options when taking settlements from other cultures. I think it's a very satisfying mechanic to be able to capture very useful buildings like Roman baths and aqueducts, and adds to the feeling, from a roleplay perspective, of inheriting a city. In earlier games you'd keep common buildings but lose faction-specific buildings which was a shame.

I'm still not entirely sold on the province system, but I do like the limited number of building slots. IMO Shogun II was the best system for town and city building (I liked the separate ports & farms there too).

[Riekopo]

Attila's building system makes more sense, but it's very restrictive because of all the penalties. You basically have to build a certain way. It's still a terrible and illogical system in my opinion. It's not realistic at all. It's very gamey. It reminds me of Civilization.

[veverčák]

I still prefer curent one over HoMM system of original Rome and Med 2. Now you at least have to plan beforhand and trying conquer certein areas rather then bubble style of previous iterations.

[Humble Warrior]

I suppose I should`ve said it`s the confusion with Squalar that was biggest nonsense.

[DestinysGT]

I really enjoy the city building in attila. You can strategically create providances MUCH better. Without worrying about what your doing and there's always something that has synergy with the building your building. And as jorfik stated the variety between factions is nice. That way things don't feel as repetitive even though they already are considering you only have certain choices but it makes sense like that.

[♔Old Dragoon♔]

I still prefer Napoleon TW and older (I didn't really get into Shogun II) since those made more since. The squalor, sanitation, and food thing is mostly ridiculous in my opinion. I do like Attila over Rome 2 for certain.

[Wintercross]

I find it ok, but to be honest I still prefer the Medieval 2 type system where any city can be upgraded, the whole restrictive building thing is unrealistic and very board-gamey to me.