after a hundred hours of play...I am less impressed with it than I was at the start

[RedGuard]

Maybe I was just suffering from the Stockholm syndrome left over from Rome 2, but I really loved Attila for the first hundred hours or so. Now at 150 hours, I am a little more unbiased to its faults (which are as numerous as Rome 2's, though less severe). I was wondering if anyone feels the same now that the rose-tinted glasses have come off? I feel the things the devs really need to work on immediately are:

Razing needs to be revamped, factions need to raze far less and less often,

The Huns should be allowed to settle (whats to stop other factions from coming up behind you after you've wiped out a area? I had the Arabians settling on the steppes in one campaign as the huns, and I promptly ended the game).

The Roman Empires are both a cakewalk to defeat. I find it more a chore to invade them as the Franks or Sassanids than I find it fun. They need more armies at the start, and know better how to use them. Its less obbvious using mods like Radious, but the ERE is still pretty easy to defeat even on Hard, as they put their armies in the sea and defend crete as if it were Constantinople.

also fix the victory conditions. They're all messed up.

[M2TWRocks]

I've had the opposite experience. In the beginning I was more overwhelmed with the bizarre choices the factions made and confused by the new family tree mechanics. After sorting through most of that I'm finding a very rewarding and somewhat challenging campaign experience. I do agree about the Huns and the razing revamp. I like to play factions in an atypical fashion, so settling as the huns is a no brainer for me.

[Generaal Van Heutsz]

Yeah the flaws are becoming more obvious but it's still a good game. I gave up on Rome way way sooner. I found out the romans really do not like to beseige, they will try and attack a field army though but since most of the times you need your armies as a garrison and can't afford more you'll not see many field battles.

[MasterBigAb]

I totally agree with the OP

[xjlxking]

I tend to get annoyed at AI more than ever. I used to like artificial difficulty or accept it. I never expect an AI to beat me. But seeing that the AI has not improved really gets me

like you said, the AI razes, doesn't expand, barely if ever resettles. It can't function so it's given all kinds of bonuses, can't manage armies, it chases players, it prioritizes the player above self preservation, it can't even do simple things. In 15 years since Rome 1, I feel like the AI made little progress and in certain aspects degenerated.

like CA went in an interview and bragged or defended their graphics how it's meant for next gen GPU but their AI is stuck in previous gen tech. It's not even an excuse no more, it's just their business model, they remove and add features and increase the graphics of every new game. Next game I bet there won't be razing

attila is good fame. Very polished but it should he it's a modded Rome 2. Same engine, map, units, diplomacy, but features either added or removed. Nothing to brag about when it cost 60+ one month into release

[♔Old Dragoon♔]

I still enjoy the game, however, I am getting irritated at the AI skipping, skipping past my armies to attack the more primitive cities forcing many 'Alamo' type battles and if AI wins they sack and flee, then repeat. I've stopped most of that due strategy and some mods, but still the CAI needs more work as well as the Political system. Though they are better than Rome II they still to me are not on par with Shogun 2 or earlier games. I know there is a give a little and take a little, but come on man when you have a faction that has almost no resources and you have loads of resources, then they should fall over to trade with you. Instead I get, "I have no use for your ill trinkets..." it's just absurd to a high degree. And then still no workshop for mods... However, I still will play because it's still in my opinion a superior game to Rome II.

[Nicolaos]

OP has some valid points.

-Razing and desolation issue: This is luckily not a big issue for me. I play Attila with the Radious mod and it disables the razing option for all factions except for nomads, such as the Huns.

-Roman Empire issue:
This is a problem. The situations seems to have improved after the last patch, but WRE and sometimes even ERE are almost wiped out by the time Attila shows up.
Maybe a solution would be to have one stationary Limitanei legion in every province, that has to be destroyed in order to gain access to the region. This would also add more depth in depicting the differences between comitatenses and limitanei.

[Kjazim]

Yea how huns will become empire when cant settle?

[Ataegina]

its quite normal for a game losing his initial charm after so many hours and look less impressive, applies to every game when you've seen everything and experienced everything..... @Kjazim they didn't had a empire as we think (romans,etc etc)but they had an empire made of vassals and such..... kind of empire of vassals ruled by them......(huns)

[RexJayden]

its quite normal for a game losing his initial charm after so many hours and look less impressive, applies to every game when you've seen everything and experienced everything..... @Kjazim they didn't had a empire as we think (romans,etc etc)but they had an empire made of vassals and such..... kind of empire of vassals ruled by them......(huns)

At this point, I am counting on mods to keep this game fresh for me. I enjoyed Attila immensely at the beginning, but now, I need mods (Currently have 75 HRS game-play time).

[Imperator Artorius]

Sometimes I wonder if the army system introduced in Rome II is at least partially responsible for the larger empires falling apart so easily.

Yeah you could argue that it adds strategy for the player by forcing them to think best how to employ a smaller number of armies, but can the AI actually cope with this? I mean in Attila and Rome II with the larger factions, especially the Roman Empires, you often come across towns that aren't defended at all, aside from the automatic garrisons that the buildings provide and are essentially a cake walk to conquer.

In the earlier games, if your economy could support it, you could have as many units as you liked stationed in towns as well as in the field. Now I won't for one second argue that the AI made intelligent use of this, for example the stacks of single catapults wondering around in Medieval 2 etc, but this made towns arguably easier to defend, both for the player and the AI.

Now with the current army system, adequately covering large territories is much harder as you just have concrete armies and an arbitrarily limited amount of these to work with, especially in Rome II where the way that imperium scaled with territory was a bit weird and seemed to make large empires underpowered.

[xjlxking]

Sometimes I wonder if the army system introduced in Rome II is at least partially responsible for the larger empires falling apart so easily.

Yeah you could argue that it adds strategy for the player by forcing them to think best how to employ a smaller number of armies, but can the AI actually cope with this? I mean in Attila and Rome II with the larger factions, especially the Roman Empires, you often come across towns that aren't defended at all, aside from the automatic garrisons that the buildings provide and are essentially a cake walk to conquer.

In the earlier games, if your economy could support it, you could have as many units as you liked stationed in towns as well as in the field. Now I won't for one second argue that the AI made intelligent use of this, for example the stacks of single catapults wondering around in Medieval 2 etc, but this made towns arguably easier to defend, both for the player and the AI.

Now with the current army system, adequately covering large territories is much harder as you just have concrete armies and an arbitrarily limited amount of these to work with, especially in Rome II where the way that imperium scaled with territory was a bit weird and seemed to make large empires underpowered.

12stacks is more than enough

the problem is the AI sends 1/3 at the player 1/3 in the ocean drifting and 1/3 get destroyed by attrition
and the fact that a same one region faction can maintain 3 stacks does not help

[Imperator Artorius]

So maybe if the AI was unable to put these armies in the sea (by scrapping instant transports) they'd put up at least partially better resistance because all of their stacks were on land?

As for attrition, maybe you could script the AI not to leave its armies in areas of attrition and force it to use roads, stay in towns during winter etc

[Theo]

Razing needs to be revamped, factions need to raze far less and less often,

The Huns should be allowed to settle (whats to stop other factions from coming up behind you after you've wiped out a area? I had the Arabians settling on the steppes in one campaign as the huns, and I promptly ended the game).

The Roman Empires are both a cakewalk to defeat. I find it more a chore to invade them as the Franks or Sassanids than I find it fun. They need more armies at the start, and know better how to use them. Its less obbvious using mods like Radious, but the ERE is still pretty easy to defeat even on Hard, as they put their armies in the sea and defend crete as if it were Constantinople.

also fix the victory conditions. They're all messed up.

Still holding out hope they fix these major issues in the next few patches. At least the ERE Mediterranean vacation cruise party/permanent shore leave for the entire ERE army issue.

[stevehoos]

I agree with the OP as well.

-Campaign has a lot to be desired in general
1. AI armies hanging out at sea instead of protecting borders
2. The raise (nuclear bomb) feature ruins the game play, it should be called Total war hoarding
3. The AI never attacks the player with a full garrison and army, which means no sieges; sieges is what the title was founded on, or so I thought?

I am bored with it right now, waiting for the modding tools and mods

[talljoe]

I agree with the OP as well.

-Campaign has a lot to be desired in general
1. AI armies hanging out at sea instead of protecting borders
2. The raise (nuclear bomb) feature ruins the game play, it should be called Total war hoarding
3. The AI never attacks the player with a full garrison and army, which means no sieges; sieges is what the title was founded on, or so I thought?

I am bored with it right now, waiting for the modding tools and mods

I loved ATW at first, but honestly this is starting to make campaigns really boring now. The AI, long story short, won't fight your army. Ever. Unless it has at least a 3-1 stack advantage, which maybe happens once or twice in the game. The only challenges, currently, are public order and sanitation. Im currently playing Ebdani, and I realized I had reached turn 100 without fighting a battle, on VH campaign difficulty. I want to abandon that campaign now. Pretty much the same thing happened in my Jute campaign. Apart from a few early battles, by the time I had any troops worth fielding, the AI would simply never fight me in any scenario. This has got to change for ATW to have replayability.

Honestly, the most fun I've had so far w/ Attila has been as ERE, because you have an enemy that can actually sort of fight you: the Sassanid Empire.

[xjlxking]

I loved ATW at first, but honestly this is starting to make campaigns really boring now. The AI, long story short, won't fight your army. Ever. Unless it has at least a 3-1 stack advantage, which maybe happens once or twice in the game. The only challenges, currently, are public order and sanitation. Im currently playing Ebdani, and I realized I had reached turn 100 without fighting a battle, on VH campaign difficulty. I want to abandon that campaign now. Pretty much the same thing happened in my Jute campaign. Apart from a few early battles, by the time I had any troops worth fielding, the AI would simply never fight me in any scenario. This has got to change for ATW to have replayability.

Honestly, the most fun I've had so far w/ Attila has been as ERE, because you have an enemy that can actually sort of fight you: the Sassanid Empire.

Most campaign, in this game come down to
the first 10-15 years you establish dominance (correct PO, Sanitation, Food Supply) or you get a settlement. After that, majority of the game comes down to resettling. In fact, campaigns like ERE/WRE you don't even have to capture anymore territory for military/cultural/minor victories.

[Bramborough]

Honestly, the most fun I've had so far w/ Attila has been as ERE, because you have an enemy that can actually sort of fight you: the Sassanid Empire.

Agreed. My experience with most AI factions has been similar to what others describe. The Sassanids, however, seem to be quite willing to roll the dice on a dead-even pre-battle balance bar. Result; some of the largest, most epic battles I've experienced in TW. You know it's been a heck of a fight when there's a total of 8 dead generals...

Kinda makes me think, CA needs to feed a little "Sassanid Kool-Aid" to Attila and some of the other AI faction leaders.

[AnonMilwaukean]

My impression at this point is favorable, though just as tempered as at the beginning.

Enough of R2's flaws naturally have carried over to a game that reuses many of R2's assets. From tiny stuff (some Hunnic cavalry, when issued orders from the player, say 'For Parthia' or the like) to complex/major things (naval mechanics and balancing), Attila has retained a good number of R2's issues, and I noted this virtually immediately. The in-game encyclopedia is even less developed for Attila, with info on the bonuses from religions, among other things, not exactly easy to find.

That said, Attila greatly improved the campaign experience, regardless of whatever flaws Attila retained or found anew. Factions are far more varied (migrators, true nomads like the Huns, huge empires, small little kingdoms), offering a lot more variety than R2's starts, and is in fact an improvement over Shogun 2's identical and somewhat bland starts (though Shogun 2 is still my favorite TW game, especially with FotS added). Internal politics has also been cleaned up, with a CKII sort of feel with marriages, traits that you caused through in-game actions (i.e.: promoting a subordinate of a character makes them less loyal). And fighting for resources is far more meaningful, as many more of them are necessary for constructing certain buildings (in R2 at launch, resources were just for trade, and only after Emperor Edition did resources become a requirement for a very few buildings). Four turns per year, seasons, and a larger map with fewer roads. Balanced agents with less early-game spam. All great stuff, though not to say all campaign changes have been perfect (victory conditions are sometimes a little strange, and the open-world strategy of R2 is a bit lost given that the easiest way to go is almost always to head west and prepare for Hunnic spam). But the campaign is greatly improved, which makes Attila a very enjoyable game.

But like I said, as much now at 200 hours as at the 20 hour mark, Attila retains some of R2's flaws, and I've always been aware of this. I think the deal with Attila is that I'm far more forgiving with Attila's flaws because so much has been improved and the game is quite good, and is even good in a way or two that Shogun 2 wasn't.

Does Attila make up for R2's disastrous release? Not at all. Is Attila in some ways just a fixed version of R2? In some, yes, though enough new mechanics are brought into play as well (razing, internal politics, hordes, options to change religions, etc.). These are unfortunate truths that Attila will never outlive, even after 1,000 hours of play. But I dealt with that and have tried to consider Attila separately from my opinion on CA, and the game is good. Really good. From the onset, it was apparent that the game would be less open-strategy than R2, as the Huns are somewhat scripted and this makes some strategies (going east, for instance) less viable or sensible given the Hunnic spam in the mid/late game. And issues from R2 were always apparent.

All that I really would say has changed from hour 20 to hour 200 is that the scripted Huns have become slightly annoying... I mean, it's good to have them scripted in one sense, since they play kind of a villain role in the sparse narrative the game tries to weave... but the current system with them is no longer fun after the first campaign, as it's too predictable. The scripting for the Huns needs to be less built around killing Attila, in short. Otherwise, the current situation with them is repetitive: find Attila's horde, kill him, find his horde once more, kill him again. And this is something I didn't realize until the last 50 hours or so of gameplay, since it is more of a replayability issue. There needs to be more variety in how a player can deal with the AI Huns. Otherwise, I see this becoming a replayability issue, especially because the formula is so strict right now (can't use agents, have to kill twice in battle, can't just kill the other hordes). But that's the only real difference after 200 hours for me, as I went into Attila with eyes wide open and a grain of salt given that it reused assets from R2.

edit: Note that a lot of things are covered by my remark of 'retaining flaws of R2', including the suspect CAI for positioning embarked armies. Again, that is an issue I, too, have, but is an issue I had immediately and one that didn't surprise me given that Attila is using much of R2 in some departments.

[Bramborough]

...There needs to be more variety in how a player can deal with the AI Huns. Otherwise, I see this becoming a replayability issue...

For me, this snippet pretty much nails my biggest concern for this game.