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Rob Zacny

Episode 311: Total War: Attila

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Man, you guys should do the next Total War show. A lot of useful information here.

 

I have to say the show you guys did was amazing, and myself agreed lot of things said there and despite a couple of thing I too liked Attila (more on this below).

 

Talking on campaign AI, I did see factions trying to became stronger and stable, in all games I did so far, I had the Western Roman Empire to fall apart and the barbarian factions set in, conquer some provinces and soon as diplomacy kick in they became rather stable (much like it was said in the podcast, factions kept treaties) sending armies away to either pick up something Rome still have left or trying to hold off the Huns (in fact during one campaign a faction managed to became strong enough to hold off Huns of for awhile or at least weaken them) or even look futher to conquest (maybe sometimes way too faraway). I also saw armies operate in coordenated ways (in my current Last Roman campaign, I am see AI using its armies to surround me, which forced me to allways bring my two curren expedition armies around. Had a really tense battle between 3 Vandal armies and my two legions).

 

However @Gatazhk and @Gormongus points where very interessing I was thinking a lot about that, because I did also noticed them.

 

You are too kind, we had long time to ponder and rewrite our opinions here, much easier than recording for podcast~ <3

 

BTW how many of you guys use sabotage + auto resolve 'exploit' in TW games? 

Never used, but I do know I few old tricks of the older games:

 

- Medieval 2 (I think this also work for Medieval 1): One problem of the crusades was that soon or later you had do defend whatever you got there from Timurids or someone else, one solution was get the provinces (to complete the crusade) and them give or sell the provinces to someone else (that is a reason why many games drop exchange of provinces or techs, players can exploit that a lot).

- If attacked by Mongols or Timurids in Medieval 2 and you are playing with England you can get some Longbomman to build stacks in front of the gate, open the gate and let them come in, with luck you might survive.

- In Rome I (and Medieval II too) there was what I would call "dance of betrayal" where a diplomat would come to one city, do the animations, but nothing happens (I mean no actual diplomacy), they would do it several times at the same place and if you spot that you can tell that faction will attack you.

 

I don´t know if this count for exploit, and maybe Gormongous might know the actual answer to this one, but if memory didn´t fail me, in Medieval I, cavalry charges where much more powerful, almost a bit too much, because you could win battle by just throwing knights (and more precise those early Feudal Knights, which where much cheaper and despite lower stats, where more useful that the other ones).This changed a bit in Rome I, but wasn´t until Medieval 2 where the changes where felt by most players and effective charges where kind complicated to pull off (I remember a dev post about how to do it).

Now on recomending Attila or not: There is a lot things I did like there, the reinforcements zones where clearer, the overall theme, hordes, the parts where UI was improved, the family trees. But also I did also find that part of the UI still confusing, the character development while improved with the new skill system, isn´t the same like in Shogun 2, animations while improved (over Rome 2) aren´t the same level as in Shogun 2, there is some problem with the AI sometimes. Still I would recommend, if you keep in mind that Attila was build over Rome 2 and is somewhat like Napoleon (which too a lot of people love and others not, but I guess the difference is that Rome 2 got a much larger overhaul that Empire got) and does have it´s own issues. But still I liked the game.

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I think I've found what's your problem with Total War.

 

You talk about this turn-based stuff between battles as if it's a strategy game of some sort.

 

To expand on this: as Rob had said many times transition into 3D was never finished properly. Awkward army maneuvers through wide plains never worked properly and were forcefully compensated starting with Empire that stated that armies are actually 500 kilometers wide. And Shogun turned the map into more accurate representation of how ancient people would probably think about it - series of tubes connecting cities. Diplomacy never worked. Economy never worked. The best thing you can do is to use those systems to get those battles. Or hope that one day Creative Assembly will find and exile that evil man who secretly inserts strategic mode features into this games.

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I think I've found what's your problem with Total War.

 

You talk about this turn-based stuff between battles as if it's a strategy game of some sort.

 

To expand on this: as Rob had said many times transition into 3D was never finished properly. Awkward army maneuvers through wide plains never worked properly and were forcefully compensated starting with Empire that stated that armies are actually 500 kilometers wide. And Shogun turned the map into more accurate representation of how ancient people would probably think about it - series of tubes connecting cities. Diplomacy never worked. Economy never worked. The best thing you can do is to use those systems to get those battles. Or hope that one day Creative Assembly will find and exile that evil man who secretly inserts strategic mode features into this games.

 

I mean, yeah, the strategic campaign has problems, but I don't know about removing it entirely. I've played XIII Century, which is essentially Medieval 2: Total War without the campaign map, and it's a boring and joyless thing after a few hours' play, despite Unicorn Games replicating the Total War battle system quite precisely. There's just no investment for me in playing a series of staged battles, even if there are variant setups based on previous performance; I only really care if my armies are composed of my units, brought together through an independent set of hard-won decisions on my part.

 

As it stands, the campaign is far from the perfect vehicle for this, especially since Creative Assembly has become increasingly intent on denying the player access to truly good units and abilities until the oft-preempted endgame, but that doesn't convince me that the answer is linked scenarios or a static "campaign" instead.

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I mean, yeah, the strategic campaign has problems, but I don't know about removing it entirely. I've played XIII Century, which is essentially Medieval 2: Total War without the campaign map, and it's a boring and joyless thing after a few hours' play, despite Unicorn Games replicating the Total War battle system quite precisely. There's just no investment for me in playing a series of staged battles, even if there are variant setups based on previous performance; I only really care if my armies are composed of my units, brought together through an independent set of hard-won decisions on my part.

 

As it stands, the campaign is far from the perfect vehicle for this, especially since Creative Assembly has become increasingly intent on denying the player access to truly good units and abilities until the oft-preempted endgame, but that doesn't convince me that the answer is linked scenarios or a static "campaign" instead.

 

Simpler Risk map would work. I remember Rome 1 has captured my imagination with governors and generals getting all this retinue and traits so my best general was not just 10 stars guy but promoted captain who became gay and scholar during campaign in Greece. It was probably too interesting and fun to play so they replaced it with sending trade ships to anchor icons and researching tiny icons.

 

They know everybody plays for battles. Anybody who plays for strategy quickly becomes disappointed and departs to Paradox land. 

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Simpler Risk map would work. I remember Rome 1 has captured my imagination with governors and generals getting all this retinue and traits so my best general was not just 10 stars guy but promoted captain who became gay and scholar during campaign in Greece. It was probably too interesting and fun to play so they replaced it with sending trade ships to anchor icons and researching tiny icons.

 

They know everybody plays for battles. Anybody who plays for strategy quickly becomes disappointed and departs to Paradox land. 

 

I think I agree, ultimately. The campaign is only good insofar as it provides context for the battles, so all the features to make it a full-fledged game that's fun to play entirely with auto-resolved battles, rather than just a place for generals to pick up traits and run their armies together in high style, are really just cruft waiting to be broken by the player or to break on their own. More and more, I'm getting to the point where, if you can't build an AI to use a feature, it should probably be cut.

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I mean, yeah, the strategic campaign has problems, but I don't know about removing it entirely. I've played XIII Century, which is essentially Medieval 2: Total War without the campaign map, and it's a boring and joyless thing after a few hours' play, despite Unicorn Games replicating the Total War battle system quite precisely. There's just no investment for me in playing a series of staged battles, even if there are variant setups based on previous performance; I only really care if my armies are composed of my units, brought together through an independent set of hard-won decisions on my part.

 

As it stands, the campaign is far from the perfect vehicle for this, especially since Creative Assembly has become increasingly intent on denying the player access to truly good units and abilities until the oft-preempted endgame, but that doesn't convince me that the answer is linked scenarios or a static "campaign" instead.

 

I agree about XIII Century, just having battle after battle was really boring, specially that the battle they had felt like bad designed puzzles. I felt the flow between campaign and battles one of the things I like in CA games.

 

Now about on the end-game units, I understand, but I did felt that changes made since Empires, made their use more pratical, because in the past, not only they where tied to late eras/tech/development, but the way reinforcement and recruiting worked, make bring this units to the front impratical. The classic exemple is the feudal vs chivalaric knight, you might think to start using chivalaric knights, soon as you got them, but the way reinforcement worked made that soon as you use them once, you had to transport them back to reinforce, sometimes this didn´t matter (if the distance was short) but in others (like you had provinces far away) was a pain and it was simple to just use feudal knights or what ever you had (specially in case of unique units that where tied to a far way provinces, so yeah, by time you could recruit archers of sherwood, they where so far from the frontline that by time you got them you don´t need them anymore).

 

 

Simpler Risk map would work. I remember Rome 1 has captured my imagination with governors and generals getting all this retinue and traits so my best general was not just 10 stars guy but promoted captain who became gay and scholar during campaign in Greece. It was probably too interesting and fun to play so they replaced it with sending trade ships to anchor icons and researching tiny icons.

 

They know everybody plays for battles. Anybody who plays for strategy quickly becomes disappointed and departs to Paradox land. 

 

Yes and no.

 

In the earlier games that worked. But in that style simple armies positions in campaign map didn´t matter at all, because all you do is drop stacks in province, don´t matter much from where they came even the map is the same. In the current 3d mode (despite AI struggle sometimes), where and when battle are fought matter as it determines the actual battlefield, in fact, back there (medieval I/shogun I) if two armies attack you and you had a single one there was nothing you could do, you can´t, like you could in the new mode, trying to delay one and fight the other, draw them to a place you could fight and maybe win.

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I wouldn't be very happy with any of these approaches. I love the 3D model campaign maps that CA is making, even if the corridors and cities are a distortion of the real geography.  But more than that, to me war is also about maneuvering and conquering, and yes, while the battles are the exciting crescendos, the campaign map -- with its valleys and deserts, rivers, roads, and mountains -- provides the whole music score.  If you think about the great campaigns of world history, getting there is half the fun -- and in this respect and others the military campaigns of Paradox Land are found to be greatly lacking .

 

Yes I'm the person who raised the problem of the Campaign AI to begin with, but let me try to justify it.  I'm fairly confident that Creative Assembly, if it wants and its SEGA lords allow, is capable of better CAI programming and better play testing before release.  For now I'm OK with giving the AI cheats or giving it corridors on the map if they're necessary to guide challenging AI behavior. I believe that one of the reasons Shogun 2's campaigns worked better is because the CAI was more defensive, it kept its regions  well guarded and it didn't risk everything in one battle or one naval expedition (to nowhere?).  I know CA tried to change the formula a bit in Rome 2, to have fewer, more consequential battles.  But it didn't work very well because the CAI wandered off to who-knows-where, leaving it's lands vacant for the player to steamroll through.

 

It really comes down to finding a better balance, and to give the CAI a reasonable set of objectives, including not giving up the homeland without a big fight.

 

Yes, we are a long way from being able from being able to simulate in 3D the Grand Armee's maneuvering on the roads of 19th Century Europe or Hannibal Crossing the Alps, or Jackson in the Valley, but we're going to get there in the not to distant future I'm sure of it.

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Yes, we are a long way from being able from being able to simulate in 3D the Grand Armee's maneuvering on the roads of 19th Century Europe or Hannibal Crossing the Alps, or Jackson in the Valley, but we're going to get there in the not to distant future I'm sure of it.

 

We're perfectly capable of simulating all of this for a very long time. It doesn't happen not because of performance or creative difficulties but just cause people don't want it. Those who want deep simulations wouldn't notice if, say, War in the East had any sort of 3D visualization. Those who wants nice battles are content with Total War model that hadn't increased sizes of anything since Rome 1 - if you exclude giant empty Empire map.

 

And in TW series all those manuevers do not work because movement and turn system is from something like Heroes of Might and Magic but maps are not as structured as in those kind of games (basically there's not much point in manuevering if enemy has enough movement points to appear from fog of war, walk past your army and capture an empty city). They've changed it in Empire by saying that armies are really huge so you can't move past it and so now their maps are functionally much smaller and more linear than they look so not much maneuvering again.

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I agree with you, ilitarist, about how maps actually ends up working but also agree with Gorm that even this kind of janky strategy game context (or really good RPG style of Warhammer fantasy variants) is way better than not having anything.

 

About the army size though, just want to point out that armies are huge defensively and are still pinpoint tiny offensively... which for the most part just means hostile entities are huge but friendlies are tiny so you can 'stack' them in the map.  Which would be irrelevant if CA allowed people to stack armies with more than 20 units...

 

Personally I think something of EU or Civ style of strategy game is too much, but maybe something on the line of RTK11 would be perfect and much better fit for TW games than what TW games have now.  RTK11 had a good mix of 'narrow corrider' to give meaning to locations but then also had open fields in between where you could exercise battle maneuvering.  Also the strategy layer was like, character focused and simplified version of CiV scenario.  Just lite enough to be accompanied by TW style tactical battle, but just heavy enough to be interesting on its own.

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I went back and listened to the Rome 2 episode - it was hilariously damning.  Angry Joe's review was good too.  However, for a pure dismantling of the game on release, it has to be: 

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I emailed the show asking them to cover Attila because I thought their coverage of Rome 2 was accurate. I listened to the Attila episode and I have to say that I'm surprised how positive they were about it. Don't get me wrong Attila is better than Rome 2, but Rome 2 was horrific. It took a year of constant patching to get it into a release state.

 

I get the feeling that the show hosts didn't play Attila long enough to realize all the problems it has. It has a lot of serious issues that haven't been addressed. There have only been 3 small patches for the game since release. They were quick to sell DLC, but they haven't properly supported the game with much needed fixes let alone adding any new features or mechanics. The multiplayer is completely dead. The game appears to have been basically abandoned. I could list all of the problems the game has, but you can just go on the official Support subforum and see the thousands of reported bugs that haven't been addressed. I myself have stopped playing because I got tired of running into bugs or things that needed to be adjusted. I honestly don't think CA does any quality control on their Total War games.

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I'd agree.  Although it is an improvement on R2, I think I'd still rather play R2 for the period and scope.  Attila is pretty good but I don't think it's a great game at all.  

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