Attila: Total War

[Jarhead0331]

Not to be disrespectful, perhaps its a language barrier, but most one-liner posts of Xtiaan don't make much sense to me.
It would be nice to communicate using more than one sentence. :D 

I don't think its a language barrier. The guy is posting out of the Midwestern United States.

[Nefaro]

Revisited some Total War this week.   

Mostly Rome 2 because it's my favorite period and I've been on another classical warfare kick lately.  But I've been browsing Mods for both that and Attila lately.


Any notable Mods you guys have played for either?

The Divide Et Impera mod for Rome 2 looks pretty good, for one of those general overhaul types that doesn't stray too far from the base gameplay but makes small changes to much of it.

I also noticed a different smaller mod which adds specific cultural Manpower restrictions to recruitment in each geographical area.  This means that you can't just conquer some foreign place and start pumping out a bunch of your own culture's troops there after building conversion.  I suppose it implements foreign auxiliary recruitment and the manpower numbers replenish a certain amount every turn based on % of Culture and some other factor regarding population/income.  I'm intrigued but haven't tried yet.

As for Attila mods, I think someone finally added one that specifically removes the Imperium diplo penalty gain from researching stuff.  Should probably look up the one that allows you to continue recruiting non-upgraded unit types too.  A couple of the major  ::) points of Attila for me so hopefully there are proper working mods to fix 'em now.

[Gusington]

I've been using Radious' mods a lot lately, but my current campaign is vanilla.

[Gusington]

Jesus Tapdancing Christ between the civil wars, imperium penalties and traitors, my empire is buckling and falling apart...any advice for getting a grip on all these things? I may have to restart :/

[Nefaro]

Jesus Tapdancing Christ between the civil wars, imperium penalties and traitors, my empire is buckling and falling apart...any advice for getting a grip on all these things? I may have to restart :/

Which TW are you playing?  Attila?

I can give advice on Rome 2, or most of the others after a quick refresher.  But I haven't played Attila as much due to a couple sticky points (which may now have mod fixes, fortunately).

Part of the problems in Attila is the fact that researching techs makes everyone else increasingly hate you.  Your Imperium penalties go up, even if you're not expanding, as long as you're researching.  ::)  Yes.  You heard that correctly.  Researching better crop rotation or legal codes makes foreign powers downright loathe you!   ;D  This is a serious game design flaw and CA has stated they weren't going to bother changing it themselves.

The excuse given for such a terrible mechanic was that it helps "balance" the diplo hatred for Empires in comparison with wandering Hordes.  I'd almost guarantee they didn't implement a proper mechanic due to release date deadlines or something, and they just shoehorned in this stopgap.


In other words, if you're Researching stuff... everyone else will increasingly hate you in vanilla Attila.


As for revolts in recent TWs it's all about managing Public Order and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Culture.  Which, in Rome 2, requires PO & Culture buildings, and possibly Diplo characters if your Culture keeps getting pushed down in a province.  You'll need plenty extra food to put up such buildings (amongst others) so that is also part of the build-up.  This pretty much goes for Attila too.

One poorly done facet of Rome 2 was the faction "politics".  Just a bad CK2-wannabe mess.  Managing simple Influence/Senator numbers, or whatever they're called, is an enjoyment sucking pit of despair. 

If you leave any of the non-family leaders without an army or navy, they'll just spam your other Generals with Assassination attempts and other nonsense.  The assassinations almost always wound my generals and put them out of action for ~6 effing years.  So I tend to plant the more powerful non-family ones in a small garrison army in a backwater & let him rot.  I think that tends to keep them from spending points on Assassinations so often, for some reason.  Then, when my main generals inevitably die or get assassinated, and I have to hire a non-family general, I immediately spend the money and Influence to Adopt them if they're not too old.  This eventually knocks down your influence, so there doesn't seem to be a perfect way to go in the long run.  I think they pretty much wanna force you to fight a civil war eventually.    

Also - having to spend the empire's funds on every one of your little factional actions is a bit ridiculous too.  Makes you wonder where all these other non-family generals get their hordes of assassination money if you're having to spend such huge amounts from the treasury on each.   

I'll not mention the similarly CK2-wannabe random event nonsense in Rome 2.  Ugh.  May as well be choosing a straw every time to see if you get the short one. 

They obviously tried to inject their own CK2 style internal politics into these titles, and it turned out terrible.  There are probably mods to change or remove some of that stuff, but I keep gritting through the constant annoyances for some reason.


I've really only been using some graphical UI mods in most of my campaigns in Rome 2, attempting to play it as intended, but I'll probably give the DEI overhaul mod a try soon.

[Gusington]

Yeah it's Age of Charlemagne in Attila, vanilla. In addition to what you mentioned above there is also war weariness which negatively affects your faction, and it doesn't matter if you started the war or not. I'm sure there are other things going on underneath the hood too, and some that are different between Rome 2 and Age of Charlemagne...I'll have to look deeper. My Danes are the number 3 or 4 faction in the game world right now (we were number 2 only to Charlemagne until the civil wars began) and I am pretty sure success has something to do with these complications 🤕

[Toonces]

Man alive, this isn't your mom's Total War.

So I'm just now getting around to playing this as the Picts and I have no idea WTF I'm doing.  To be honest, I really don't like the new province mechanisms in the new Total Wars.  I prefer to select AI control and focus on the warfighting.  I have no idea what my strategy should be for building up my provinces.

This game has jumped the shark. 

[Sir Slash]

I never played as the Picts but as the Sassanids, it was best to have a mix of province types with as many of the different resources as possible. Of course nothing beats Gold. For that faction trade and commerce trumped the military needs which could always be filled-out quickly with lots of cheap troops.

[solops]

OK, someone please tell us WHAT mod kills the Attila diplomacy-research penalty...and a link would be super, too.

[Nefaro]

OK, someone please tell us WHAT mod kills the Attila diplomacy-research penalty...and a link would be super, too.

Ridiculous BS isn't it?


This mod says it removes the Imperium research penalty.  But I don't think it's possible to surgically do it that way.

AFAIK, the only way to mitigate it is to reduce or remove the Imperium penalty as a whole.  Which means not only the research penalties, but also the normal oldies related to empire size & such (which were just fine IMO before they f'd it up in Attila by adding research to it).

There are 4+ other mods that reduce or remove Imperium penalty overall.  I think the ones which reduce it are attempting to mitigate the additional research penalties without completely getting rid of all of it.



This mod lowers the Diplomatic penalty for it across the board.  May be the ideal way to go, although you'll still have other penalties going up due to research and all else.

[Nefaro]

Actually, the following one sounds promising at just getting rid of the Research imperium gain, and has been updated fairly recently:


http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=496609947

[Gusington]

I am playing as Aksum (Ethiopia) right now and it is a great campaign.

[Nefaro]

I am playing as Aksum (Ethiopia) right now and it is a great campaign.

Did every other faction in existence begin loathing you after you finished a few research nodes?

[Gusington]

No - I have that above mod installed :) And a few others for enhanced trade, etc.

[Sir Slash]

What's different about Aksum Gus? Who's your friends? Who's your enemies? What cool units do they have?