Attila: Total War - Charlemagne DLC?

[Sir Slash]

I think that's one of the new units in the game, the Westphalia Loin-Moistened Men-At-Arms. 

[Gusington]

Well now of course I am torn as to what to gwke this weekend...do I stay in the Victorian/Edwardian/Great War era or do I nose dive right into 8th century Westphalia?

A lot of forumites over at TWC complain about too many Germans but Westphalia looks like The Money.

[Philippe]

I'm going to wait six months for Chuckles to go on sale for half price.  That should also be enough time for any significant bugs to be worked out.

In the meantime, speaking of hot, bitchy girlfriends, there was a substantial Atilla download on Steam today.  Does any of that have anything to do with the base game ? 

Paradox always seems to update the base game with a patch whenever there's a new expansion.  Does Creative Assembly do something similar, or is this just new material that won't unlock until I pay for it (in six months when Chuckles goes on sale).

[AchillesLastStand]

I'm going to wait six months for Chuckles to go on sale for half price.  That should also be enough time for any significant bugs to be worked out.

In the meantime, speaking of hot, bitchy girlfriends, there was a substantial Atilla download on Steam today.  Does any of that have anything to do with the base game ? 

Paradox always seems to update the base game with a patch whenever there's a new expansion.  Does Creative Assembly do something similar, or is this just new material that won't unlock until I pay for it (in six months when Chuckles goes on sale).

Here ya go........

Total War: Attila – Age of Charlemagne FreeLC and Patch details

To complement Age Of Charlemagne, we're adding a free update to the ATTILA Grand Campaign that features a new free faction, The White Huns, an overhaul to the Alans unit roster, and a number of important balancing changes.



Contents
[hide] •1 Free LC
•2 Campaign Balancing
•3 Battle Balancing
•4 Known issues


Free LC

The White Huns

Sweeping down from the bleached slopes of the Hindu Kush mountains, the White Huns represent a Horde faction who start in a position to directly threaten the Sassanid Empire. Alongside a revised Hunnic unit roster featuring new units and the Hunnic cultural trait Scourge of God, they also enjoy a new Faction Trait, Scourge of The East.

Scourge of The East:
•Income +100% from sacking, looting and raiding
•Integrity +1 for every war being prosecuted
•Immune to desert attrition
•Morale +20% versus Eastern Empires


White Hun unit roster:

White Hun armies are an exotic and fearsome blend of Hunnic, Eastern and Gupta Indian fighting styles. As such, they offer an incontestable counter-argument to cavalry-heavy armies.

The White Hun roster features a mixture of existing Hunnic units, new White Hunnic units, and notable additions from the Persian unit roster.

New units:
•Kindred of The Sun: General's unit, Khanda swords, heavy precursor weapon, good armour.
•Xionite Spears: Heavy spear infantry, high missile block chance, precursor weapon.
•Yanda Spearmasters: Heavy spear infantry, heavy armour, large shield, low attack, rapid advance, precursor weapon.
•Khingila's Khandas: Khanda sword infantry, low attack, high block chance, medium armour, high melee defence, inexpensive.
•Guardians of the Hindu Kush: 2H axe infantry, good armour, excellent melee defence, precursor weapon.
•Hephtalite Chargers: Melee cavalry, high missile block chance, precursor weapon.
•Spet Xyon Archers: Elite bow cavalry, high attack, high spear damage, light mass.

Persian unit additions:
•Sogdian Warriors.
•Sogdian Camel Raiders.
•Indian Elephants.

Alans Unit Roster Overhaul With the removal of certain units, visual and stat tweaks to those that remain and a slew of new units, the Alans unit roster has changed in a number of significant ways. Firstly, it's no longer based on the Germanic core roster, and is unique in that the only infantry are melee infantry; crossbowmen, archers, spear and pike infantry have all been removed. There's a greater focus on cavalry overall, and the Alans can field some unique pure anti-cav focused cavalry, plus a monstrous new anti-infantry steamroller in the shape of the insanely expensive Sarmatian Cataphract Lancers.

New Alans Units:
•Alani Warriors: Aggressive melee infantry, medium armour, sword and large shield, frenzied advance.
•Alani Swordsmen: Defensive melee infantry, medium armour, sword and large shield.
•Sarmatian Band: Inexpensive basic melee infantry, sword and shield.
•Sarmatian Mounted Skirmishers: Skirmisher cavalry, Javelin and sword, low attack, high damage, ideal anti-missile/mopping up.
•Cavalry Raiders Cavalry: Skirmisher cavalry, Javelin and sword, low attack, high damage, ideal anti-missile/mopping up.
•Mounted Sword Raiders Cavalry: Skirmisher cavalry, Javelin and sword, low attack, high damage, ideal anti-missile/mopping up.
•Chosen Raiders Cavalry: Skirmisher cavalry, Javelin and sword, low attack, high damage, ideal anti-missile/mopping up.
•Mounted Bows: Inexpensive horse archers.
•Alani Horse Archers: Standard horse archers.
•Alani Cavalry Warriors: Spear-wielding basic melee cavalry.
•Alani Mounted Tribesmen: Unique anti-cav cavalry, flying wedge formation (bonus vs cav), medium mass, no charge bonus.
•Alani Mounted Veterans: Unique anti-cav cavalry, flying wedge formation (bonus vs cav), medium mass, no charge bonus.
•Alani Heavy Cataphracts: Excellent vs infantry, poor vs cav, v slow, high health and armour, small charge bonus.
•Sarmatian Shock Cavalry: Elite shock cavalry.
•Sarmatian Heavy Cavalry: Elite heavy cavalry.
•Sarmatian Cataphract Lancers: Extreme charge bonus, very high cost, frenzied charge, excellent armour, High health.
•Sarmatian Cataphract Archers: Very heavily armoured horse archers.

Campaign Balancing

Grand Campaign Balancing Changes Below is a list of balancing changes made to the Attila Grand Campaign:
•Reduced the chance of non-Hunnic factions razing settlements.
•Most Roman units now take 1 turn to recruit instead of two.
•Reduced Sassanid income bonus from Puppet States from 200% to 100%.
•Reduced base income for non-playable factions from 4000 a turn to 3000 a turn.
•Changed corruption formula so it is much more of a curve with less severe jumps, and now caps off at 60%.
•Reduced settlement and army zones-of-control.
•Fixed public order effects from food.

These changes have had a big cumulative effect on the balance of the campaign. With less razing by AI factions, more regions are owned and contested over the course of a campaign, and less razing also means less migration and public order problems so the Roman Empires survive for longer, though their lands are still fought over. The Roman Empires are further strengthened by the changes to their unit recruitment times.

In the East the reduction of the money the Sassanids are getting from their puppets, the reduction in the income of non-playable factions (which means a double hit in the money the Sassanids are making), and the introduction of the White Huns means the balance is completely different now. Faced with a threat from the East, a strong Eastern Roman Empire to the West, and with less cash, the Sassanids are no longer the completely dominant force they were.

The changes to corruption makes expanding your empire more rewarding, and also has an impact on the Western Roman Empire at the start of the campaign, as they have less corruption throughout their provinces and more income to use to be stronger.

Changing the zone of control size for armies and settlements frees up some more room for manoeuvre on the campaign map.

Public order effects from food weren't properly working before, so more attention must be paid to the impact of food shortages on public order in your provinces.

Battle Balancing

There are also some changes to the balancing of battles that apply across all campaigns:
•Increased the reload time of arrow towers so they fire less often.
•Reduced collision damage multiplier.
•Adjusted the flanking and outnumbered penalties in melee combat.

The change to arrow towers means lone units can more reliably capture and destroy arrow towers on their own, and more emphasis is placed on the defending force's strength.

Reducing the collision damage multiplier has a big impact on cavalry, making their charge bonus and other stats more important in combat which helps balance combat.

Tweaking the outnumbered and flanking factors in melee combat helps balance out some areas of combat, and certainly helps with some of the balancing aims we had for Age of Charlemagne.

Known issues
•Western European Christian nation voiceover occasionally refers to Rome when referencing themselves/their enemies.

[mikeck]

Maybe this will contain a fix to let me run it.

[Toonces]

I'm going to wait six months for Chuckles to go on sale for half price.  That should also be enough time for any significant bugs to be worked out.

Dude, we're only talking 15 clams here...not life-changing money.  ::)

[Gusington]

I'm downloading the patch and the DLC right now.

[undercovergeek]

pics, big boy

[Sir Slash]

And hot, juicy details.... please.

[SirAndrewD]

Got it myself. 

Decent so far.  The Carolingian starting situation is pretty crazy, lots of pressure from two fronts and not enough troops to deal with them.

Unit skins are awful, lots of direct 1:1 import of Attila levy unit skins over.   

Good map.  It lacks the East but it's zoomed in pretty heavily on the west. 

War weariness has been added, first time in a TW game.

I like the UI changes, very early medieval feel. 

I'll put more time in with it tomorrow.  Seems to be a big improvement over the Last Roman DLC, which I didn't really like.

It's a quicker, dirtier, more levy/militia oriented experience with shakier morale and a good emphasis on mercenaries and your general.  At least from first glance.  We'll see how it goes along.

[Gusington]

Only had a few minutes with it myself perusing each faction description and their goals. Gotta say each of these factions look like a lot of fun to play, including Westphalia, Avars, Umayyads and of course the Carolingians themselves.

[Philippe]

I'm going to wait six months for Chuckles to go on sale for half price.  That should also be enough time for any significant bugs to be worked out.

Dude, we're only talking 15 clams here...not life-changing money.  ::)

Yeah, but I'm a couple of thousand hours of gaming behind schedule, and don't see the point of jumping Chuckles to the front of the queue.  Besides, there's a Viking Conquest patch coming out in the next day or two, and that's going to eat up a lot of time.  Good thing Barbarossa is out of beta.

[mikeck]

Dammit. No luck...still get the "failed to initialize steam! Are you running steam?" Doesn't matter if I launch Attila or use the Rome launcher and self Attila from there. I even tried replacing the Attila launcher with a copied Rome 2 launcher...no dice. Looked at compatibility modes, running as admin..everything. Sucks because i really loved this game and one day, it just stopped working

[Gusington]

Didn't you come close to solving the issue a while back?

[Philippe]

I was sure my drivers were up to date.

They weren't.

Modern computers use an awful lot of drivers when they're running.  Human memory is quite fallible when it comes to remembering when you updated what.

What I try to do every three months is to install and run iobit's Driver Booster.  The program is free, it updates drivers I didn't even know I had, and it's easy to uninstal (have to uninstall it or they'll hit me with ads to buy their other products every time I boot up my computer).

The shocker came when I thought I had updated three months ago, and it turned out it was more like five or six.

There are a lot of weird (legit) things flying around in computer land these days: Microsoft's attempts to get me to convert to Windows 10 actually prevented a couple of programs from running for any length of time.  Everything cleared up when I read up on how to disable their very invasive adware  -- even when it wasn't running out in the open where I could see it it was gumming things up.

I mention all of this because it might have some bearing on the problems you're having. 

The hot bitchy girlfriend feels pretty resource intensive, and if your memory is only adequate, things like old drivers or Microsoft adware might be enough to bring your system to its knees.