Interesting split between the Gamespot and Polygon reviews. They’re both positive, but don’t seem to agree on the difficulty.
Gamespot:
If there were any doubts, let it be known that Total War: Attila retains the series’ depth of strategic offerings. But for the uninitiated and leery, it’s entirely possible to play par golf on normal difficulty armed only with an understanding of the series’ now-familiar unit rock-paper-scissors. Swords beat spears, spears beat cavalry, cavalry beat swords. And generally speaking, everyone hates having arrows lobbed at their heads.
On the world map, the opponent empire AI seems cautious by nature, rarely pressing an offensive. Enemies are not sleepwalking, though–if they catch you trying to send an ambush force deep into their empire they’ll crush it with overpowering force. Other than that, though, they seem mostly content to maintain their border wherever it lies at the time.
Polygon:
Total War: Attila is challenging, even at low levels of difficulty. Neighbors are always in a high dudgeon, agitated and fearful. Borders are disrespected. Raiding armies are a regular occurrence. If you are the sort of strategy player who enjoys steadily increasing your borders while empowering your people with ever greater levels of happiness and wealth, you’re in for a nasty surprise.
Playing as a large empire is a nightmare. Playing as a small one is hard graft. Playing as a horde takes patience and skill. This, in case I am not being clear, is a difficult game.
after spending all of last night listening to this excellent podcast (audiobook?) while leisurely exploring the stars in Elite, I really can’t wait to sink my teeth into the new total war game. And I never finished my campaign in the previous one! and the one before that!
I can really recommend anyone intending to play Atilla to listen to the above linked audiobook. It is an in-depth look at the germanic tribes and their history. Well-told and erudite. He goes into matters of economy and culture and makes a very interesting point about the nature of christianity.
You’re just seeing the difference between Polygon and Gamespot there. The ‘indie-fication’ of Polygon. I watched their interview about the Alienware Alpha when looking up things about it online, and it was painful. “Tell me about this RAM stuff!” they exclaimed, to faces of surpressed disbelief.
Between the dozen or more patches since release and the major improvements added when Emperor Edition went live, Rome 2 is now that game it should have been at release. If you enjoy the Total War series, Rome 2 at $15 is a fantastic deal. I would highly recommend the Caesar in Gaul and Hannibal at the Gates DLC Campaigns as well, they are $3.74 each with the sale, and both are very good (as is the freebie Augustus campaign that comes with Emperor Edition). Also on sale are the various culture and unit packs. The only unit pack I found entertaining was the Beasts of War, but you can live without all of them easily enough. For culture packs, at $1.99 they are a good deal. I like Pirates and Raiders personally, but it’s more of a decision about what types of units you like and your play style. Take a look at each one and see what appeals to you. For around $25 you could nab the base game, both the above mentioned campaigns, a unit pack and a culture pack. I would pass on the Sparta campaign for now, it’s only 66% off versus 75%, and reviews paint it as the weakest of the campaigns.
Agreed. Rome 2 is immensely good now. It launched in a frankly awful state, but CA has done their work and hammered it into a solid experience. It’s still go the rough edges that any Total War game has (AI strategic turns can sometimes take a long time, the AI still doesn’t handle sieges very well, odd glitches still exist) but they seem trivial compared to the stuff that does work.
So I awoke this morning fully intending to get TW:Warhammer today but then I started thinking - what itch will it scratch that I can’t scratch by playing something in my library? If I want high-fantasy tactical warfare I’ve got AoW 3 (not Warhammer, but I don’t really care about that, plus the battles are turn-based). For the TW experience I have the barely-touched Attila, but it just hasn’t grabbed me. Then I remembered reading that TW:Rome 2 had finally been patched into a pretty good condition, so I’m installing it as I write this.
My only question at this point is if any one can recommend any “indispensable” mods.
There’s two I can’t play the game without. The first is a data typos mod, that just aims to fix obvious typos in the game data files. This fixes unit stats for the most part, but some garrison sizes and costs.
Second, the last patch made resources really stupid - there is no public order or food issue at all once you capture a wine and grain province, for instance. This reverts the resources back to the previous patch, where they gave an advantage but didn’t outright break the game mechanics.
Can you thumbnail what makes the DLC campaigns good? I really liked how they gave each of the Attila DLC factions special personal touches with the mission chains and some distinct gameplay mechanics and starting situations. Is that the sort of stuff in the Rome 2 DLC?
They are specific, important historical eras, wars and scenarios. I for one REALLY enjoyed Caesar in Gaul, since it was a lot more streamlined and focused as an experience, with more clearly defined goals. It helps if you find the historical period interesting of course, but mostly its different scenarios where you can either play a major player, or a minor player in the grand scheme of things.
There are a few mission chains, but nothing as well done as in Attila though.
The critical piece of the DLC for Rome 2 that “fixes” them from the GC is they dealt w/ the core flaw of 1 year per turn. The damage this does to the GC permeates the whole game. It wrecks all immersion for me in the GC as the generals and agents die in droves, so often in fact I don’t even know or care what their names are as their skill sets are not groomed and developed to bring to bear later in the campaign when you need them, instead they die over and over before they’re ready. Not that anyone was listening, but we told CA this in their main game forum long before the game released.
Interestingly I guess maybe they were sort of listening because all the DLC have multiple turns per year, as a result you not only get seasonal impact on the campaign map you get agents and generals who survive long enough for you to properly develop them and put them to full use.
As a result, in my view all the DLC in Rome 2 are quite entertaining and truly for me save Rome 2.
Yes, CIG is fantastic, it’s so much like Shogun 2 at the point of realm divide when you play it as Caesar because all the barbarians pretty much hate you from the start and you have to fight tooth and nail to take Gaul over. By the time I controlled even just like 20 provinces I had stacks coming at me from every direction constantly.
Observation in general about my love of DLC for Rome 2, I’m specifically talking about the ones that add a campaign, I don’t care about adding cultures, that never changes much in my experience.
So specifically the Rome 2 DLC I recommend are: Imperator Augustus, Wrath of Sparta, Caesar in Gaul and Hannibal at the Gates.
Wrath of Sparta is almost a giant mod ala Charlemagne. It replaces religion with ‘culture’ divisions of classical Greece; Ionian, Dorian, Aoelian and Achaean, which give certain diplomatic affinities.
