Hurrah! Wanted Rise of Islam but… that’s not going to happen… ever, now.
You should check periodically over at the Rally Point Podcast. http://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Rally_Podcast While they are still basically ads you can see the strength of their historic research and their enthusiasm for the period. They’re sure to release an episode on the expansion in the near future. And the 15 years of Total War episode is a neat insider peak into the sausage factory.
I’m hesitant to get excited for this expansion. Partly because both of the recent Total War games (Rome 2, Attila) left me kind of cold, although they were both big improvements over the initial release quality of Rome2. But the main reason I’m not terribly excited about a game that covers a period in history that I really enjoy, is that it seems the gradual trend in Total War games has been to make the pursuit of total war much more time consuming and difficult. THis one seems no exception with a feature like this:
The fewer wars you wage the better your people will respond, as frequent and drawn out conflict will rapidly damage morale and your armies’ integrity.
I know that sounds appealing to some people, and I’m happy for them, but at this point I’ll probably fire up the original Medieval again where I can fight a bunch of battles every turn and my peasants don’t whine about it unless I’m using them as arrow fodder. Total War has traditionally been about the battles, but lately it is focusing on the campaign, which I think is a detriment to the series’ biggest strength.
While I hear you, and I have found Attila a bit of a headache at times when the Huns appear to have an endless supply of magic stacks harassing me and the upkeep/civil disorder/corruption/sanitation balance often appears more trouble than fun, I’ve also enjoyed the balancing act some of these type of mechanics have forced upon the player over the years in the various TW works. Take MTW2, the Pope was a constant headache, yet I didn’t mind it, keeping cardinals on side and bribing the Pope occasionally and calling a crusade now and again, all of that was great fun while at the same time limiting the players ability to pursue all out war all the time.
So perhaps it’s just a partial failure of good game mechanic implementation in more recent works?
I didn’t mind the pope in MTW2. You could always just say “screw you, pope!” and fight as much as you wanted anyway and deal with the multiple fronts you were going to eventually develop. This description for the Attila expansion sounds like they’re actually going to penalize you for fighting too much in a Total War game by making your armies worse, and possibly (might be reading too much into it) severely slowing down your economy if you fight too often.
haha sounds good. I hope it is a good game. Like I think I mentioned upthread, it is a historical period I really enjoy. It would only take a couple of “oh yeah, there is bloody fighting everywhere!” recommendations to get me to jump in. In the meantime I’ll probably just give Medieval 1 another spin.
I wish vanilla had slightly slower combat in battles. Sigh. I know I can mod it but it always feels funny. I am looking forward to this addon though ! Age of Romance! Medieval turned from ancient! Who knows? It could be the Fall of Samuari of this iteration! without ironclads of course.
it really, really isn’t. Its not even debatable. (Edit: sorry, I thought this was turn times, my apologies)
Anyways - Today the Charlemagne DLC is out, and Im very excited about it. It should basically take the game into Medieval: Total war, which is a great thing.
I hope that the map is somewhat smaller, so that turn times aren’t as ridiculous as in standard Attila.
No worries! I agree the turn times are terrible in Attila. It is on my SSD with a pretty great computer, and they still take forever. It’s actually the biggest thing that puts me off playing - Rome 2 turns are actually quite quick, so I tend to play that instead.
Let me know how Charlemagne is. I quite like the setting. But I’m certainly not paying asking price for the DLC when I know it will have some problems and it will certainly be on a significant sale in the not-too-distant future.
I’m really pumped for this one as I really like this period of history and there are a lot of different factions I want to play as. What’s got me really excited is the fact that turn times should be much more manageable now. Like other people here, I play Rome 2 more than Attila simply because the turn times are much more manageable. Anyway, I can’t wait to play as Mercia when I get home this evening. I’ve been watching Let’s Plays on YouTube with users tying out the Lombards and Asturias, two other factions I eventually want to try. Then there are the Vikings and attempting to create Daneland…
I havent played more than a few hours, but this is easily the best DLC yet. First off, the factions are all very distinct, and all have various strengths and weaknesses - This means Danes for instance have no horses. You can of course hire mercenaries, or conquer lands where horsemen are available, but its a nice distinction that adds flavor and strategy to the game.
The new unit stylized unit cards are awesome, as are the new building icons.
The smaller map, and fewer countries is unfortunately what the game needed, in terms of performance. Turn times are quick, and its a lot smoother to play, and I’m loving it a lot so far.
So far, it feels a lot like Medieval 2, for good and bad - thats also of course since I’ve mainly played Mercia (England), which is what I always did there, but its really fun so far, and the Atilla engine additions (Stories, more detailed families, leaders and so forth) is a great enhancement.
I recommend it heartily so far!
ps- Danes rule!
edit: I have to say, I want to play ALL the different factions, except for Charlemagne. This is a personal pet peeve of course, but I really dislike large empires to start out with, and the franks are just too big for me to enjoy. The rest ? Bring them on!
I had to do a reinstall last night to get the new FLC and this DLC to show up, so that slowed my jumping into the game, but I expect to spend some time this weekend in the new campaign and will circle back with impressions of it.
They’ve stripped down much of the complicated mechanics; Charlemagne is a relatively simpler game. The Sanitation malus is almost completely removed from most building upgrades, and if you never built trade ports you’ll almost never have sanitation problems. There is a new War Exhaustion mechanic but i’m not even sure where to find that one yet (i only played for a few minutes last night). It’s interesting that even the icons feel stripped down. The first time i saw the settlement icon i thought it looked like some bad mod graphics compared to the incredibly rich and evocative icons of Attila. There are far fewer units as well. They really seem to be going for an “end of the Dark Ages” look and feel. The overly complex hierarchies of units available to factions are also stripped down to a much simpler and traditional (for medieval style games) minimum.
Only a couple hours of play so far, began this first campaign as Charlemagne, I like it quite a lot so far, I suspect a good piece of that is because of a couple things:
Like the time period. And as Enidigm mentioned, they’ve trimmed down the unit roster, and I also think this helps.
Every DLC for R2 was a smaller affair, so is this. For my tastes these end up being tighter and more compelling engagements that are just more entertaining than the rather ponderous GCs CA is making these days. It’s also I suspect part of the reason S2 was such a success, focused on an island nation it also was a tighter more disciplined execution.
Anyway, it’s still early in the campaign, but I’m enjoying it, but take that with a grain of salt, I’m already a fan of the TW series anyway, so I’m biased.
Slavic Nations Culture Pack announced. Includes the Anteans, Sclavenians and Venedians.
Victory for the Slavic Nations requires the player to build Wonders from the new Legendary building chain. The scale of the victory (minor/regular/divine) and type of victory (military/cultural) depends upon the Wonder built, and players can continue to build different Wonders to achieve greater scales of victory.
Also, the Make War Not Love event starts on Feb 14th.
