CA can’t decide if they’re a strategy game maker or a cinematic battle maker. Are they making dry but deep games like EU or flashy games harking back to famous movie battles? Are they making open world games or deterministic narrative driven games?
I mean honestly, they don’t seem to know themselves. That’s the schizophrenic nature of Rome 2’s sometimes half baked design.
The really cool thing about Attila to me is that they’re bringing back the family trees and dynasties after inexplicably cutting them out of Rome 2.
The really cool thing about Atilla are the graphics for scorching an entire province!
You guys made a damn fine effort. Damn fine. The lack of other meaty strategy games in Q1 made it hopeless, though. At least you have someone to post impressions?
So - who else is excited for today? I know I am - can’t wait to get home from work and get some playtime into this! Family dynasties are back, and the weather should play a much larger role than it used to.
I do wonder if I can overcome my normal aversion to starting with a huge empire, and play as one of the Roman Empires.
i aint buying this. not for now at least. no money and i really need to finish my rome2 grand campaigns as well as the hannibal and caesar ones i bought. so no atilla for me for now.
Its usually prudent to wait a bit when CA’s games releases, so I don’t blame you :-)
I do want to though. Especially after listening to this guy talking dark ages. I found his site after he was mentioned by bruce on the three moves ahead podcast for a couple of times and checked him out. definately worth a listen and really gets you in the mood for this timeframe.
I bought this last night because of the Youtube Let’s Plays on the subject. Indeed i began already to compose a review on what i had seen; Total War: Remembrances of Things Past. The incredible aesthetic sense of declining into the mists of history and of civilization going to the weeds is carried by the artistic style shown.
OTOH, this morning when i checked my computer, not only had Atilla not been preloaded , my vanilla Rome 2 had dissapeared from my Steam account.
Yeah, this is really good. Performance is way lower than Rome 2 though, be warned about that. I find my poor laptop to be struggling, while having absolutely no issues with Rome 2. Performance is usually improved a LOT in these games over a period of time, so I’m not worried.
Family tree is back - with a vengeance. A times the UI seems a tad…crazy all over the place, but the game is really what Rome 2 should have been, so far.
I’ve only played some of the prologue but want to try the main game now instead. Oh, and the music is bloody brilliant, as always!
So, starting out in the old Macedonian countries, now occupied by the Eastern Roman Empire, my Visigoths, two armies of nomads, travelled towards the west. Towards warmer lands, towards revenge on the Romans who betrayed them, and towards Rome itself - The Eternal City. Being hounded by Eastern Roman Empire armies, I pillaged and sacked my way across the old world, liberating several cities back to their old master to slow down the armies on my heels. After resting for a while near one such ally, and upgrading my travelling hordes tent-city, I set out for my final goal, Rome.
The Eastern Roman Empire was coming apart - not only because of me, and the other germanic tribes, but also the Hordes of the Huns, who burned and destroyed everything in its path.
Finally, after 6 years of nomadic life, we came upon Rome herself. The Western Roman Empire was also in shambles, having overextended its armies, being destroyed by former allies, and so, the city itself lay unguarded. My two armies attacked, and won easily over the garrison. After some debate, we decided that our travelling days were over, and we were now the owners of Rome, beginning a new Era and a new Empire!
Yeah, I’m having a lot of fun with this. The two new mechanics, extreme weather and travelling as a horde (You can abandon your cities and travel as a horde) makes for some interesting gameplay mechanics.
I do have to warn people though, that my turns take quite some time to finish, and the game is very gpu intensive. Hopefully, they will optimize the heck out of the game like they did with Rome 2.
Performance in battles is not great. I’m getting about 30fps in battles. In the benchmark battle I get an average of 32.6fps.
In Rome 2, I got 60fps in battles, with the same in the benchmark.
I don’t think Attila is doing anything different graphically than Rome 2, so I think CA has some optimizing to do.
This is from the official forums
Be aware that Maximum detail in Attila can’t be compared to maximum detail in Rome II. Maximum detail in Attila is more detailed and thus a lot more demanding.
So, I guess it stands to reason that all graphics are more detailed, and thus more demanding. Rome 2 is after all two years old by now :-)
Part of the issue - and this is peeve of mine - is CA has chosen to name the graphical options differently between the two games. It’s the same engine. If you want to add more bells and whistles, then add another option in the category pulldowns, or add another category. Don’t have the same category (like “tree detail”) and then name the pulldowns differently. Most Rome 2 players are going to think the similar-sounding pulldown options should perform the same. If that’s not true, then make that clear with obvious differences.
Edit: Plus, I’ve done the comparison and the lowest setting in Attila looks significantly worse than the medium-high setting in Rome 2, (as it should) yet gets much worse performance. That shouldn’t be happening.
Runs and looks fine for me at “Quality” setting, except for Unit Detail, which is Max Quality.
Biggest improvement so far is the UI. It’s fantastic.
Not feeling the factions, though. Mostly half naked men covered in dirt.
I spent an hour just perusing the factions as well last night. You need to find a narrative to wrap a campaign around in your head. I tend to like eastern empires and are thinking hard about the ERE or Sassanids but I think I’ll try one of the migrating tribes after Razgon’s nice description.
Can you play the earlier campaign (as roman factions) with the new mechanics (like families?)
Family dynamics are not part of Rome 2.
Attila and Rome 2 are separate games, no back porting.
Even when Rome 2 was first released and everybody was having issues, my PC ran it just fine. I just started up Attila for the first time and even the intro cinematic was choppy. What the heck.
Time to update my driver, I guess?