Managed a minor victory in 425. Here's the geo-political situation at that time. Two Legions are poised in northwest Africa to take the two remaining factions there. Three Legions are in Frisia pressing the Geats and Danes. The remaining six Legions are arrayed along the Danube front against the Huns.



An interesting thing I noticed. Ever since about 402 when the Huns declared war on the WRE, they have single-mindedly pursued me. I've not noticed them attacking anyone else. All of their stacks are either in my territory, along my border or heading there. However, when I killed Attila and got the 'Attila the Dead' achievement, they completely changed gears. It was very apparent. They pulled all of their armies away from my front the very next turn and went off in other directions, and haven't attacked me since.

Congrats on the win DBond! Next time I play as the WRE, I'll try it on "normal". I've played the campaign on "easy" enough times now to have gotten a good handle on what to do and what not to do.


Even with all of the hundreds of hours I've put into the game, I've yet to get a legendary victory in any campaign. The most I've managed is the second level tier victory.

The problem I have with getting a legendary victory is that you basically have to conquer more than half of the playable map.

Thanks PM, that was alot of fun. I really like this game. It's more engaging for me than any other TW title. I've just completed three campaigns in it (Mercia. Saxons and WRE) and I still want to have another go. I'm torn between continuing with this one and taking over the world, and starting a new one. Frankly we're unstoppable at this point, especially with the Hun on the run. These games are always best when it all hangs in the balance. Thinking of the Lombards in AoC maybe.

What do you mean by Legendary victory? A victory on Legendary difficulty? Or do you mean Divine Triumph? In the screenshot above I think I already have enough land between myself and allies. But I think when I flipped religion I lost the ability to get that one? Cultural and Military would just be a matter of a few more techs, buildings and waiting for the required year to arrive.

Sorry, I meant "Divine Triumph". I forgot the proper term.

Try playing as Belisarius in the "Last Roman" DLC. If you want a really tough challenge, break with history and declare your independence from Justinian. That will bring the wrath of the Byzantine Empire down on you!

The Roman Expedition does seem interesting. I will have to try that at some point. From what I've read the events, politics and dilemmas make for a fun run. I've had enough Roman for a bit though I think. Rewriting history, defeating the Barbarians and Huns, and restoring the glory of Rome takes alot out of a guy

I noticed that throughout this run I did not earn interest? Why is that? The ERE makes bucketloads of interest don't they? My income in 425 was around 75,000 per turn, with a profit margin of 17k while maintaining eleven Legions and three Navies.. Over 20,000 in trade from ERE alone. Immigrants interestingly, accounted for about 10,000 income per turn, as well as -9 PO.

I know it's a game and has gaming conventions. But some of the stuff is sort of silly. For example, why does building an adobe kiln or whatever cause more unrest than the WRE's massive immigration?

Only the ERE has that faction perk of earning interest on unspent treasury funds.

Well that's not fair

Well, my campaign was going fairly well until I made what turned out to be a huge strategic mistake. During one of the turn sequences, a message popped up that the ERE was being attacked and it asked me if I wanted to join them in the war. It was probably some faction that I would never have to deal with, but instead of saying yes, I declined. Of course this broke my alliance, but not our trade agreement. I failed to go back and look at what this did to how the ERE felt about me.

Sometime between 3 to 5 truns turns later, they declared war on me which of course also killed our trade. In going back and looking a the diplomacy screen, I saw that I had gotten a negative 150 points for breaking our alliance. Crap! They are the number two power behind me, but since I'm mostly defending borders from the Gauls, Germanic faction, migrating tribes, and huge rebel armies that were created by my my own deserted provinces, I don't have the man power to fight on another front. I can see ERE ships of both navy and troop transports headed for my coasts and I have only one dinky navy which couldn't handle any of them. Basically, I have no armies in Iberia or the Italian peninsula and not much in North Africa, so all of this is open for invasion.

I hate to restart 27 turns into the game, but I may have too. At least it would allow me to avoid a couple other mistakes I made along the way.

Cheers

Oh man, yeah that's a tough one. I'd hate to restart too, but I think it might be best. You really need that trade income and a secure flank. In my run they didn't help me militarily, it was me saving them, but having them at war with you is not good. You'll have enough enemies and don't need your fellow Romans fighting you too. If you stick it out and pull it off that would be impressive

It must have been a defensive call they made to you right? I refused plenty of their requests to join wars, but defensive wars require it or the treaty breaks, If it were me I'd reload to a slightly earlier save.

So last night I wanted to try a new run. I spent some time in AoC considering the various factions. Almost did the Danes but they have no cavalry and I kinda need cav lol. Feeling uninspired I went back to the GC. I hadn't wanted to play as a horde, but thought what the hell, and started a new run as the Ostrogoths. The rightful heirs to Rome, but without a home at the mo. I worked out a plan to sack my way through the WRE to Spain or maybe as far as Carthage. We'd figure that out along the way.

And what fun it is. Having never played a horde, and having no clue what to do we set off to the west. I hired two spies to act as scouts to hopefully avoid getting trapped. The WRE was hunting me and so were the Huns. I saw that relations with the Huns were hostile and stagnant, since they don't start at war with the WRE. So I needed a way to get them ticking upwards. They are at war with the ERE though. So I got the Visigoths to pay me to join the war against the ERE. I was heading off in the opposite direction, so little danger to me.

A full stack led by Stilicho was spotted in western Pannonia so I detoured north, making friends and allies along the way. As I moved west I was continually in allied lands which helps. Moving through the Alans, Burgundia declared war. At this same time I noticed that my second stack had integrity issues. It was dropping fast and there would be a mutiny in two turns. I needed victories and quickly. At one point I was forced to use the decimate option which worked great, like +30 integrity which saved the day. These are the hard decisions a King has to make. Heavy is the head that wears the big hat

I sacked my way along the Baltic coast and turned south near Holstein. My goal was to have 50k in the bank in order to settle. We kept moving south, sacking through Gaul and skirmishing with WRE and rebel armies, while trying to evade their larger stacks. Was able to finally get a peace with the Huns who stopped chasing me. As we moved through Bohemia, I was shocked to see two Picts stacks in my wake. What are they doing here? They took advantage of my sacking and occupied one or two of my targets. Picts holding land in central Gaul 30 or 40 turns in! Madness.

We continued south and crossed the Pyrenees into Iberia. Iberia was a complete sh!t show. Rebels, WRE, Hispania all waging war on each other. And guess who? The Caledonians had a full stack there! What the hell? Seeing what the Picts and Caledonians were doing vindicated my decision in my WRE run to hold Brittania. If this had happened in that game I would have been screwed.

I sacked counter-clockwise though Iberia with the intention of settling in the southeast corner, Carthegenisis or somesuch. A little expansion from there would net me olives, wine, marble, iron and gold, plus one of the most defensible locations on the map, at least by land. Of course Iberia is ridiculously vulnerable to seaborne invasion so I'll need a navy or two.

Falling short of my goal with 35k I declared on Hispania and took my first city, and then the one with wine to the west. And with that, the Ostrogoths have a homeland. Now, to plot the conquest of Rome!

In my run as the eastern Goths I settled in Iberia (Cartho Nova) on turn 50. By turn 75 I hold all of Iberia except all of the northeastern province, plus Mauretania too which I took to get the timber resource. Iberia was such a war zone that I could take advantage and did so. I will finish taking the other two regions in Terraconisis or whatever it is and then turtle for a while. Did all of this with two stacks plus a half-stack navy, so I will need to build up my armed forces a bit, while developing the provinces and strengthening the economy.

Ostrogoths have a great roster and strong armies.My main concern now is that I have so many treaties and such that relations with the Huns are plummeting. I don't want them declaring on me and showing up on my doorstep. The WRE was gone by turn 75. In it's place is a mish-mash of all sorts of nations. Should be an interesting mid-game.

Without a doubt, my favorite horde to play as in Attila are the Huns.


If you want a really tough challenge try playing as the Alani.

Yeah what's the deal with the Huns? Like, what are their objectives? It must be insane to field an entire stack of uber cavalry. I didn't think I'd care for the horde mechanics, but when I tried one I found it fun. I was either lucky or good because my migration really could not have gone any better. I've read lots of posts about folks struggling with the Ostrogoths. But I think they just went straight in to the heart of the WRE and got stomped. My plan was to skirt it, maybe sack a few towns if the opportunity presented itself. I wanted to wait until WRE was swamped by multiple wars so that they couldn't place all of their attention upon me. And that's exactly how it played out. Stilicho's stack seemed to shadow me as I moved west, but he never did catch me.

As for my run, things have gone exactly according to plan. I've been turtling and building. Took Carthage but otherwise just playing defensively while I tech up. I need to return to Dalmatia for the victory objectives.

It's interesting, Caledonia. Picts and Ebdanians have divided Gaul up between themselves and hold mostly all of it. And they are all allied with one another.

The WRE re-emerged in Crete and Rhodes believe it or not. Not sure how that happens. Between them and ERE they hold a united front, but have been reduced to about a dozen regions between them, none in continental Europe that I can see. Visigoths hold Constantinople. Seubians hold Rome and conveniently I just went to war with them in support of ally Caledonia.

If I remember correctly you have to sack 35 settlements, raid something like 7,000 worth of talents and you have to play until 425 in order to get the minor victory. There's no settlement capture objective of course since you cannot settle as the Huns.

Thanks. Worth a go. I think if I did it I would sack then raze all of Europe. If I could.

What happened to F/O? Was looking forward to following along with your run. Maybe he was captured defending Ravenna or something?

Two questions that you could help with. One, where is the battle difficulty setting? I set the master difficulty to hard, which I assume makes the battle hard too, but I'd like to up the battle difficulty a bit or at least check what it's set to. How come I can't seem to find it?

Second, how do I move my troops in formation? I set them up with spears just so, javs on the flanks, melee in support, general in his place. Now I want to move these units forward but maintain exactly that formation but I guess I don't know how to do it. I remember in older TW titles I would just select all of the units and click somewhere in the distance and they would maintain the formation I set. I can't seem to do that in Attila.

In Attila, there is no separate battle AI difficulty for the campaigns. Only the individual historical and custom battles have it.

Concerning the formation question; what I do is select the entire army by dragging the selection box all around it and then assigning it a group number (for example doing CTRL 1). Then you assign one of the pre-made formations to the army. During the actual battle, you can move the entire army by then selecting "1" and using the up arrow to move forward.

Thanks, does that mean I am limited to a pre-set formation and not my 'custom' one? Or am I misunderstanding?

Oh no, you can use a custom formation. You're not limited to using the pre-made ones at all. I was just using it as an example. The TW games have always had some really good pre-made formations though for me so I've never actually created my own.

In RTS games, the AI has an obvious advantage with multi-tasking since an AI doesn't have to worry about mashing on a keyboard and mouse.

Yeah especially on Legendary when you cannot issue orders while paused. And you can't slow down time either.

There are lots of folks who claim this or that on Legendary difficulty but I wonder....

That sh!t's hard.

I like to be challenged in a game but not to the point of utter frustration and also knowing that the AI isn't truly intelligent but is just simply getting statistical cheats.

Hey guys,

I've been out of pocket for a few days. My AC went out last Monday and I found out I have to have a new evap coil for it. Wouldn't you know we got hit with a hot spell for September with temps running over 90 degrees for the last week. The replacement coil wasn't in stock locally, and just got in town this morning. Some friends of mine invited me to stay at their place to avoid the heat until the AC was back on at my house. I'm back home now and the AC repairmen are at work in the attic now. The warranty had just run out on my system too, so this is costing me an arm and a leg.

Anyway, I did restart my campaign as the WRE although I cheated a bit and started with turn 3. I got to about turn 35 before I quit. The one thing I'm having an issue with now that I never encountered with any other faction is low public order due to immigrants. It's hitting me with a negative 9 to my public order in almost every province. Luckily, I'm mostly at peace with everybody although the Huns have started raiding some. I'm having to spend a lot of time going back and trying to counter that sudden hit to public order everywhere. I thought it would begin to decline at some point, but after 6 more turns this morning, it hasn't changed a bit. Any clues how to counter this.

As far as controlling a large army.

I use a double line sorted preset formation to initially get my army close to how I want it, but then just move a few units around manually to achieve my final formation. At that point I select my entire army with Control/a and hit G two times in a row. After you first select a preset, you will see your group button with the symbol of a lock in it. However, the formation is not truly locked. It's only locked with the units fixed in relation to each other. They will still accordion on you if you try to move them with a right click drag.

So once you have your final formation set, with all selected--ungroup and then regroup again, which should lock them both in relation to each other and in locked rank and file. It doesn't hurt to hit the g key several time as long as you end with the group showing the padlock symbol. It's a bit hard to see since your initial army group will have a dark red button and the lock is only a bit lighter. For each successive group you form the button will have different colors and the lock is easier to see.

You can use right click drag to the final destination or use the arrow keys to do it manually and for finer adjustment. Once you've sent them on their way, you can hold the space bar down and their final destination will be highlighted.

If you then continue to hold the space bar down, you can now use the arrow keys to move the high lighted "ghost" army to change the final position or facing. You can run the ghost army all over the map and the real army will try to react to it, but in real time so you have time to get it right. Turning the facing of the "ghost" army requires you to both hold the space bar and a control key down while you use either the left or right arrow key to perform the turn.

I apologize if I'm telling you stuff that you already know, but that's how I go about controlling my armies as a whole.

Cheer