Does Attila always end up failing in your game?

Always fails.

But I've read in another subforum that with Attila you go for an early conquest (preferably manipulating diplomacy to get the least penalty), an then switch to another victory condition (around the time your UA and UU start falling off).

GWashington said:

Yeah, I don't like when AIs declare war just to raze cities, so I turn city razing off. Cause it's really weird and unrealistic when you see a huge blob of land suddenly go vacant in the 20th/21st century.

Click to expand...

You should read up on the Germans' plans to depopulate the Ukraine and western Russia.

The Huns are accurate to real life then. They didn't stay as major force for too long. I wish other civ's were more accurate when the AI plays them. Hiawatha is always the king of the world from beginning till the end (unless I stop him) in my games, although that's as much to do with his UA and UB, not just his AI.

He's doing OK in my current game. He'd be doing better if he had attacked Babylon or Denmark instead of me about 100 turns ago. He's really useful for when I want a wonderspammer dead without having to build an army. He spends all his hammers on units and takes the diplo hits, guarantees me Nebby won't build anything ever again, and it only cost me 3 gpt.

Smokeybear said:

He suffers from the same terminal disease as Monty and Ghengis- early aggression causing focus on military instead of science/culture, resulting in small, weak, poorly-improved cities that massively slow him down past the first part of the game. Shaka has an advantage over those others because of his better military bonuses and impis, but he still is rarely a factor after the industrial age, when he just becomes expansion fodder for the strong civs. Impis are great, until they have to face off against riflemen. His situation may be extended if he has good early successes against weak neighbors early on, but I've never seen him be any real danger by later-game.

Click to expand...

I was at war with Shaka in one game recently, mainly as an observer rather than a participant, and though he was (a little) behind in tech, he was remarkably good about upgrading his impi to rifles when the opportunity arose (I saw them physically upgrade on several occasions; he wasn't just building new units). He remained the dominant civ on his continent the entire game, including a late game war against Russia (which I instigated by bribery) where he took three Russian cities including Petersburg (in one turn, I think it must have been a peace deal), and later nuked Moscow for good measure.

Attila's a whole different proposition - I've only seen him do moderately well when playing peacefully, and then he's essentially irrelevant. In G&K I was astonished on the rare occasions I came across him and found him to be score leader. His Achilles' heel relative to other warmongers is that the AI just can't handle battering rams - it still insists on thinking they're spearmen, using them to guard settlers or to try and defend Hun cities, and will preferentially move them through dense terrain close to enemy cities to get the cover bonus, when rams need the most open ground possible to get close. A similar flaw is probably why I've rarely seen Ashurbanipal do anything (in one recent game I saw him apparently trying to take out a barb camp with a siege tower).

Roll on the day when Civ VI hopefully adds a 'melee siege' path to the standard tech tree rather than having these as occasional unique units; then perhaps the effort will be put in to program the AI how to use them.

One time I played a Scrambled Africa map on emperor, and Attila conquered India, Indonesia, and The Shoshone early on. He stayed a major civ until I took him down in the industrial era, and let me tell you, that was one amazing war.

Atilla for me is usually the same. he builds up a massive army and in mid game you can make him hated by all the other civs. do that, and eventually they will spend most of their game trying to take out atilla, who with so many units, usually won't give a peace deal surrendering cities, and they can spend hundreds of turns trying to get into that capital.

yes. he almost always fails. Unless he catches me off guard early in the game.


Here's a question about the Huns. What is the value of one of their special abilities... to be able to name cities with the names from other civs? I have not played as the Huns yet myself to see the effect.

Fanny Brice said:

Here's a question about the Huns. What is the value of one of their special abilities... to be able to name cities with the names from other civs? I have not played as the Huns yet myself to see the effect.

Click to expand...

It has no gameplay value at all. It's merely for 'flavor'.

King William I said:

That strikes me as odd. The first game I played as Venice, Shaka went crazy and took over his entire continent, and launched frequent wars with the civs on my continent well into the Modern era. There would have been a full scale world war if he hadn't switched to Freedom and turned friendly at the last moment.

Click to expand...

I think Shaka gets a pass as his UA keeps his maintenance costs lower. It's a rare day when I see Shaka losing money (and therefore science), but I see it happen to the other warmongers all the damn time.

Fanny Brice said:

yes. he almost always fails. Unless he catches me off guard early in the game.


Here's a question about the Huns. What is the value of one of their special abilities... to be able to name cities with the names from other civs? I have not played as the Huns yet myself to see the effect.

Click to expand...

As Smokeybear mentioned it's intended for flavour, since there aren't any names that can be given to Hun cities (they didn't have any) and even their precise area of origin isn't well enough known that they could be given modern city names from, say, Turkmenistan. Although it has the incidental (very minor) effect that when playing against random civs you will often get some idea of who civs you haven't yet met are, since the city names are always taken from the lists of civs in the current game.

When G&K was released the thematic explanation given was that these were meant to be minor settlements belonging to civs in the game that had yet to grow into cities - so for instance the Hunnic city of Caracol would have been a minor Maya settlement that was overrun by the Huns before it could develop into a Maya city.

Of course there are numerous conceptual problems with this explanation in terms of the way Civ works - cities don't grow from prior settlements, they're founded from scratch by settlers. That Maya settlement could be on the other side of the ocean long before they develop sailing. etc. etc.

qemist said:

You should read up on the Germans' plans to depopulate the Ukraine and western Russia.

Click to expand...

Like I said in a later post, I wouldn't mind city razing if you kept the territory gained from the conquered city. If the Germans would've depopulated those places, I'm sure they still would have kept the territory.

Not as bad as he used be to but this has the core of the problem.

Smokeybear said:

He suffers from the same terminal disease as Monty and Ghengis- early aggression causing focus on military instead of science/culture, resulting in small, weak, poorly-improved cities that massively slow him down past the first part of the game. Shaka has an advantage over those others because of his better military bonuses and impis, but he still is rarely a factor after the industrial age, when he just becomes expansion fodder for the strong civs. Impis are great, until they have to face off against riflemen. His situation may be extended if he has good early successes against weak neighbors early on, but I've never seen him be any real danger by later-game.

Click to expand...

Attila after the patch seems much more likely to survive until the later days though his exuberant attitude towards conquest isn't gonna make him win popularity contests. However, unlike before he can be a scary sight on one's borders before pikemen.
Monte generally does a bit better while Shaka might steamroll without breaking sweat.
Before Shaka the only formidable military opponent was GA boosted Persian pikemen but impis are way worse.
Genghis is by far the saddest case of the pack. Unlike the others he's keen on conquering way before he has the military to do it so he ends up taking a CS or two before he gets gangbanged off the map - if he'd the patience to wait until keshiks he might have a chance but as it is now, he's wiped off before T100 and something really should be done with that.

Grendeldef said:

Before Shaka the only formidable military opponent was GA boosted Persian pikemen but impis are way worse.

Click to expand...

Not the only one, unless you never had a problem with Landsknecht spam. A swarm mentality by an AI whose default mode for everyone other than Germany is the carpet of doom is pretty tough to beat.

PhilBowles said:

Not the only one, unless you never had a problem with Landsknecht spam. A swarm mentality by an AI whose default mode for everyone other than Germany is the carpet of doom is pretty tough to beat.

Click to expand...

Perhaps nitpicking here but that's not exactly the same issue. Carpet of doom might be scary with a number of different units but landesknecht as a single unit weren't something to be scared of while a GA pikeman was/is a beast and late 60s early 70s it's opposition usually are well inferior CBs & spearmen.

He always have a fearful military in the early ages;
but his military fails to fruit, he never end up conquering anything;
He always end up as a underdeveloped civ in the later ages

Grendeldef said:

Attila after the patch seems much more likely to survive until the later days though his exuberant attitude towards conquest isn't gonna make him win popularity contests. However, unlike before he can be a scary sight on one's borders before pikemen.

Click to expand...

It really makes me wonder why the devs added Attila and some other early warmongers to the game and then made the warmonger penalty so incredibly severe. Especially Attila's whole playstyle revolves around very-very early game domination and taking advantage ASAP. Now, if you decide to use your AH, Horse Archers+battle rams advantage, you are basically guaranteed to be in a never-ending war with the swarm of AI. Because The Huns have such early UU, they need to start dominating right off the start, so you won't even have the time to set up your diplomatic cliques.

The Huns usually do as well as Babylon.

GWashington said:

Like I said in a later post, I wouldn't mind city razing if you kept the territory gained from the conquered city. If the Germans would've depopulated those places, I'm sure they still would have kept the territory.

Click to expand...

I guess what the Germans had planned was something like partial razing.

In the game I just finished, on Immortal difficulty, Atilla first had wiped away Spain, who had conquered Persia. After that, Attila came for me with his huge army of Knights crossbows and some trebuchets. I had caught up science-wise and was leading in production with a decent empire with 5 cities. Most of my cities were on a hill and I had just castles up but got wiped out in short time anyways, without a chance. I guess I should have payed much more attention to that Hunnic threat. The Atilla AI can manage an empire, it seems.

At any rate, what bothers me about the Huns is that the Hunnic Horse Archer and Battering ram (a scary unit with 300% bonus vs cities so early on and cover to boot) come so early. It doesn't seem to make sense historically. Both units are very strong and come in the Ancient Era while the Huns were having their heydays around 450AD. Attila next to you on higher difficulties is praying he doesn't attack you. Moving the Horse Archer to Horseback Riding or Construction and the Battering Ram to Mathematics or so, would make more sense to me.