With Venice now in, should the Huns have been done differently?

[Yzman]

I was thinking. Instead of the lame thing they have right now where they use other civ's city names, why not have a UA similar to Venice but focused on war?

Maybe something like

Scourge of God: May not build settlers. Get a 30% bonus when attacking cities.

Simple yet I feel it would go a long way. It avoids the awkwardness of naming they have right now and gives them a bonus for the penalty of not being able to settle their own cities.

What do you think?

 

[Altisma]

So you would make Huns bottom tier? I can understand the no settlers thing, but your forgetting BNW completely broke early game warfare making their early units useless since you can't build up a army without -16 gold and 0 science.

 

[Hruberen]

I actually really like the Huns as they are now, especially flavorwise, as you get to see city names you would have never has otherwise seen that sound really cool, along with their war flavors, you can't be too sure whether they settled a city, or if they conquered and annexed it.

Also when playing as them, you can know which civilizations your facing, if you know city lists well enough.

 

[Yzman]

I'm not saying early warfare is perfect. I'm saying the flavor makes a lot more sense for them than what they currently have. Also, the huns don't need a lot of units for early war. A battering ram and a unit or 2 will take a city quite quickly. Give them some other bonus if needed, perhaps a unit maintenance bonus.

 

[Polisurgist]

So you would make Huns bottom tier? I can understand the no settlers thing, but your forgetting BNW completely broke early game warfare making their early units useless since you can't build up a army without -16 gold and 0 science.

Negative income isn't as much of a problem when you're plundering left and right from burning cities. I don't think I've ever played a Huns game where I had a positive income pre-Renaissance, and it works just fine.

 

[NukeAJS]

Two battering rams and 4 horse archers shouldn't break the bank. That's -6 GPT.

 

[Altisma]

I'm not saying early warfare is perfect. I'm saying the flavor makes a lot more sense for them than what they currently have. Also, the huns don't need a lot of units for early war. A battering ram and a unit or 2 will take a city quite quickly. Give them some other bonus if needed, perhaps a unit maintenance bonus.

Play multiplayer, if a Hun player comes at me with only a battering ram its a easy war for me. Once you play against players who can actually give you a challenge you realize how pointless and broken early warfare is just because of the penalties of gold being too low. You can't win wars with a small army unless its a complete stomp. The gold also isn't just a problem for domination, but for wide empires as well.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I think Huns should not have been designed as Venice has. and I'll tell you the reason

Domination should never be the reason for expansion, yes, technically it is an important part, but Venice can expand peacefully by puppeting city states. Huns don't. So they would only be able to expand by war, which in theory prevents them from Diplomatic Victory, but it also makes them a specific civilization, just because Korea has a science boost doens't mean they have to focus on scientifict victory, they can achieve any victory as most of their Uniques focus on differnt things.. or whatever you get my point. Huns with only being able to settle Attila's Court would make them TOO specific for a game like Civ 5.

 

[FrostK]

Attila is ok. And it is very hard to defend vs human-Attila, you can hardly do something with composites against horse archers. And your cities are down very fast.

Play multiplayer, if a Hun player comes at me with only a battering ram its a easy war for me.

If ram comes to you on turn 10 (upgraded from ruins) - it is indeed easy war, your capital is down on turn 12.

 

[Yzman]

Play multiplayer, if a Hun player comes at me with only a battering ram its a easy war for me. Once you play against players who can actually give you a challenge you realize how pointless and broken early warfare is just because of the penalties of gold being too low. You can't win wars with a small army unless its a complete stomp. The gold also isn't just a problem for domination, but for wide empires as well.

The game is not balanced around multiplayer and I am not considering it for this discussion.

 

[Yzman]

I think Huns should not have been designed as Venice has. and I'll tell you the reason

Domination should never be the reason for expansion, yes, technically it is an important part, but Venice can expand peacefully by puppeting city states. Huns don't. So they would only be able to expand by war, which in theory prevents them from Diplomatic Victory, but it also makes them a specific civilization, just because Korea has a science boost doens't mean they have to focus on scientifict victory, they can achieve any victory as most of their Uniques focus on differnt things.. or whatever you get my point. Huns with only being able to settle Attila's Court would make them TOO specific for a game like Civ 5.

How would they be any more specific than Venice or the Zulu currently are?

Venice if it wants to expand is forced to war or to gobble up city states that may benefit it more as allies.

Zulu is designed for war, that is it. It has no other redeeming qualities.

France is designed for culture victory, the UA literally only helps with that.

I could go on. Certain civs are designed for certain play styles. You could certainly still win by another means than domination once you get your first few cities. They could be CS even. A civ more catered to one play style does not make it bad.

 

[Altisma]

The game is not balanced around multiplayer and I am not considering it for this discussion.

The game isn't balanced for anything but you can't just ignore what you don't like.

 

[Monado]

I despise Venice's unique (In)ability. The one major city, puppet empire is a terrible design I feel. I would hate to see a change to the Huns, and have to mod them out with Venice as well.

That being said, your idea, changing them to be a one city military type civ makes much more sense than the "pick a random city name" part of the UA. I just hope not to see it happen.

 

[poom3619]

I despise Venice's unique (In)ability. The one major city, puppet empire is a terrible design I feel. I would hate to see a change to the Huns, and have to mod them out with Venice as well.

That being said, your idea, changing them to be a one city military type civ makes much more sense than the "pick a random city name" part of the UA. I just hope not to see it happen.

Okay. Now it's suddenly looks better.

How would they be any more specific than Venice or the Zulu currently are?

Venice if it wants to expand is forced to war or to gobble up city states that may benefit it more as allies.

Zulu is designed for war, that is it. It has no other redeeming qualities.

France is designed for culture victory, the UA literally only helps with that.

I could go on. Certain civs are designed for certain play styles. You could certainly still win by another means than domination once you get your first few cities. They could be CS even. A civ more catered to one play style does not make it bad.

Mmm. I think we have enough pseudo-forced OCC civ. One is enough.

Actually, No one mind if you play wide India or OCC Rome or play Egypt without building wonder or Siam, Austria, Venice, Greece in map with no city-state, or Byzantium without founding a religion or peaceful Zulu, Mongol, China, Japan, Germany, Assyria or warmongering Sweden, Morocco, Portugal, Venice or un"spicy" Indonesia.

In short, I think that limiting player by your idea is not a good thing. If your Hun is going to expand. They have to go to war, While even Venice can do this in peaceful way. It's way too specific IMO. (Pro-civ)

 

[kaspergm]

So you would make Huns bottom tier? I can understand the no settlers thing, but your forgetting BNW completely broke early game warfare making their early units useless since you can't build up a army without -16 gold and 0 science.

One could get around the Gold issue. Huns unique ability could be something like: "Can't train settlers, don't pay any unit upkeep when in war with another major civ."

 

[arand86]

One could get around the Gold issue. Huns unique ability could be something like: "Can't train settlers, don't pay any unit upkeep when in war with another major civ."

That's actually a great idea. They'd be completely warmonger in, warmonger out.

Although the huns are already my second favorite warmonger civ to play as (only to the insane keshiks of Mongolia) I think a change on the lines of this would make it more interesting:

UA:
Cannot train settlers. No unit upkeep when at war with another major civ. Raze cities at double speed. Cities regain half HP upon capture. + 1 production for pastures


That way, when you conquer a city, it'll be easier to hold, and easier to keep multiple cities.

 

[FeiLing]

The new Huns:
-Battering Rams and Horse Archers stay.
-City naming thing
-New UA: {reworked German UA}:
Cannot build settlers.
Can convert barbarian camps to Hun Outposts (which may later be turned into regular cities).
6 units are maintenance free.

A Hun Outpost is kind of a little village that upon being created claims the 6 tiles around it (inner ring) for the Hunnish empire. It doesn't produce any buildings and neither has a city combat strength (but gives the defending unit a 25% bonus). [And when an enemy walks into an empty Hun Outpost it gets destroyed like a barb camp]. Instead the Hun Outpost produces Hun barbarian units at the same rate a barb camp would (ignoring Raging Barbarians game option).

Resources below the Outpost are not automatically improved. When you reach the Classical Era Barbarian spawn rate for them is reduced by 66%. After reaching the Medieval Era they stop producing Barbarian Units, but from now on you can upgrade them to regular cities at will or also choose to abandon them in which case your nearest city gains +1 population (while the claimed tiles remain your tiles)).

I'd also suggest to have all of their cities be called ''Attila's Something'' rather than stealing other civs city names.

If that isn't a unique and interesting play style, I don't know. And after the initial early barb warring (and 'preparing' new expansions for the medieval era) you're free to go down any path in the game you want (as you haven't necessarily pissed off every enemy civ diplomatically for the rest of the game by conquering too many of their cities).


PS: I thought about -100% unit cost maintenance in Ancient and -50% in Classical Era, but I think the sudden raise will cause huge problems for a lot of players. Same problem applies to the idea to have them get -100% maintenance costs during war. So I believe the x free units is an elegant way to prevent these huge up and downs in the gold income. This also all lines up perfectly for a true Honor SP civ (6 free units without maintenance for the Military Caste and the barb bonus obviously too).

 

[shattergod]

In essence Attila becomes the barbarians. =)

 

[PhilBowles]

I was thinking. Instead of the lame thing they have right now where they use other civ's city names, why not have a UA similar to Venice but focused on war?

Maybe something like

Scourge of God: May not build settlers. Get a 30% bonus when attacking cities.

Simple yet I feel it would go a long way. It avoids the awkwardness of naming they have right now and gives them a bonus for the penalty of not being able to settle their own cities.

What do you think?

The city attack bonus is already part of the battering ram; unlike Assyria, the Huns can have two siege units - one ranged, one melee - simultaneously. As for settling, I like the intent of the Hun UA (these represent smaller settlements the Huns have overrun) but it doesn't work well in practice (the Maya had an early settlement on the other side of the world?) and above all I dislike the fact that the names are taken from civs in the present game (so you know who else is in play before meeting them).

The key thing I've learned from Venice is that removing the settler option is not nearly as disadvantageous as it seems - since you invariably have other ways of obtaining cities (and warmongers might anyway just go with a capital and focus on production, and conquer everything else), you're basically freeing up production and food to use on other things and still getting most of the advantages of settlement.

 

[primordial stew]

How about this UA: "Attila's Confederation", earn "great settler" points through combat (cannot build settlers). - early game combat is essential, but later not so much. The reflects Attila's preference for alliances over territory, but that likely would have faded over time to the normal path of any other civ. Another way would be a UU settler that cannot be built until.. Civil Service. It is cheaper to build, and starts with 3 pop, and a monument.

Also gets: +40 influence with military CS on meeting them, and military CS gift twice as often. This reflects the very significant component of the "Hunnic" army that was composed of Goths, Sciri, Gepids, etc..