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

[PhilBowles]

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..

How about something inspired by the above:

Huns can't build Settlers. Hunnic Great General can found cities (with the name "[General]'s Court") but loses the Citadel ability. Huns start the game with a Warrior and a Great General (always called Attila - so the capital will be Attila's Court. Hun generals have their own name list). Rest of the UA as now.

Battering Ram as now.

Horse Archers require horses and lose Accuracy I, but never cost maintenance (they represent clansmen fighting due to loyalty).

 

[Yzman]

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.

I am not trying to disadvantage the Huns, so I have no issue with it not being a hindrance to them. I just think in terms of flavor, the Huns are really the civ that should have been a OCC with an emphasis on capturing other cities. I think had they implemented the Huns after they had implemented Venice or instead of Venice, they may have gone some route like this. It just makes too much sense with how The Huns are currently tried to be represented.

I like some of the other ideas thrown around in the topic too, with reduced unit maintenance or maybe even a certain amount of free units. Anything to make it so they are not playing as a handicap. I just feel that their UA was really meant to be represented as a civ that doesn't settle its own cities ( no city names) and takes others ( using their city names). If they had come around the time of Venice I feel they would have been done like this.

Feel free to post more ideas/criticisms.

 

[Yzman]

How about something inspired by the above:

Huns can't build Settlers. Hunnic Great General can found cities (with the name "[General]'s Court") but loses the Citadel ability. Huns start the game with a Warrior and a Great General (always called Attila - so the capital will be Attila's Court. Hun generals have their own name list). Rest of the UA as now.

Battering Ram as now.

Horse Archers require horses and lose Accuracy I, but never cost maintenance (they represent clansmen fighting due to loyalty).

This is also a very interesting twist. I like this idea as well.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Ok.... Similar to Venice (GM-> GG, CS->Barb)

UA: no settlers.. cannot puppet cities (annex or raze). Great Generals can convert Barb camps to cities. (liberty policy gives GG not settler). Remainder of UA same.

Horse Archers being no maintenance would then be the rest.

I like the idea of cities named "X's court"... they could use the std Great general list though. (Patton's court would be neat)

 

[maxp]

The developers said they code new UAs and try them out first to see if they're fun to play with.

Chances are thats why settlers are not usually blocked in UAs no matter what the bonuses are.

Venice only works because its so fun to steal a CS with a merchant of venice.

I dont think Atilla's UA is fun as it stands, but the same could be said about a bunch of civs, particularly warring ones.

 

[maxp]

Perhaps something like polands UA, except gifted military units, that would be a fun warmonger ability:

Each time you enter a new era receive 3 units of that period (even if that tech is not researched yet)

Not very historical though...

 

[maxp]

Or perhaps for Attila :

UA:
- Barbs never attack you
- Every settler built comes with a free nomad

UU1:
Nomad:
Cheap unit that is expended to form a barb camp (must be outside of all civs borders). Any pillaging done by these barbs earns you gold and any kills earn you culture.

UU2:
Battering Ram

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Workers build barb camps that generated units for you would be interesting

UI: hunnic camp... Consumes worker, must not be in or adjacent to any civs territory. Must not be adjacent to other camps. Will randomly spawn hunnic units if a military unit is in the camp. (50% defense). Provides access to resources if a military unit is in the camp.

 

[Matthew.]

They lost their opportunity when they created Assyria. Waiting on the AI to give you cities could be terrible on science, and getting a free tech would help smooth it out.

Giving them a 30% against cities and that is it would just turn them into another Mongolia without Keshiks. Horse archers are nice, but they are no Keshiks.

 

[Monado]

EDIT....wrong thread

 

[simonthesinner]

They should change Germanys UA to something to do with production and/ or culture, and Huns shoud have Germanys old UA plus something like venice, cannot build settlers, but found cities with great generals.

 

[Raptor Llama]

Personally when I play the Huns I never build settlers anyway (the old "Normal civ builds settlers huns build battering rams" spiel). So I thought maybe the Battering Ram could be changed to be a settler replacement technically (only get starting settler). Point being to get earlier access to the ram and access to the spearman at the cost of founding your own cities. Of course I don't know if that's balanced. It'd be like getting the ram from a ruin and taking the nearest city but without the luck factor.

But of course changing the ability would be great for the AI, since they do settle cities and as you said, it makes no sense whatsoever.

 

[kaspergm]

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.

Huns can't build Settlers. Hunnic Great General can found cities (with the name "[General]'s Court") but loses the Citadel ability. Huns start the game with a Warrior and a Great General (always called Attila - so the capital will be Attila's Court. Hun generals have their own name list). Rest of the UA as now.

Battering Ram as now.

Horse Archers require horses and lose Accuracy I, but never cost maintenance (they represent clansmen fighting due to loyalty).

UA: no settlers.. cannot puppet cities (annex or raze). Great Generals can convert Barb camps to cities. (liberty policy gives GG not settler). Remainder of UA same.

Horse Archers being no maintenance would then be the rest.

I like the idea of cities named "X's court"... they could use the std Great general list though. (Patton's court would be neat)

Some really interesting ideas going on in this thread. I do think PhilBowles idea about the Great Generals founding cities with the Generals name is great, both in terms of something that will actually work in game, and as a completely unique twist to the civ and something that fits the flavor 100 %.

EDIT > I even think most of it would be moddable through simple modding, so that could be fun testing.

 

[Deggial]

I agree that, with Venice showing the possibility of "outside-the-box"-civilizations, something more fancy would have been great for the Huns.
I like many of the proposals made so far.

This is what I proposed many month ago:

----

Huns are not able to build settlers. Instead of this, their early horsemen are able to establish temporary encampments.

Temporary encampments...
- can be converted into horsemen again
- are able to build units like cities
- have a (moderate) range attack like cities
- have a cultural border like cities with all consequences (harvest resources, fighting bonus with WW or SoPos)
- can build a limited set of buildings (barracks, palisades (=walls), monument); all buildings are lost, when converted into horsemen
- (optional) have a starting population related to the unit's experience
- are a promotion and can be passed on upgrade
- don't add to SoPo costs but...
- (optional) ...create some unhappiness (but less than "normal" cities)

----

I am aware, however, that there is a differene between Venice's "outside-the-box" play-style and my proposal:
Even if Venice plays quite different to a "standard" civ, the underlaying game mechanisms are already present in the game. 'Temporary encampments' would need totaly new (and exclusive) algorithms to be coded and tested. This comes with a high expense and is probably true for many of the proposals made above.