What's wrong with Attila the Huns?

[briengles]

When people call him "the worst" do they mean he is OP, or that he is a bad civ?
I tried him out, and saw nothing wrong with him.

[gimmethegepgun]

He is basically the worst neighbor to have right at the beginning of the game because he's enormously overpowered very early game. A single battering ram can take a city at that point in the game. And if his warrior gets an upgrade goodie hut, it becomes a ram.

He does have quite a poor UA later in the game, just getting 1 production from pastures (pretty much straight up eclipsed by Russia's) but his ability to take a monstrous lead by obliterating people with his ridiculous rams helps him out big time.

[Staber13857]

Watch an AI only world campaign and you'll understand. Someone near atila almost always goes down, on any difficulty. In my recent game on empeor, it's turn 175 and there are 3 civs left on a standard map. I took out one and attila killed the other four.

[retjero]

An A.I. Attila is not very dangerous to a neighboring human opponent that takes advantage of his weakness. Battering rams can only attack cities, not military units. And the A.I. builds roughly two rams per other military unit. Go out to meet Attila with a force 1/2 his size and you will clean up. Just target his non-rams first.

[zxcvbob]

Target the non-rams (especially the horse archers) and block the rams so they can't get to your city.

[briengles]

Well, he doesn't sound that bad now

[dcain3456]

Originally posted by Staber13857:

Watch an AI only world campaign and you'll understand.

Expand on this idea. How would one do this?

[Dipsta]

Originally posted by dcain3456:

Originally posted by Staber13857:

Watch an AI only world campaign and you'll understand.

Expand on this idea. How would one do this?

Watch BASTAR gaming on youtuve, and you will understand

[Staber13857]

Originally posted by dcain3456:

Originally posted by Staber13857:

Watch an AI only world campaign and you'll understand.

Expand on this idea. How would one do this?

Go on youtube or twitch and find one. An example of what I'm talking about would be this video.
The commentator is a bit over energetic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h96z8gxk37k

Or you could use the in game editor and make your own if you really wanted to

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Brad:

Well, he doesn't sound that bad now

I think one of the bigger problems with him as a neighbor is that you have to actually make a few military units to keep the rams away, unlike nearly everyone else where a tiny skeleton force of an archer and a swordsman can keep a city alive themselves against the AI.

[zxcvbob]

When I've had Attila spawn right next to me, he throws everything he has into the initial assault. If you survive that, you can push back and take his cities. I lost one pike, he lost everything. If he had attacked me just a few sooner I would have been in trouble.

[Matthew]

Originally posted by retjero:

An A.I. Attila is not very dangerous to a neighboring human opponent that takes advantage of his weakness.

This is all true, but it should be noted that the human player still needs to be aware it is a possibility. A surprise DoW and Hunnic horde jumping out of fog of war onto one of your cities is still insta-death. Even if you have the military, if it is not in place he can rush down a city before you can target down the rams.

Compare to someone like Monty, who sacrifices warriors on city walls so half his forces are already dead by the time you move into position.

Out of all the "surrpise DoW" attacks possible, Attila is certainly the worst/best in that regard.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Matthew:

Out of all the "surrpise DoW" attacks possible, Attila is certainly the worst/best in that regard.

Assyria is just as bad. Since, you know, they ALSO have the battering ram, they just named it something else.

[Matthew]

I suppose that is true. Though it is strange, I rarely get Assyria to show up in my games. I keep them on random and I seem to get Attila every. single. game. I know, confirmation bias and all that, but I sometimes wonder if random truly is random.

[Damsteri]

The Huns are definately a very powerful civ. Rams are incredibly strong under human players, like in one of my games where I capture an enemy capital in 9 turns. I have done it once even faster, in just 7 turns.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=379394049
But... I think that horse archers are eventually better units. You get range and/or logistics promotion for them quite fast because of a free promotion and they are unstoppable after that. I usually can clear my continent without problems within 50 to 100 turns on standard speed when using horse archers and some horsemen with them (rams at the beginning).

The Huns under AI command are also very deadly... so they can be considered as a "bad opponent". The Huns can kill even an experienced player when they spam those horse-free horse archers which are hard to kill if there are plenty of them, especially on flat terrain.

[Taran Alvein]

I personally find that the Battering Rams kind of suck. I tried a rush with them once and it just didn't work. The whole battle got bogged down to levelling up my horse archers until they could whittle the city down, and by that point I had catapults. Maybe it was the difficulty I was playing on, I don't know. But I find them to be useless.