A new late antiquity scenario brought to you by Zerco, official jester of Aspar, Aetius and Attila!
For beginners here’s a small guide to the basics of nomadic empire’s building, because in game hints and scouts do not hold enough space apparently…
Pastures
When you see a terrain like this you can push argalis and/or send goats (3 in total) and at the cost of 100 wood a pasture’s foundation will appear. You can’t build pastures during winter.
Argalis respawn naturally in spring but goats need to be purchased in the market in case you can’t find them in the wild or by stealing them to other tribes. Goats and argalis have an hero aura to make them distinguishable. You can’t hunt argalis.
Villagers
Depending on the difficulty you’re playing it will be harder to get villagers. On standard and moderate you can train them in the town center at a higher cost, on hard you need to find a market where to buy them. Because of this it could be a better idea to kidnap enemy’s villagers rather than creating your own ones…
Kidnap mechanic
Balamber has a lasso he can use to capture villagers but remember to set your stance on neutral (it is by default) so you can individually catch each of them by simply tell Balamber to attack one. Click on the villager card or use the ungarrison button in Balamber’s UI to free the space to capture another one. If Balamber already has a villager captured and cross a wounded one, he/she will disappear but not added to the captured ones so be sure to always have enough space to kidnap them.
Horses
To make a horseman you need a man and a horse, who would have said? To make a scout for example you need to train a militia first and possess a “light” kind of horse (horse A, standard light brown), for a cavalry archer you need an archer and a horse for archers (horse B, smaller light brown), for a steppe lancer you need a spearman and again a light horse and so on. You’ll find different combinations leading to different units, specially if you manage to subdue other tribes giving you access to their special units. Given you can’t upgrade your foot units it is essential to switch to cavalry.
You can find horses in the wild, near your enemies stables or by breeding them at the Stall (folwark). Purebreed horses (Hun horse, with an hero sura) are very rare but you can purchase them, if you have a market, at a gold cost. All your horses will automatically run to your town center, be sure to defend them.
Mobile buildings
You have 4 mobile buildings: your initial town center (the only one you can find and that you cannot lose), your barracks, archery ranges, stables and the chief’s yurts. The town center can be simply packed and unpacked while the others can be deleted once to spawn a cart and again delete the cart to lay the building’s foundation.
Huns do not have access to most common buildings like Farms, Lumber camps, Mining camps, Fish traps, Markets, Castles, Stone walls/gates, Universities and, until you won’t capture one of them, neither Docks nor Siege workshops. However you can build mule carts to collect resources and train unique units at the chief’s yurt. In the Stall you can also research unique techs.
Seasonal cycle
The scenario starts in summer. Pastures can be built in all seasons except winter when you’ll have to find alternative sources of food like hunting, herding or stealing farms and fish traps (you won’t be able to rebuild them once expired though).
From the mill you can breed your own herdables (except goats) when you can’t find them in nature. All animals cost wood. In winter you can store them in mills (like Gurjaras do) to passively generate some food.
Hunting dogs
If you submit the Alans you’ll be able to train hunting dogs from mills to increase the work rate of hunters nearby and defend them. These units are affected by infantry upgrades, can charge the enemy but they are weak to everything.
Heroes
You have three heroes for this scenario: Balamber (Attila), Basiq (Girgen Khan) and Kursich (Bleda). Of these only Balamber need to survive, the other two will respawn at your TC once defeated. All the heroes can obtain experience in different ways and gain their own ability and units/stats to boost through their aura.
Balamber
Experience: through killed units
Stat gained: attack speed, HP, armor
Aura: scouts, tarkans, cavalry Flailmen (Konniks), cavalry axemen (jarls)
Stat boost: pierce armour
Unique ability: armour strip
Basiq
Experience: through pastures built
Stat gained: range, HP, armor
Aura: cavalry archers, kipchaks, magundai, khans
Stat boost: attack speed
Unique ability: volley of arrows
Kursich
Experience: through villagers kidnapped
Stat gained: range, movement speed, HP, armor
Aura: steppe lancers, Sarmatian raiders (keshiks), Sogdian Cataphracts, Sabir (cuman) chiefs
Stat boost: melee armour
Unique ability: ignore armour
Other tips
Remember you can change your diplomatic stance whenever you want. Your units won’t attack transport ships on neutral (default stance to prevent your units from killing villagers)!
It’s not a good idea to provoke both the Romans and the Persians at the same time, try to deal with them and their allies one at a time. Romans will react if you attack the Bosporus kingdom (blue) or Lazica (red), Persians will react if you attack Caucasian Albans (orange) and destroy their fortress in the area.
The strongest imperial units in the chief’s yurt have limited training. These are the khans, sabir chiefs and cavalry axemen (all limited to 4). Sogdian Cataphracts instead are not limited.
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