I don't get it, instant battle resolution doesn't even hurt them, tried manually, but they just seem so freaking strong. If I see that those freaking huns declare war on me and the the hunnic horde arrives I basically quit because there's nothing that I can do.

Have a look at this story for some epic battles against the Huns. In essence you need some good walled city and quite a few archers. Once you destroy the main horde, go on the offensive and conquer what you can. Build more districts and garrisons to limit their targets for ransacking. Focus on archers behind the walls, they are dirt cheap.

Your only real limitation will be population growth to supply your army with enough soldiers to withstand the onslaught.

If you do not have good defensible position you will need to tech up and simply get better units over time while staying behind your walls.

I just don't like combat and violence (not here, not in civ). I always focus on the city building experience, like, always, I want to build great empire, so I always ignore wars. I use instant battle feature and usually it works apart some ridiculous cases where I'm stronger, but I loose, if I reload and use manual then I win, this frustrates me. But with huns... damn, there's literally nothing I can do

I guess that matches their history ;)

Best way is maybe to rush the huns before they rush you, maintain a strong army and check people who pick militarist culture in ancient era as those seems like prime suspects for becoming the huns in classical. Build a strong army early on, if you have 10 archers, build 10 more as if you survive the early game you will probably be able to win the game as the ai do a poorer job in the later game.

One thing about huns and cavalry in general is they cant cross fortifications except destroyed ones so by placing garrisons or building your city in such way you can keep a distance between the hunic hordes and your archers, you can slowly pick of the hordes with your archers.

Anyway if you play aggressively the screenshot below may tell what happens with the huns.

If you really don't like war and violence there is a peacefull mode in the difficulty settings that you can activate, this way the AI will be much more pacifist too !

Yep, if you do not like the combat and violence, on a New game set up there is a toggle for pacifist mode. It says the AI will never initiate combat or attack you. Thus you can enjoy a peaceful game. :)

The Huns are made to be a challenge and a refreshing one at that. It is up to you whether you want to have to deal with it or not by fine-tuning your settings before you start a new game.

While the huns are good at what they are supposed to do, keep in mind the huns are maybe not the best long term or fame gathering culture and if they attack you and you can't beat them, you can ask to surrender and become a vassal which may give you the time you need to build up and become free and conquer your former overlord.

Mass Horsemen help, generic unit of Classical Era can run them down and take the Hordes out rather reliably, if you don't have the horses for them, try garrisoning up and using Spearmen/Swordsmen or whatever else that has high CS and is available to you. Archers might be good in heavily garrisoned area. Also I don't think they can scale walls so use that to your advantage.

A good idea is not rushing into Hordes, but bunching up a bit away from them so they have to come to you and have less movement left to run away. Use terrain and get the high ground on them to minimise damage done by them, flank, body block, etc.

Turning off AI aggression wholesale shouldn't be the solution to the Huns.

I don't mind them being powerful but I really mind how long hordes stick around after their era is up. 32 unit swarms are not fun to pick off.

Also the "Tyrannical" AI attitude making every AI no matter their persona into a Nuclear Ghandhi midgame crisis which needs to be dealt with. Probably a comparison the devs don't want.

Surviving by playing out sieges is crippling production-wise.

When it happens the same way every game, it's boring.

It's made worse when they go Huns into Mongols. They snowball from military pressure as Huns on everyone else (notably other AIs which also can not resist hordes) then they get the double whammy of conquering an already weakened world.

Literally the only counter we find consistent is surviving through the Hunnic era, racing to get ahead, and selecting Mongols ourselves so we have the tools to fight back.

Maybe they would be better as expansionist instead of militant. It would fit neater with the whole (Not particularly well developed) horde settling mechanic they have but the units are clearly worth more as armies than outpost builders atm. 

It also help to learn the block enemy army trick so they can only use one unit in combat which you can kill and thus end the battle and repeat it to their whole army is destroyed and this will give you huge war score given you win many battles. To do this, you need several armies and some should be cavalry only as cavalry can ignore zone of control. The idea is to play one army behind the enemy army and 3 armies in the tiles in front of the enemy army. If you attack the enemy army with the army behind, they can't deploy more than one unit as your 3 armies will block their zone of deployment and because you as the attacker move first you can kill their unit before it is even their turn and thus destroy it and end the battle after which you can keep attacking them with the same army.

However this don't always work as the ai sometimes decide to attack one of your armies before you have move them into position.

Walls and archers, otherwise be aggressive and kill their armies one at the time by blocking their reinforcements.

In any case, you end up killing 200/300 hordes in a continuos war. It's not fun at all. Huns and mongols need to be nerfed, they spam way too many units making the game repetitive

Building walls is not very efficient. The huns will ransack your stuff, which will make them growing and make them able more threatening.

Archers can works against huns, if you are in a specific terrain.

But the real thing which works, it's the spearman-like emblematic hunic : Immortals and Hoplites.

Elephants too (Carthage) works well against huns.

Others units are not cost effective.

Thanks for the ideas. I hate the damn Huns as I have yet to find ways to counter them. These ideas may help.

There's one potentially very easy way to deal with the horde (could be a form of exploit though).

- Most of the time the horde is only composed of horse archers with a range of one;

- Those dudes cannot climb walls;

- So any archer that you place one tile away from the wall will be able to slowly kill the whole horde without being hit once.

- Even if the horde manages to kill the city defenders you can still win the battles if one archer is out of range.

Some simple ways to do that:

- Either create cities that are at least three tiles wide

- Or you can create a line of districts between two obstacles like mountains or water and then you can place your archer outside the city but untouchable.

stroibot wrote:

I just don't like combat and violence (not here, not in civ). I always focus on the city building experience, like, always, I want to build great empire, so I always ignore wars. I use instant battle feature and usually it works apart some ridiculous cases where I'm stronger, but I loose, if I reload and use manual then I win, this frustrates me. But with huns... damn, there's literally nothing I can do

You should be at an advantage then. The best defense against the Huns is to have a city with a clump of districts. Hunnic Horde units only have a range of 1 and can't scale walls, so if there are tiles in your city which are within the walls and don't touch any tiles that are outside of the walls, the Horde can't harm them. You just have to plan for this by making sure you have a clump of districts if you know you border an aggressive horde neighbor.

Undernier your ideas are good, but the problem is if I was a huns, I would simply Siege you in this case, and do nothing.

I don't need to conquer the city immediately, if I can shut down your production in a major city, it's very efficient.

Besides, laying siege to a city should not stop all production. It's too powerful. In case of a siege, we should be able to use the FIMSI from inside the city (the interior districts, not the annexes of course).

I've had the Nation Difficulty Hun Raid on my game and picking the Persians and having 4-5 immortals on very steep edges at my borders helped me to defend as I eliminated The Huns. I think during the first couple of phases if you have an agressive neighbour try to keep up several units with different traits to hold on choke points. Remember to use the terrain advantages as well as the flanking bonus of units. Tryin to have them placed in defend formation in woods.