I have a long history with the Total War series that goes back to the first title in the franchise, Shogun: Total War, back when the games were still titled “X: Total War” instead of “Total War: X.” They are slow, ponderous giants with two separate modes: grand strategy, which takes place on an overland map in turn-based mode; and real-time battles. While it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for the franchise (Empire was a bit of a bust and the first Rome was incredibly buggy), the last few iterations have managed to deliver good, solid gameplay and then some.
The latest addition to Total War is named after Attila the Hun, the plunderer of Europe and Asia Minor, establishing the game’s setting as during the fall of the Roman Empire and the dawn of the Dark Ages. While it looks quite similar to Total War: Rome II, it’s an entirely different beast that, thanks to the vast differences between its factions, plays and feels like its own game. In previous installments, factions offered different units, buildings, and appearances, but followed the same basic elements–they were civilized to a fault. The same can’t be said for the barbarian factions in Attila.
The factions in Attila, particularly the Huns, define what it means to have “Total War,” for the Huns simply have no concept of civilized diplomacy. Everything exists as an extension of their military conquest–a means to an end. When you play as the Huns, you won’t be able to fortify, settle, or ambush cities–only raze and plunder them. This encourages players to embrace the Huns and any other Barbarian faction as a roving menace, constantly at war with the rest of the planet.
What’s also interesting with Atilla is the implementation of climate change. Some old men in Florida aren’t going to be particularly pleased by its inclusion, but history tells of how the hunter-gatherer populations of the nomadic tribes were forced to move southward due to climate change as the north grew gradually colder. Their migration forced them to invade their neighbors to the south, displacing many. These barbarian factions can form into hordes, giving them numerous growth bonuses for migrating and settling new lands, but you lose your building and camp improvements each time you do so. Slightly more civilized factions–the Franks and Saxons–receive bonuses for converting conquered lands but aren’t quite as apt at migrating.
To contend with the onslaught of the Dark Ages are three remaining civilized factions–the Western Roman Empire, who are rich but scarcely militarized and are thus ripe for invasion; the Eastern Roman Empire, militarized to a fault but surrounded by aggressors; and the Sassanids, whose only threats are the Eastern Romans and the Huns. I found the Western Romans the most difficult to play, as each section of my territory was whittled down and conquered by barbarians.
The game accurately reflects (based on as much as I’ve read Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, anyway) the zeitgeist of the Dark Ages. Cities are razed more often than they are simply conquered, and rich, fertile lands are often left desolate wastes after an army marches through them. With the invasion of the Huns, you’ll find entire parts of the map aflame. This actually happened.
The titular character appears in the game, and you’ll get to familiarize yourself with Attila as you play as the Huns. The game reveals much of his story not just through a semi-randomized sequence of events, but through cutscenes as well–casting Attila as the destroyer of the civilized world.
As with Attila and his family, every other character in the game too has a family structure that’s a part of the new family system, which adds quite a bit of complexity to the grand strategy portion of the game. The system weaves a narrative into the otherwise war-filled yet story-less proceedings, giving the player ambitions to achieve and goals to accomplish. It’s a lot better than what Civilization: Beyond Earth did with its goal-driven narrative system, and a lot more personal.
Overall, Total War: Attila is a solid improvement over its predecessors, and a worthy entry in the long-running series that will no doubt be expanded upon with future entries (one of which has been rumored to be a take on Warhammer Fantasy). Total War: Attila is highly refined and is without a doubt the pinnacle of the Total War series, which can only get better in the years to come.
