Atilla Total War Factions
Welcome to!A subreddit for all of those who love the Total War series. Thus far the campaign that has held my interest the longest has been the Langobards, so I'll write a quick bit about themThe first thing you need to do is decide if you're going to stay in Germania or migrate elsewhere. I'd honestly recommend migrating because even though it's pretty easy consolidating a foothold in Germania (your starting army can take out the Thuringians or the Alamans on the first turn), there are so many rivalries at play around you that you'll end up fighting wars on many fronts. Not to mention the Huns like to show up pretty early on and make a mess of things.If migrating, you can opt for the warmer climates though I chose to head up to Britain. Your faction trait (+10 morale vs. Armies of other religions) makes these early game fights much more manageable, especially if you've got a few clubmen to hold the line. Your faction trait means that whilst you're free to change religions if you want, there is a benefit to keeping one that is different from your neighbors.
Keep that in mind before converting. I'm 100 turns in and still Germanic Pagan because of this (well, and because it feels wrong to convert Godan's chosen people!).Campaigning in Britain is a good way to start for a number of reasons. Firstly you'll be plopping into a territory already embroiled in a miniature World War of their own. I went straight up to Scotland and took out the Picts, Caledonians and Eb.whateverinians first. By then the Romans had been kicked out by Britain and the Geats, letting me take on one small(ish) faction at a time until I had the isles completely under my control. I'm now beginning to expand back to mainland Europe, where my allies from the start (since I never had to destroy them for their province capital) the Alamans have formed a huge buffer state to the east protecting my new acquisitions from the Huns.
It's going very well and I'm looking ever southwards as the climate starts to wreck my provinces in Britain, forcing me to convert much of my industry to farmland to keep the provinces profitable.Now then, for your armies. Clubmen are key to your success. Langobard Clubmen are uniquely tanky for tier 1 melee units and can be virtually unbreakable if properly supported.
Use shieldwall whenever you can, it will give a bonus vs. Infantry that will help them do a bit of damage. That said, your damage will come from any of the many fear-inducing melee units you have access to - Young Wolves or Germanic Warbands at first, Godansmen later on.Army composition (early game): 6 Langobard Clubmen, 4 Young Wolves, 4 Germanic Hunters, 2 Germanic Spearmen, 2 Mounted Germanic Warbands, 1 Onager. Use your clubmen to hold the line and your spears to prevent any cavalry flanks.
Archers are better than hurlers for an army that holds a steady line, as you can fire over your units. Flank with your Young Wolves once the enemy infantry has engaged and a rout should be happening in short order. I tend to keep my cavalry in reserve until they have a clear shot at enemy missile troops, or just to run down routing enemies and make sure they shatter.Army composition (mid-late game, c. 420 AD): 4 Scaled Clubmen, 4 Godansmen, 4 Germanic Archers, 4 Taifali Cavalry, 2 Germanic Spearmen, 1 Onager. The same basic principles as above apply, except you don't have to be as careful with the Godansmen / Godan's Chosen as you did with Young Wolves since they're a bit tankier. Feel free to engage earlier with them. The Taifali are just a monstrously utilitarian unit and can be used to harass, engage enemy cavalry, destroy missile troops or charge into the rear of your enemies.Militarily, I don't think there are any stronger Barbarian factions than the Langobards.
The only thing to be wary of is as with all Longbeard DLC factions, your generals are stuck with Germanic Nobles. Be careful of higher tier armor-piercing units, as they'll kill your generals off fast. Playing Huns, having some issues with hardware so my campaign has stalled a bit around 420ish AD.
Here's what I've learned by categories:.Economics - are hard. Much harder than the military, so focus your research on money to start. There's no such thing as too much money.
Always be either raiding, camping, or exhausted from destroying a city - anything else is a mistake. Raiding is profitable only in certain situations - you need to devote some army levels and general skill points to the bonuses, and it helps to find mercantile hubs to raid (crossroads, heavily populated areas, that sort of thing - raiding Italy makes bucks, raiding Dacia is probably a loss). If your armies are like my armies, you wind up making a lot more money if you hang out in fertile areas - Huns eat a lot of goats, goats eat a lot of grass, so grass = money.Military - Upgrading your units is expensive.
It's not that they're bad - you just don't need to worry about upgrading anything, really, until your economy can handle it. Basic horse archers can beat pretty much anything, and you can hire mercenaries when you need to climb city walls. You'll learn tactics just by playing a bit; one strategy to keep open is, if you should find yourself in a no-win scenario, don't use the campaign-map retreat button - take the field, empty your quivers, and then withdraw units manually as they become useless.
Attila Total War Faction Focus Franks
Sure, it counts as losing, but you can drastically increase your odds of winning the next battle. BE A HUN - HIT AND RUN.Subjugation - Tributary states are a pain in the ass.
Subjugating someone doesn't repair the penalty of having fought them, and it doesn't break their wars with any allies you have. So, if you're already at war with someone, it's probably safer just to burn them to the ground. If you should happen across a neutral (or even a friendly!) government with only one settlement to its name, subjugate them. Or liberate dead civs when you get the option. Client states are really nice to have, but holding them is a pain if they hate you. So only enslave your best friends.Politics - Everybody hates the Huns, and the Huns are terrible at making friends. So if you get the chance, take it with a sword.
Find someone you might like to cozy up with (anyone who admires strong empires - can't load the game to confirm the name, but in the east there's a muslim empire starts with A, they're my best friends). Use the diplomacy screen to find their enemies, sell your sword for political favors, and of course export daughters to solidify what you've gained. You should only declare war on a faction when it's earning you favor with someone else. Plenty of other people will take it upon themselves to declare war on you, so you'll always have cities to burn.Infantry - I went a long way without any.
Then I got a few for the hell of it, and they're great to have - the enemy must respect your infantry, they have to engage it. And because of that, your cavalry is free to operate however it wants.
My makeup is changing a bit, but my last heroic victory was two spear, three warriors, and about five total melee cav with the rest a mix of horse archer units, holding a river crossing against four enemy armies in the snow.Horde Growth - building new hordes means you'll have more growth happening at once, so it's a good idea to have lots. How many is the right number, well, how many can you afford? My policy is that when I can afford to stand still and make money, it's time to build a new horde (but then I'm only up to five, so that's only happened twice). Make it happen faster by dropping your tax rate to facilitate growth, and research techs, build buildings, etc. That add more growth in one of your hordes.
It'll probably make less money but you want to be able to reach the population surplus fast when the time comes. The lesson I'm learning slowly is that not every horde needs to do every thing - you can have a growth horde, an economic horde, a raiding horde, etc.
Everyone needs to feed themselves, but they don't all have to be totally self-sufficient.Maneuvering - Getting attacked by a full stack of bad guys is simple, all you have to do is kill them. Getting attacked by multiple stacks is troublesome, because you've only got so many arrows, and you can only retreat once. So it's helpful to find places on the map where you can camp your armies within reinforcement range without incurring a rivalry penalty - anywhere three or four provinces come together is a great place to live. Make friends there! Either way.Fertility is kind of a huge deal for the Huns.
Find fertile areas early and do what you can to stay there. I burned Constantinople pretty early on and hung out in Greece, and got a lot of infrastructure built. Not enough to risk heading into Asia Minor to finish off the romans, but I figured Sassanids were up to the task, and when ERE started launching armies at me I left. But I'd made a lot of money, and built a lot of important buildings (felt makers, royal camp upgrades, farms, etc) while I could. Any time you get a chance to rest from war for a bit, it's probably a good idea to do it. But once in a while you do have to run north to bitch-slap a naughty viking - do that quickly and come back south. Winter is coming.
Well I didn't figure out specialization at first, or rivalries, or anything else. I was a little slow at first, but maybe that's working out. My first three are all similar - the only difference is one of them got priests instead of Noble Azcari riders (who are AMAZING by the way), one of them was operating north and needed an extra food source, and therefore missed his soldier camp. Basically besides that they were all identical - designed to build and field big scary armies and burn stuff. When I built the fourth, I wanted to start specializing into economics a bit, and the way that worked out, I actually morphed one of my starting hordes into the economic center while the new guy became just a pure military force - because upgrading buildings costs growth points, and it was easier to build an army camp in a new horde than a mature one. My fifth is going to be cultural - I should've done that way sooner, because it's been rough not having spies.Anyway for the first three, I sorta had to make them all self-sufficient, small-profit hordes. But you don't need four of those.
You probably don't even really need three, that's just how I happened to do it. I was thinking about specializing, it just happened a bit more organically.If you think about it, if you were to purely specialize right off the bat, then losing any single army could totally destroy you. I didn't like that idea. With four, or now five, I have a chance to recover from even a devastating loss.
I started with one all cavalry horde for field battles, mostly infantry and foot archers horde with 3 onagers for siege battles, and one support horde with just some cheap troops. I soon grew to 5 armies and 3 of them were support armies. Like you mentioned, I keep them at the corners of 3 provinces so they can reinfocre each other and they have good enough troops to beat a full stack and at least hold off 2 stacks.I just spun off a 6th horde that's shaping up to be a general purpose military horde with half and half infantry/cavalry.
Got enough pop for 2 more hordes but I can't handle creating them yet.I haven't even tried the Azcari riders because they cost so much and I'm scared off by the fact they have like 6 armor. It's all in the abilities (and the charge I suppose). They can deploy behind the enemy formation - I like to find a tree and hang out until the enemy starts moving. Once I disperse their army with skirmishing cav archers, the Azcari (2-4 usually) break cover and ride down the general - they get rapid advance to make the most of the charge, and Frenzy (or something like it) to just freakin' butcher the unit.
They slaughter everything I throw them at, and I throw them at pretty much anything. Maybe not a head-on charge into spears, but nothing and I mean nothing else can stop them. Trouble is if you want to build some, you have to be stationary for two whole turns, so you can't refill on the move. But I've never lost one - gotten close, but they're quick enough to beat feet when they need to. They've turned many tides for me. A cavalry-heavy army should really think about picking up a couple. This might not be the optimal way to play them, but the Danes are fun to play as a semi-permanent horde faction.
I took them down to the Mediterranean and am raiding and sacking all the cities around. Raze or subjugate the western islands so you can have a place to rest and rebuild. Sack coastal cities to your heart's content, even inland cities as long as you stay within turn of the coast. And if your enemies send an army at you, escape into the sea. If they follow you, destroy them.With the no seasickness buff, your ships are twice as good as the enemy, and even garbage units like Nordic brigade can take on quality enemy units. The only faction i have got a minor victory with yet are the Vandals. What i did with them is subjugating the Alamans first and then wandering south west into Spain and eventually Africa.
On my way i looted every Roman city i came by and liberated the Gauls, the Septimans and Hispania. By the time i got to Carthage i had roughly 45k in the bank and decided to settle there. After conquering the whole province and getting my economy up to speed i expanded east- and westward until i completely controlled Africa and half of Spain. Took me about 230 turns on normal difficulty. I only upgraded my two hordes so that they could sustain themselfs but not much more. I have played a few migrating factions, I like the vandals most because hey they are Vandals right?But at any rate, sack, sack, sack, sack, until you have at least 35-40k (more is better) to settle and rebuild right away. Prior to settling I set up horde camps every turn and decimated my hordes as needed to maintain influence.
I didn't raid all that much while migrating, unless I needed food.Find a nice safe-ish spot, where at least some settlements are protected from one direction or another - I settled Spain and so far so good.Armies are spears (3-5), swords (2-4), archers (3-5), and filled with either wardogs, siege equipment, or cavalry. I have found cavalry to be less than impressive in Attila, at least so far with what I can recruit. Playing as ERE my advice is to consolidate all your judean and osorene legions into a 3 stack offensive force around edessa then do a preemptive attack against the sassinds while marching down Mesopotamia sack and occupy destroy all buildings for extra cash and try to either avoid or divide the sassinds main army as if they face you at full strength it will be a pyrric victory for them and you will have the economic advantage. Do not worry about the sassinds puppet states as you want them to carve pieces out of Mesopotamia.
March all throughout persia occupying and sacking until the last sassind province of which you sack and then subjugate. Congrats now you control all of the middle east and all your puppet states love you and will fight all your rebels for you. Plus you get around 6k in tribute which gets you closer to ERE infinity riches. To clarify, when you subjugate a faction you automatically become ruler of all of their current clients/puppets. Therefore other than occupying the media factions province (for the wonder) there is no reason to attack any of the additional Sassanid puppets as you can become auto overlord of them when you subjugate the Sassanid.
If you are still allied with the wre at this point it is nice because they will automatically be at war with all you 30+ barbarian enemies and go from loading to loving in one turn from the same war bonuses.
About This GameAgainst a darkening background of famine, disease and war, a new power is rising in the great steppes of the East. With a million horsemen at his back, the ultimate warrior king approaches, and his sights are set on RomeThe next instalment in the multi award-winning PC series that combines turn-based strategy with real-time tactics, Total War: ATTILA casts players back to 395 AD. A time of apocalyptic turmoil at the very dawn of the Dark Ages.How far will you go to survive? Will you sweep oppression from the world and carve out a barbarian or Eastern kingdom of your own?
Or will you brace against the coming storm as the last remnants of the Roman Empire, in the ultimate survival-strategy challenge?The Scourge of God is coming.