Fun fact: this video was originally going to be about how easy East Rome is compared to the WRE. Boy was I wrong. Music is the Infernal Galop (Can Can) by Offenbach.
The worst part about playing as the Sassanids is that if you go to war with the Eastern Roman Empire, your game ends there because then half the map allies with you and you have nowhere else left to fight.
@@elel2017 Terrible solution. I just roleplay a bit. With the Sassanids lets say, i'd like to secure access to the meditteranian for trade purposes, and conquer the main coastal points neccesary for uninterupted trade to the Atlantic... But only those key cities and the seas to the left and right of the gibraltan straight. No conquering inland allowed. Maybe set up a "colony" on the British Isles. Boom you got yourself a more difficult and interesting game, whic would provide problems you had easily solved before but now must figure out. I like to try to occupy every city which in our modern world is a capital of a country, without capturing any others. Also let your initial cities that arent capitals decay into rebels, or abandon the settlements.
Well, I did defeated the Roman Empire with my allies, that should be the end there since there's no one to fight. But, of course, it's Total War, so I betrayed my allies and go to war against them, and guess what? *I GOT OBLITERATED.*
They actually build up 4 at a time, so in 5 turns they could take a settlement easily unless you wipe them out within the first few turns of the rebellion
@@vogel2077 with the WRE the idea is that foreign threats are secondary. First stabilize your empire, crush any rebellion when they appear with a single general and recruting mercenaries, or hire a 5 - 6 units army to hold the twon rebels will attack later, that way public order returns to zero
The Huns punish Christian Factions (-10 morale) . If you start with any Roman Empire you must convert the faction to roman paganism as fast as possible
It is one of the most strategic locations in the world but yes it could also be because the Greeks have one of the most extensive record collections throughout history. I believe only the Chinese have more.
Literally what historically happened to the Eastern Roman Empire. They just were too strong to fall in one go and so went through phases of waxing and waning until 1204. After which they were pretty much gone for good.
I still think Legend's "let's just relocate to Egypt and exploit the 5% treasury buff until the economy has a stack overflow" is my favorite method, even if the setup for it is absurd... but hey it works.
I felt the same pain until I killed their emperor and his army with my 3 garrison units on the first turn which they attacked me. East Rome still too op. ( Was playing on very hard difficulty by the way.)
@@amp8295 I'm two months late, but the term you're looking for is "Shahanshahs" (King of Kings) or "Šāhān šāh ī Ērān ud Anērān" (King of Kings of Iranians and Non-Iranians) in Middle Persian.
Hey everyone, thanks for being so patient with me. I know I promised this like two months ago but a mix of over-ambitious video plans, self-doubt and real-world obligations meant that it ended up taking much longer than I thought it would. I'm about to be on break from uni for about 3 months, so that should mean some more frequent uploads, probably a big one (like my current "how to play..."s) about once month and a few little ones here and there in between. Also got plans for a sub special at 200 so get hype for that!
Y'all, when you make these Chad X vs Virgin Y, you gotta actually back it up. For instance, Chad East vs Virgin West Eastern Rome: Survived for around a thousand years longer than the Western Roman Empire, succeeded by either Russia or the Ottomans, both highly successful empires. Had badass Viking Bodyguards protecting their Emperor, who remained ferociously loyal even in the face of overwhelming opposition. Had the actual capital of Rome in their borders, I.E Constantinople. Had fucking flamethrowers. Western Rome: Capital was sacked twice, succeeded by the cancerous "HRE" which was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. Had Praetorian guards, who spent most of their time doing political scheming rather than actually protecting their Emperor. Only had the former capital of Rome, which got dumped for the superior Constantinople. Did not have fucking flamethrowers.
Playing Rome I Total War: at war with all factions Playing Medieval II Total War: at war with all factions Playing Napoleon: at war with all factions Playing Shogun II: at war with all factions Even in the fvckin' mods... Total War is masochism.
The trick is to spend the first few dozen turns maintaining your territory, trying to avoid unnecessary conflict, and spending the absolute bare minimum. Once you've saved up enough money, the interest really starts to become noticeable, to the point where it will exceed your normal income. At that point, don't start spending. Spend another few turns saving money until your interest payments are about triple what you spend on unit upkeep. Then, and only then, you can start spending, but even then, make sure that you only ever spend the amount you gained in interest. Keep your normal interest going back into savings, so that you get more and more interest each turn. Before long, you'll have more income than you know what to do with. Attila Total War is actually an investment simulator.
Also, for playing Easter Rome, in addition to paying off all attackers, try breaking all non-trade treaties with the west when it's visibly disintegrating. The boost in diplomatic relations with everyone else you get for this can set you up pretty well for enough time to prepare better defence
I know it's the right thing to do, but it just feels so wrong to betray them like that... On the other hand, whenever I play the Last Roman DLC I always backstab East Rome as soon as I can so that's a bit hypocritical of me
Exactly the same reason why I didn't invade ERE in my first WRE playthrough, despite the fact that I dislike ERE. In fact, I would even send my navies to blockade ports that the Sassanids captured before I could actually afford to send full armies down there. My reward for this? ERE offered itself as a puppet state to me :p
@@Yrridian you're doing the historically correct playthrough as well. Eastern Rome tried very hard and spent a lot of resources and manpower to save Western Rome till the very end. But it was too corrupt to be saved by that point. Even after 476 they tried to reconquer the Western Empire's territories under Justinian the Great and Maurice wanted to officially restore the Western Roman Empire but it wasn't meant to be as he was killed in a coup.
I like Rome 2 more, now. Attila has that stupid mechanic that makes all the land useless after a few dozen years. You'd think it was Total War: Snowball Earth.
Here's a good way to Ruin enemy Port cities via exploit: Hire a fleet of artillery ships, send them off to an enemy port: Destroy their fleet first, then attack their artillery. When you run out of ammo, have them retreat. For some odd reason, you can continuously attack an infinite number of times in the same round with fleets: So just keep attacking them until they lose. I wouldn't recommend razing/occupying their settlement unless your ground army has secured inland because of counter attacks, and also because you can bait a portion of the enemy's armies toward those ports when you besiege them thus making it easier for your inland armies to destroy them piecemeal. So just sack them repeatedly every turn to prevent growth, until your inland armies secure the area around the port city.
I actually used a similar exploit with the Saxons to slowly wear down a settlement, I believe it was Camulodunum (Colchester) - be careful not to use high-ranking admirals for this though as they lose Influence Points every time they withdraw from a settlement without actual fighting.
East Rome was the only faction I tried to play as in this game. I played on Hard as I was very good at Rome 2... Now I see I am not the only one. Literally impossible and extremely time-consuming. As you have to fight every single engagement and you usually lose anyway, or if you do win 2 more armies are on the way the next turn.
The north African desert factions are pretty easy, so long as you expand mainly in Africa and later into sassanid territory. You are basically playing a different game than the Roman’s or barbicans. It’s more like other traditional total war games.
@@aethylwulfeiii6502 In my best ERE campaign, I became best buds with the Sassanids and helped them fight the White Huns while I go the absolute limit defending Greece from the Northern Hordes. I only came back to kill Sassanids after I have taken Italy, Spain and Germania like the old Romans lol. Was quite a trip since I even parked an army in Edessa expecting the Sassanids to attack.
The best part is if you do the math you notice upgrading town for income is even pointless mainly because you just can safe money that will have 5 percent interest rate per season. Playing ERE is like playing at some point with infinite money
>get the upgrade for desert pikes to tanhukid pikes asap >siege settlements >line up your pikes and onagers behind them >let the enemy charge you head on >win.exe
I never played this game nor am I planning to do in the near future, but you just did a great job with combining the music with the video. Not everybody does that and it's especially nice to see it so well executed. Deserves a thumbs up!
I played ERE, i focused on economy. Legions defended Capital. Amassed tons of money, then kept gifting it to Sassanids. Eventually they became my puppet kingdom. I then made western rome my 2nd puppet state. Then it was easy to conquer the map.
How to play the ERE: More skirmishers, archers and javelin infantry to win all of the siege battles you'll have to fight. Stacks of spear-infantry alone cannot defend valuable towns and cities.
The only problem I have with that is that ERE is awful in the skirmish department until you can get hold of Armoured Sagittarii. Otherwise, it is a sound piece of advice, with proper positioning of the ranged units and the Comitatenses, and valid for the WRE too. Regular Sagittarii and Levis Armaturae are cheap and nice and more than hold their own - but mid-game, solid mid-tier skirmisher units like the Matiarii aren't there (which is odd considering both Roman Empires had them as an equivalent of the Palatini). I could mention the Elite Ballistarii, but they can't really be called skirmishers at that stage, can they? They'd be more like the main killers :p
Actually, that was my WRE build for pretty much most of the game (with Cohors vouching for the Legio until I unlocked them), until I could afford greater numbers of Matiarii in my armies :p
Quick question, every-time i play Attila and no matter what faction i take, all of my dreams are crushed and shat on. Tons of enemies, diseases, outbreaks. Do i have to be a masochist to play this game or do i just need to git gud? The only game i won is with the vandals and following history with them (top notch faction btw). I love to hate Attila, this game is brutal
Git gud :P But seriously, Attila is one of the hardest total wars (in my experience at least), so it's normal to find it challenging. My biggest tips are: 1. Play a faction that starts far from the Huns and near to the Romans, capture your starting province and then just start tearing into Roman territory and don't stop until you have to. Good starters include the Garamantians, Celts, Himyar and Aksum (assuming you have those DLCs) 2. Maintain momentum. It takes ages to properly consolidate a province in Attila (especially if you're one of the Great Migrators), and sometimes the best course of action is to just keep pushing forward even if it means leaving some stuff vulnerable to invasion/rebellion. This is especially important if you're at war with several factions, as if you play defensively they'll just keep sending stack after stack to fight you. Make time to send an army their way and get razing. 3. Git gud at town defences, you can win some completely bullshit victories once you learn how and it makes everything so much easier if you don't have to spend so much time worrying about defence. 4. On the civic planning side, for the most part focus on making as much cash as possible whilst keeping public order stable. Disease outbreaks suck, but in my experience it's worth just letting sanitation go to shit until at least 400AD while you focus on more important infrastructure. Finally, if you're having problems with battles, make sure that your army composition isn't just good, but good for you. A well-rounded force that you find difficult to command is much worse than a stack of like 2 unit types that you actually know how to use together properly (this is why my Alans armies were literally just the one unit type, and why I used so much artillery as West Rome). I could legitimately write about this stuff for days (particularly the civic planning side), so if you got any more questions don't hesitate to ask.
Man I would love to find a total war community, teamspeak or discord. I feel like such a noob playing the games even though I started from Shogun and the only one I haven't bought was Napoleon. (I really liked the older ones better.. I felt Diplomacy was better, being able to sell my daughters for stable alliances and before Medieval, you could split your armies and send 4 units of calvarly ahead on the map to wreck the enemy army by the time they met your main force, without having to designate a 'general'.
Papadragon18 I remember when the Sassanids brought their 20 fucking client states to war with me, I lost all my armies and was pushed back to Constantinople and I realized o was fucked, becuase my shitty half stack garrisoning wouldn't be able to stand up against the three full stacks. I suppose that's what happens when the Sassanids declare war on you on turn 15.
Holy shet. Yeah, I didn't have it that bad in my first playthrough, but holy hell, the entire eastern warfront was a grind worthy of the trenches of WW1. I think it to me 30 in-game years or something like that to finally squash them, and I still had all their fucking client states to contend with. Still, I've had great fun with the ERE in Attila. Doubt I'll start up a new campaign with them in the foreseeable future, mostly because of how much of a slog it is in the beginning...
lol in my legendary ERE playthrough i got really friendly with armenia, they betrayed the sassanids when they declare war on me. then together with nobitia we completely ruined the sassanids in the east whilst i was killing the goths in the west. armenia now holds 3 provinces in what was once the sassanid empire and 1 turn after the sassanids were destroyed they offered me to become my puppet state :D now they are helping me kill rebel uprisings all the time, they are my best allies and i love armenia
how to be the ultimate faliure with a faction that is almost IMPOSSIBLE to fail. and yet then almost win the entire game. and then fail again. you must have many skills.
Artur Araśniewicz so true in this game even most of the big RU-vidrs saw it as a big challenge and not that much fun, hardly any even considered remaining Christian when playing as the Romans cause it’s such huge drag on the economy without mods.
nathan meulensteen Legend has earned his name sake, so I don’t really include him in that list, I mean his channel is now pretty much dedicated to fixing royal fuck ups. But even he didn’t attempt a Christian campaign for either Roman Empire on vanilla because Greco Roman paganism is just better period in Attila without mods.
Legendoftotalwar on Legendary: Faction destroyed, faction destroyed, faction destroyed, total domination. And that's how Epirus became the Roman empire in 100 turns
ERE is easy on legendary though. The benefits at the start didn't factor in the 5% interest rate that turns into infinite money for free later on. Just do what LegendOfTotalWar did as a concept when he did his ERE attila campaign. Anyone can do that when you know what you are doing - you just will probably never do it as well as he did. But yeah, just buy time, sack buildings, sell off shit, save as much money as possible and consolidate in your most defendable region, Egypt. By the time they push you all the way back, and 40 turns later or so, you should be able to be secure just on the interest alone, and getting continually stronger with that 200-300k in the bank giving you 5% interest each turn - while if played right, still expanding in the green. Don't even worry about doing it like legend did it - he did it on This Is Total War - you can save bank even faster by doing things like keeping trading with the WRE, etc and allies while doing this slow consolidation. Despite not being as good - might still even be at the unstoppable economic level before legend was, because banking faster. Simple: remove any excess expenditure - lose all the territories outside of egypt/north africa for as much coin you can squeeze out of scorched earth, and allies and trade, etc - save, save, save, save. Got enough where your profits each turn are like 30k by itself doing nothing? Roflstomp everyone, keeping 5k still in profit each turn to keep making even more boatloads. No other faction has that broken money hack, er - faction trait that gives you infinite cash. The next best one is the 30% army upkeep reduction that can stack to like 1000 turns simply from spam sacking one settlement - and those barbarians got nothing on these ERE money hacks.
I don't think so when the bloody *Sassanids* are at your doorstep and you're at war with them pretty early in the game :p But agreed, I would like to see Yrridian's take on it all the same!
I think that's a really good shout, since even the 'regular' Huns can do it and steamroll nearly everyone else... that's lethal even against heavy infantry when paired with melee and/or shock cav and a tiny bit of infantry support actually! (goes double against Christian factions too since they get a huge morale debuff)
playing as the roman factions in attila is acctually quite easy.. here is your simple guide: 1. Don't try to defend all your territory!!! 2. Choose same fertile and ez to defend provinces. (eg. Hispanic peninsula / northern Afrika/ isulae Okzidentalis with WRE) everything with natural defense ( water/chokepoints) & far away from the huns is good DON'T hold more than 5 Provinces, 3 or 4 is Ideal. 3.Disband all Armys, that arent close to the Choosen land. 4.Set taxes to maximum. 5. Free your choosen provinces from taxes. 6.Destroy all Buildings that have upkeep cost outside of the choosen provinces. 7.Profit. 7.1. use the money to build up the choosen land. 8.Start over as a minor faction with good Starting position, LOTS of GOLD (at least 50 k better more), and lot of enemys. 9.Reconquista. 10. Say thanks for this ez guide. Edit: often u will not be able to destroy an enemy, don't bother about conquering his land. Just weaken him. Conquer a few of his settlements for unit replenishment (but don't hold them if u don't need them). Sack some others. And Eraze his key towns. Use hit and Run, scorched earth tactics, to make your neighbours so weak they can't attack you. Edit 2: For far away enemys try to pay some of their neighbours to join war.. This way you turn the barbarians against each other.. Edit 3: if possible try to give regions you don't need to migrating factions, and try to make some rebel factions (e.g. hispania, gallia, afrika, Pontos, Asia,) Into your puppet staates. This will generate a buffer zone between your homeland and the enemys..
I was able to play as the ERE without losing any territories by 1. eliminating all barbarian hordes operating in my western territories in the first 3 turns 2. Constantly issuing diplomatic tribute to the Sassanid's (one per turn) until I was able to eventually get a trade and non-aggression pact with them. At that point my diplomatic relations were so high that they never declared war on me. I basically enjoyed 100 turns of peace by which time I could field maximum armies of the best units my faction could recruit whilst still earning cash out the wazoo. I think I was playing on normal so that strategy might not be possible on other difficulties.
Total War CAT лучше накопить на 3х островах до 1 миллиона и спокойна вынести количеством легиона( за счёт 10% от суммы казны) у тебя будет около 10 легионов и около 25 миллионов золота) Играл так на легенде, спасибо проекту маил ру игры) за такую помошь)
Spear* :p Can't see any Menaulatoi, they were mostly Comitatensis Spears haha Besides, early game, Comitatenses and Cohors are probably the way to go to form the backbone of an independent army, with some Levis Armaturae or Sagittarii backing them up
I saw some of your earlier videos 'by accident' (checking out other strategy games videos) and now I stumbled upon this one, and it is absolutely hilarious. Subscribing! :3
Yeeeah. The game wasn't too accurate about that religion part. Christian infighting was one of the principle reasons behind the initial Byzantine decline.
And the Muslim Ottoman Empire outlived Christian Rome by 500 years, what's your point? My point is that christian schisms were one of the principle reasons behind many of the empire's territories either ceding or being conquered over the centuries. It's hard to keep an empire together when the docetists over there, the arians over here, and the monophysites over the hill all hate each other and keep asking the emperor to banish each other because they have a slightly different ideas regarding their imaginary friend.
That's true. If they had a single Church, Byzantium could have survived more. Think about ikonoclastia (Idk how to say it in English), it caused big divergences between the 2 power (Lion III and Gregory III or Fozio and Niccolò I). By the way, Byzantium had to fall, it was fighting but didn't achieved anything, the other powers were too much for it (Venice, Turks, Crusaders etc...)
All imperial powers eventually fall. Either to other imperial powers, infighting, or ever since the French invented it, Nationalism. It's entirely possible that the Roman Republic would have been torn apart by infighting had not some made the attempt to centralise authority. Eastern Rome gave out to other imperial powers encroaching their territory. And Holy Rome was ultimately undermined by the religious wars following the reformation. That and Napoleon.
Ooooh, I see. I'm dealing not only with an idiot, but a racist too. Whoops, tautology! See, here's what you're not quite understanding. It's not religion that holds empires together. It's power, or the perception of power, and convincing those you rule over that you have that power. Now you can do that to a few religious zealot retards by convincing them that their imaginary friend is playing favourites with you, but inevitably some of them are going to wake up scared one day and decide that you're actually the anti-christ or something equally moronic. And I wouldn't knock Islam too much. It's no worse than that backwards death cult christianity is.
Oh, I'm sorry. I must have imagined the centuries of European empires using christianity as the excuse for enslaving other races and considering them subhumans worthy of abuse and genocide. I would list a bunch of those for you, but I don't have time to sit here for hours copy-pasting them all. But between googling Colonial latin america/africa/china/etc." I'm sure you'll find something. Perhaps I also must have imagined the various inquisitions, witch-hunts, pogroms, crusades, and random massacres that have coated European history in human blood. No, no, it's all Islam. Christianity never done hurt nobody. Perhaps you're under a misapprehension here. I'm not defending Islam. I despise it and every other religion equally. Except fro perhaps the Buddhists and Jains, because those guys do little but inconvenience themselves.