The MASSIVE Total War Gamble that PAID OFF - Total War Attila 2023 Review 

Don't forget to check my latest Total War cinematic narrative campaign video in Attila (Age of Vikings) right here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-y9Rpit9jkKQ.html

This game has so much potential. It is sad that CA abandoned it. Modders would have a field day with the proper modding tools.

Total War: Attila actually inspired me to research and write my history masters thesis and now PhD dissertation on Attila and how the Romans viewed him and the Huns as the embodiment of the apocalypse. The game actually nails a lot of historical details and themes well. Thanks CA for helping move my career as a historian forward!

Attila probably truly is the best total war game. The survival element of playing as Rome was super unique, and played surprisingly well. Both the battles and mod support are second to none, which makes it the perfect game to experience many different time periods with the best battle mechanics a game could offer. Now imagine Attila with a trade system as good as Troy!

Age of Charlemagne is really fun as well. I love the early medieval aesthetic.

The fact that this game has so many challenging aspects to it. Every single feature had some type of survival in it wish made every turn challenging and rewarding. - fertility land now might not be good in the future - How bigger your armies and unexperienced your armies are, how easier for them or the general to break away from your empire or start a revolt - Family trees become complicated and the political aspect could get worse if you don't manage it correctly - Attila is coming to get you - The settlement destruction is probably the worst thing that could happen to you in any total war game. Burning the entire land so your fertility level is just 0 when you reclaim it How in the world did Creative assembly not developed this further and still struggled with endgame challenge after this game? This was the perfect answers for future TW games in terms of Scope and style. Especially crazy to think they didn't do something similar when Warhammer started to release.

The Western Roman Empire campaign on very hard is still the most fun I've had in a single TW campaign.

Attila is also my favorite I love the uphill campaign as the Roman factions

I love Attila TW, it’s so gritty, the winter attrition, the politics, destabilizing factions with diplomacy.

Attila and Empire are extremely underrated. I wonder if it has to do with the in-game strategic considerations being much greater challenges

Atilla for sure has the best UI of maybe any TW. I can remember spending so much time in the tab screen using the different overlays to plan my empire layout! The beauty of the artwork married the game mechanics so well.

Shogun 2 did have a fertility system as well. I was happy to see that brought back.

Attila TW best TW.

I just got this game yesterday because of being on sale. Been contemplating between the Total War Hammer 3, Attila and Rome 2. Glad I got the Attila.

1000 hours on Attila and did not know you could gift regions to Hordes 🤣

My favourite thing about it is the sound effects during battle, when someone yells COMITATENSES or the horns during charges, great sound.

Nice to see Attila get highlighted Andy!🙏

You're right, this is a very sophisticated game and your review was suitably nuanced and vey well presented to boot! Thanks for making content like this worth watching and not as tedious as the usual knuckledragging gamer fare we're so used to on this hellsite!

Andy Great Video man! Attila is actually my favorite TW. Mainly because the awesome mods havent played vanilla in a long time

well I was today years old when I learned you could gift regions to hordes...I am only half way through the video but that was enough of a shock to mention it. 167 hours played in the game am I am just learning this. Western rome is fun to play, even more than western rome in Barbarian Invasion i would argue since I usually don't end up half a trillion gold in debt as the WRE in Attila lol.

Bought all of it , have over 5000 ours on warhammer. But by the gods I love Attila , needed a minute and watch your vids about it. Subbed and thank you 👊🏻

I'd love to see a sequel that adds some of the other mechanics that CA has developed, like the supplies mechanic from Britannia. Something like that would definitely highlight the differences between settled faction armies and hordes. At the very least, I wish CA would release a patch to scale the UI for 4K and above.

Total war games come and go from my steam library constantly, but one remains constant. Attila

Hey Andy! Got another question my friend. In your opinion: Is it better to play Attila vanilla or with Europa Perdita + Fall of the Eagles mods? Or better said, do you play it with or without these mods? I know this is not your latest video, but since is about Attila I think is the best place to ask this question. Thank you for your superb content. Much like Attila you are having a renaissance of your own.

Attila is by far the best Total War game that has ever been released. It is also the last of the Historical Total War games. I have more hours on Attila than all other TW games. I hated Rome 2's campaign and just could not get along with its economics and its buildings system, nor the faction design. Attila is a far superior game, in my opinion.

This is the game that is so hard to play that makes it fun to solve. I have played many factions that I find hard to play as and also set the difficulty on Legendary. However, it is not fun when you finally defeated Attila or become the most powerful faction. Because you already know you won... So I decided to play Lakhmids this month and decided to rebel the Sassanid Empire and try to defeat Attila at the same time. So far I have 7 failed attempts to find the right formula on succeeding. Wish me luck!

The feeling of winning the campaign as the Romans, especially the Western Romans is the most gratifying feeling ive ever had from a total war game

I really wish I could like Attila. However what really put me off where two things. Firstly Vassals and Allies tend to randomly declare war on you in the late game(even with highly positve relationship). This really pissed me of after a long campaign of the WRE, where I take great effort of resettling and vasslising barbarian factions to create stable border and trade, only to have it all blow up randomly. Basically the only sensible thing seems to be to burn everything down you can't hold directly. And respawing Huns armies never appeared to me as being a good mechanic.

The mechanic I HATE is that you can only have such few governors. Thats honestly just a blatantly stupid limitation that makes no sense. Other than that I love Attila.

Attila was the first Total War I actually played. Granted, it was not the easiest title for entering the Total War world. But once I had become used to it and was fully immersed in it, no other Total War I played after managed to captivate me as much. There are a lot of things that make Attila feel truly unique. Even without any roleplaying mechanics, like in 3K, the TWWs, Troy or ToB, the campaign is super immersive. The gritty atmosphere is really felt strong. As you mentioned, the buildings having almost all having negative effects, means that building up is tougher and expansion will feel painful until a province is fully stabilized. And the climate change and Attila's impending arrival gives you a sense of looming threat that truly brings more dynamism to the campaign. It gives you a reason to expand and build your empire. You're not expanding just for the sake of being a great conquering, but to be able to survive. If you didn't get strong enough by the time the doomstacks of Attila come, you'll get wiped out or atleast you'll have a very hard time. Even in south-eastern regions far from Attila's reach, the Sassanids and their endless puppets play the role of the big local boss. You know you'll eventually have to fight them but until you can, you gotta play a subtle balance. On top of all that, the migrations of various germanic and gothic hordes, coupled with the opportunist expansion of other barbarians on the ruins of the western roman empire make it for a highly unpredictable campaign. You wanna be the first to grab those juicy fertile provinces before other opportunist barbarians take it under your nose. But if you rush in too early, you'll have a hard time strengthening your position there, without the money to buildup/convert and with units still inferior to romans. So you gotta decide between rushing the best provinces before anyone else but then struggle to hold them in the early game, or waiting to build up your forces and your money through pillaging, before making a more secure expansion, at the risk of being opposed to fellow barbarians, which could then give you a lot of ennemies.

“He who defends everything, defends nothing.”

There is no other TW that i played more than Total War: Atilla. From all games of the series, i love the dirty and dark visual style of Attila at the most. It catches perfect the dark times which it represents. And, dont forget the massive amount of genious mods like Ancient Empires, Terminus etc. .

I actually just played through again recently on Very Hard and Legendary as WRE. Literally just pulled burned everything back to Italia on turn 1 and rebounded exponentially against invaders. Burn, consolidate, expand. It was pretty epic!

Can anyone please tell me what is the name of the music from 1:20 to 1:45, it is so beautiful, and i remember hearing it somewhere but i do not remember. Thank you in advance.

I wonder if a game would work if you started at an age at the height of the roman empire fully united one of the powerful emperors, with an expanded map maybe new Mechanics like Imperial authority weakened by defeats losing territory ect or rebellions, also there can be slave revolts or gladiator revolts ect would have to balance it but you have more options to control the empire and could even transfer it back to a republic if wanted

I'm playing a Western Roman campaign right now (Fall of the Eagles+Europa Perdita) , and my initial strategy has been to raze every settlement I have to the ground except for Italy itself. Then just grow out from there. If I can't have the European/African holdings, no one can. FoTE also introduces heavy maintenance costs to city centers, so it becomes untenable to hold onto all of your regions.

I bought the game plus (age of charlemagne, empires of sand, and celt culure pack) and Im kind of excited to start playing this. Have sunk 100s of hours into Rome 2 DEI but this seems like a fresh twist on a quasi-familiar setting. I was wondering if anyone has anything to say about the other 3 culture packs (slavs, vikings, longbeards) and if they worth buying. Unfort theyre no longer on sale, but maybe next time.

Hello Andy! Thanks for your videos man, they are great. You are the one of the most committed youtubers that i am subscribed to. I have a question: when you say that we should put shadows on 'high' you mean Quality or Performance? The options on the game settings only let me choose between Max.Quality, Quality, Performance and Max.Performance. Thanks again for your amazing content! Cheers!

I'm badly addicted to WRE Attila. Mixing and matching mods helps keep it fresh.

"I have 1 word for you. Skill issue" THATS TWO WORDS! Anyway, Atilla really stands out from every other Total War because of the fact you have the ability to play as a massive empire in decline or a Horde marauding across the land or a minor power finally catching its big brake. Its less "Expand, Conquer, Profit" and more "Objective: Survive!". Not to mention it puts more recent TWs to SHAME with its Government system including your family tree. Also If provinces don't have enough food for THEMSELVES let alone the Empire they get unhappy, who would have thunk the peasants need to EAT? (makes ya wonder why that isn't in Rome 2, it literally has the exact same system in place) As noted Your troops can even become disloyal as well as your generals, It really captures the Harsh nature of the period. The phrase "how far will you go for Rome?" has never been more tested. And as noted, the modding scene is really cooking off, their is no doubt a Lord of Rings mod will be made, their is always one.

Attila Total War still aged like a fine wine. Because 5 years later, most of the game mechanics from Attila Total War were brought over to Three Kingdoms Total War. Sure there are many new additions in Three Kingdoms Total War such as : 1. fixing the limited governor issues 2. character assignment mechanics 3. character ancillaries mechanics 4. five elements generals mechanics 5. human relations mechanics 6. population system mechanics 7. army logistic supply mechanics to deal with winter attrition 8. overhauled diplomacy However, the rest of core campaign and battle mechanics were actually pioneered in Attila Total War. When you play Three Kingdoms Total War's records mode you will find that it is basically a heavily reworked version of Attila Total War.

Only purchased Atilla a year ago in preparation for Dawnless Days, but have played it with 1212 AD and recently played a campaign as the Ostrogoths where I pushed my hordes all the way into Hispania laying waste to the western romans, then settling in Hispania and solely moving west retaking the Roman empire until it will be a Germanic Empire

I was hoping they would do something similar with 3 kingdoms and do a final DLC that took place once the historic 3 kingdoms were established and vying for power, with a start date around 218 or 219 (right before sun Quan betrays lui bei and kills Guan yu) since this offers more expansion opportunities for the 3 empires and makes each start feel a bit more unique while being different from the other start dates

what mods do you use for playing the vanilla timeframe of Attila.There aren't any DEI like historically authentic and complex mods for Attila's vanilla timeframe.If you know one please tell.I dont want Ancient Empires as a DEI For Attila.I want to know if a mod like DEI exists for the 395ad timeframe of Attila.

Just tried it for the first time, and it runs miles better than Rome 2! Spread the word! So many RU-vidrs push this 'Attila is unoptimized peasant trash and thats why its bad and runs bad' propaganda

It's my favourite total war game. it took me a while to get in to it, but it's now my most played total war game

I think total war Attila is fun if you‘re there for the campaing and mods, but as someone Ike me who wants to goof around with the 1212 ad mod in custom battles it sucks. I have a question, I neustem battles can you make any unit a general or do you have to use the ones given to you by the game?

Attila is the basically the Nightmare Mode of Total War games. You have to suffer endless humility in the WRE campaign in order to rework your economy and cities till you can finally get things back in line. However, once you have your cities back under control and start amassing your armies, you can harness war machine that is nearly unstoppable. I took so much pleasure surrounding Attila one last time and smashing his forces, reminding the barbarian invaders that the Western Roman Empire pays its debts.

I love that you're a big TW: Attila enjoyer, I always thought it was a great game that, like Three Kingdoms, was done dirty and dropped too soon by CA.

10/10 for campaign, complexity, history and the modding community❤

Total War Attila is still the best Total War for me. It was brutal, but more realistic. I loved that. Western Rome campaign was the best i ever played in Total war franchise

It also has the best soundtrack by far since Rome 1/Medieval II

Man it’s so wild how there is really no other games, anywhere ever like total war. Especially Attila and empire/napoleon. Blows my mind how

How do you play as the Celts?

I'm really hoping to grab this if it goes on the black friday sale

I love playing as Rome with Attila but I find the other factions slightly dull-Rome just folds too quickly when you attack it

My first campaign was the ERE, and I was so looking forward to it as I loved Barbarian Invasion. But my armies collapsed in battle for no apparent reason, endless uprisings for no reason and infinite Hun stacks. It wasn't fun and made no sense. Which is why I have played it less than any other TW game and not touched it in years.

All Total war games which i cant play with reasonable Performance at high and shadows on: Attila My favorite total war game: Attila Life can be hard

Ah yes Total War Attila 2015 the last 100% Historical only tent pole title from CA. Now it's the end of the 1st quarter 2023 and all we've had since were 2Saga titles, 2 Warhammer titles, 1 semi mythical/historical game. And yet CA continues to remind us how they're the biggest games developer in Europe and how they have/can have multiple teams working on projects . But still no news of a new Historical title 🤔. I was on the official Total War YT channel earlier, looking at all the awesome Warhammer trailers ( yes i'll give CA credit for those ) but see how far back you have to go on there for anything other than Warhammer news ! If CA are incapable or unwilling to do Historical by now they should just come out and say so.

I never got Attila. I guess I was still enjoying Rome2 or wasn’t in my game budget at the time One of my fav aspects of R2 was the Auxiliary system. Not only the units I could recruit myself but the units I could recruit from my vassals. How did Attila handle Augs?

When i first saw this game, i didn't like the way the world map looked (i used to play a lot of Rome 2 a few years ago, so that's why). But i downloaded it and actually played it, i fell in love instantly. I always like the challanges this game throws at you.

Honestly this goes to show how little we ask of CA. Attila has a lot of ridiculous problems (some might have been slightly patched since I haven't played it in like 3 years but I doubt it). 1. Corruption, I remember I had over 100% Corruption as the western roman empire once I expanded into anatolia. Basically conquering new land reduced my income significantly. Only had income from provinces with governors and trade. Meaning that I could field like 4 armies while owning half the map. While an opm could have 2 to 3 armies. 2. Trade I made over 10k gold (maybe much more i dont exactly recall) from trade with the eastern roman empire due to duration of trade even though the ERE was just a opm by that time.. completely unbalanced. If it wasn't for trade though I would have 0 chance as I had almost no income as said above 3.WRE and ERE are way too weak. In most of my campaigns (when not playing as rome the west falls before attila is even the leader of the huns and the east falls shortly afterwards 4. Devastation makes the game boring once u defeat the huns. There was me and the rest of the world was empty (except for the east) they should have replaced razing with "extreme "looting where all buildings are destroyed but the city remains for example(i know there are mods for that but Im discussing vanilla not the work of the community). It's no fun to have half of the map empty. Additionally I would like to see the huns make vassals instead of just destroying everything. It would be more historically accurate as the huns did have tributaries and make the game more fun. Finally I would like to add that I don't say this as someone that is just mad because the game is hard or something. Quite the opposite, I was able to save the WRE while only losing parts of britain and france. My problem is that poor balancing and bad thought out mechanics make the AI completely unable to hold the roman empire for even a couple of turns and makes the late game (after defeating attila extremely boring). Ps.just remembered that they were unable to balance the huns so the huns pay no maintenance for armies and have armies just spawn for them 😂 + attila needs to be killed like 3 times. I dont mind the difficulty but surely there is more intersting way to achieve this

Attila and Shogun 2 are my favorite total war games

But have there any reliable performance fixes or mods to mitigate the absymal fps?

I legit re downloaded it and planing to play it tomorrow

Atilla is the best. Interesting time setting, good to fine DLC’s, and excellent performance. I have a relatively cheap gaming laptop and it runs perfectly fine, no issues. Only shame is that age of charlemagne hasn’t a larger unit roster for the factions and more factions to play

Attila, the best of the franchise 👍

Instead of just YET ANOTHER LOTR mod, I'd really love to see a Conan The Barbarian-based mod set that overhauls the world into Hyboria, this game is DYING for a mod like that exactly, and Total War could greatly sync well with the Hyborian setting extremely well.

This game no longer works for me and some steam users for quite some time now. As good as it was, CA has done very little in the way of supporting it’s clients to troubleshoot. Very sad.

Holding on as westen roman empire on legendary without giving up ANY territory was the most painful thing i ever did i had to attack all barberians from start and razing to the ground before they can even declare on you if you let them you dead unless you give up provances

I have over 8000 hours on Attila. It is THE best. Depending on the faction, it plays WILDLY different, so it is like multiple games at once. I recommend getting all the DLCs, as that is where the diversity is.

For historical fans (in my humble opinion) a hybrid of Attila and Troy would yield the best total war experience possible.

I really love this game, but I always seem to run into an error I can't fix during AI turn somewhere after turn 100.

Did they fixed the multiplayer campaign bug of turn 100?

Isn’t the starting setup the same as Rome BI?

Can u play third age on atilla ?

This convinced me to finally buy it, thanks

Atilla sounds like a Barbarian Invasion remake with new tech.

My PC never had any trouble running Attila, even though it's just 8gb of ram and 4 gb of dedicated graphics. I remember I had troubles with Three Kingdoms and Troy as soon as they got out but with time (And I'm guessing some help from CA) they ended up running smoothly too

I wish the performance was like thrones or troy level. Also wish unit models look better to represent the time.

Great video

Absolutely love this game - Definitely not for the faint-hearted if you want to play as the Western Romans though

I have a Hymyar Campaign saved where I moved (Horde) from Arabia Felix as a Jew to Breton peninsula (the Galic region) settled, converted the whole infrastructure to middle eastern of Hispania, Galia and Brittania, converted neighbors to Judaism and married both Romans and Barbarians with several alliances and kings, crown prince of mix race. It was my last game before my second children was born but boy o boy, I am such a veteran in this game that I wreaked Havoc in my journey to West Europe.

attila was my first total war game, and man it was my first war game and first pc build.

a quick qusestion: i like multiplayer battles, also i have heard some say attila is dead! can i buy it and play multiplayer? will there be many pepole to play whit? great vid :D

It's my favourite too! Greetings from Italy!

its definetely best of 3 Total War game. Empire Total War was also very good game and CA has made their worst mistake by abondaning them... The Western Rome and the Ottomans on very hard is actually challenging and fun to play...

Wait, shadows always on high no matter what? Even on potato PC?

I'd die for a TW: Attila Remastered version in 64-bit, more modding support and an easier way to edit the campaign map. Rn, the RAM lock, limited core/multithreading use and bad support for modern GPU's, is killin' it for me in comparison to TW: Warhammer franchise. But it's still a fun game like Rome 2, for me. - it's just the bottlenecks within the games that render high end PC's almost redundant from my experience and test runs.

wow running smoothly on high graphic settings. what is your computer specs, bro?

This game is brilliant I just wish they would fix the UI size (can’t adjust and it’s tiny in 4k) and optimise it a bit better

I just LOVED what they did in this game. The battle maps are large enough (compare to rome 2 where an infantry unit can run and be upon you in a minute or so), there is diversity in units, terrain types, the cities and regions look better, siege weapons are really dangerous ans the squalor rework was an amazing thing. On the other hand, having to kill atilla three times is not really the greatest of ideas.

Im on a low end laptop, and Attila performs way better than Rome 2 for me. Honestly people complaining about performance just cant face the reality you need top expensive rigs to play almost anything in high definition, its not the games fault if youre pumping everything to max and what you have cant handle it.

its my favourite too and haven'd bought an other tw ever since

Saving a huge crumbling empire is a totally different experience than expanding from 0 and one of my favorite. Unfortunately Shogun 2 runs so much better so I'm sticking with that.

Agreed all around, thanks for the content.

I have an ongoing Western Roman campaign right now. It's 406, I've somehow mamaged to more or less stabilize the Empire (to a degree) and currently I have only a few enemies I am at war with and most of them are either virtually destroyed or don't pose a greater threat. I've even managed to hold all my provinces (though rebellions still do occur) and convert my Empire back to paganism. The biggest problem for me right now are probably the Huns with whom I don't really have good relations and it seems they'l attack me soon. But thus far, the future looks rather promising.

Attila got at least one performance update that makes it much better.

I was in doubt between getting it or the remaster

I usually crawl back into spain Fight every city battle trying to kill some horde And growing back from there