Total War: Attila, released early 2015, takes place in the turbulent time from late antiquity to the migrating period and begins in 395 AD. The game plays like most other Total War titles with the additions of functions like migrating hordes and the ability to completely demolish a settlement/region.
In this timeframe the Roman empire, though divided between an eastern and a western empire, is still the major faction of Europe, Africa and parts of Asia with control of more or less half of the campaign map.
The Western Empire has direct control of basically everything west of the germanic lands while the Eastern empire control Greece, Turkey and the mediterranean shore down to Egypt and beyond. If you think this sounds like a walk in the park then think again. Throughout the empire rebellions are brewing, public order is disastrous low, you are on the brink of war with virtually every neighbouring faction, who quite frankly hates you. And if this wasn't bad enough, extensive corruption leaves your coffers basically empty and deny you the income necessary to handle all the different threats.
Needless to say, the Roman Empire is in deep trouble from the very first turn of the game, and if not handled correctly will quickly find itself in a fight for survival.
This guide will go through the opening moves playing as the Western Roman Empire, the WRE, and offer logical steps on, not only how to survive, but salvage as much as possible of the once mighty Roman Empire.
An easy start would be to abandon the empire, withdraw to the relative safety of Italy or Spain, which are easily defended, and let your former empire fall to pieces while you get a handle on your internal problems. While this is a viable strategy and offers quite good chances of survival, and will let you expand later in the game, it’s not the most effective and leads a bunch of unnecessary losses.
Rather you should keep on to as much as possible of the empire, and play a true survival campaign the way it was meant to be played.
Thus, to start of, let’s take a look at your internal problems. Extensive corruption eating up your income and a dangerous low level of public order, with imminent rebellions across the empire.
To me public order always seem the most pressing concerns, as rebellions in faraway lands will require troops to be withdrawn from defending border posts and open the path for invading armies. Therefor to start of, open your provinces tab (at the top right corner) and sort your provinces by public order. Take your four provinces with worst public order and assign governors to them, It’s recommended to make your emperor one of those governors as he’s a pretty useless general.
Once governors has been assigned you will want to issue the Bread and Games edict in those provinces. This will give a boost to both food production and public order.
To further counter your issues with public order you will want to construct guard posts (which gives +3 public order and two strong infantry units to be used in the defence of the settlement, for when/if a rebellion does break out) and/or capitols in the settlements with the lowest po.
Now, let's move on to the money and corruption problem. Throughout the empire you will find a bunch of churches, these gives a bonus to public order but requires gold in upkeep. BURN THEM!
One of your main expenses is upkeep for those religious buildings. You will want to replace your churches with either guard posts or capitols, depending on how threatened the province is.
Other than being a huge cost saver burning churches also have the side effect of, later in the game, allowing you to convert the roman empire back to Greco-Roman paganism. How fun :)
For corruption, recall those governors you assigned earlier, in a couple of turns they will start and increase in level. Once they do you should go down the center skill tree and get to level 2 of the vicarius ability, which will decrease corruption in their province. Whenever your empire level increases and you can assign more governors you will want to repeat this, but now you can start and focus on putting the governors in charge of your provinces with the highest income, if the public order situation is at hand.
Reducing the corruption in your provinces with the highest revenue will do wonders for your financial situation, especially when combined with the abandonment of those pesky churches.
So far so good, you should now have both your revenue stream and public order if not completely in check at least going in the right direction. Thus we can start and think about how we want the empire to be fed, because you know, food is kind of important.
The time period of Attila saw a number of severe and sudden climate changes. As the world got colder crop yield decreased and once fertile lands, like spain, will lose their good soil quality. While you shouldn't have any issues with food early on, that is unless you have seriously mismanaged your empire, it will eventually become an issue.
Thus you will want to prepare for it by, whenever possible, you should construct buildings that gives you food. Such as wheat fields (in settlements with good soil quality), sheep flocks (generates the most income among farm buildings, but the least food) or cattle herds (the middle ground, produces a mix of income and food).
Once you have come this far, and we’re still on the first turn ;) we can start and think about your assets on the grander scheme of things, like which provinces to hold on to, where to send armies and such.
You will note that a battered 6th legion is based in britain (I can recommend looking up the sixths history around the time of the civil war, their exploits under Caesar in egypt are quite legendary). Also note that your two provinces in britain produce just over 400 gold per turn in revenue, barely enough to sustain the sixth at its current, quite reduced strength.
As britain will soon be set upon by both the picts and the saxons, combined with the disastrous public order of the province, the only logical thing to do is to evacuate the sixth to Spain (where it can help suppress any rebellions springing up during the early game, followed by a return to Africa in the middle game, where it can suppress the minor African factions).
Leave the brits to their destiny and let the province burn, it’s not worth the effort to defend and you will need the troops stationed there elsewhere. And if the strategic withdrawal from britain leaves a bad taste in your mouth, just consider that unless you abandon the province Clive Owen would never get to bang Keira Knightley in the movie King Arthur ;)
Good news, britain is the last and only province you completely abandon. The rest of your eastern border are easily defended against any barbarian incursions. At least while you build up an economic powerbase to finance a growing, elite army.
In the early game you shouldn't ever even consider expanding your borders. Focus on holding the line and get a handle on Romes internal problems (with one major caveat, go to the grand map and find the Quadians. Now destroy them, wiping out their armies and slaughtering their citizens as soon as possible will save you a lot of trouble down the road).
Whew, this became quite a long text on just how to start a campaign as the Western Roman Empire, good news is that once the issues I walked you through here has been resolved playing as the western empire is quite easy, and before long you will have the opportunity to reconquer britain, expand your borders to the east and just generally have a splendid time of it, at least until you come across the huns ;) but that’s a problem for late game and not something we need to concern ourselves with here.
Good luck in your WRE campaign, I hope you will have as much fun playing them as I did
pax romana
great
great guide