Holding Back the Hordes in Total War: Attila - Part 1

Rome is in decline. The Empire has been split in two and both East and West are struggling to hold back the hordes of ‘barbarians’ knocking at the gates. All the while, internal troubles are tearing each nation down from the inside. Of course, the Western Roman Empire has got it much worse, as the Eastern Empire is both better located and better administered. Not to mention, a lot richer. We all know the story, right? Bursting at the seams, the once mighty Roman Empire slowly but surely falls into disarray. Even the more persistent Eastern Empire eventually evolves to a point where it’s unrecognisable from the toga-wearing, testudo-forming culture of the great Roman era. It’s a grand story, and a story that I’ll be discovering once more, with the help of Total War: Attila.

This is the first in a series of articles in which I’ll be following my journey through a new Atilla campaign, I’ll be playing as the Eastern Roman Empire for the first time. To give a bit of perspective: I’m a long, long-time Total War player with hundreds of hours in each game, so I’ve got a fair bit of experience. I’ve only played Atilla for around 30 hours though, most of which was in one campaign, which means I’m not overly familiar with everything the game has to offer. In short: there’s certainly no guarantee that this campaign is going to go well. Considering I’m playing on very hard, and the faction difficulty is also very hard, I’d wager it probably isn’t going to go well at all. I can but try.

The Eastern Roman Empire at the start of the game.

In my reign as Eastern Roman Emperor (or rather, the Emperor’s omniscient advisor) I’ve got a few goals that I want to achieve/maintain in an effort to give this series a bit of focus:

-Primarily, I must hold on to Constantinople (or Constantinopolis as it’s named in the game), losing my capital to an outside force results in instant failure.

-I want to reverse the events of history and make the Eastern Empire a much less immigration-friendly society. I’ll let no barbarian hordes into my land willingly, and certainly won’t let them settle.

-A minor victory in 425AD is my overall goal. I know it's nothing amazing, but I don't want to write 50 of these things...

The diary will start off slow, looking at the game turn by turn. Yet as things develop I’ll start to spread out the diary entries between turns, taking in a more general look at how my campaign is going. Anyway, let’s get to it:

395AD Spring - Turn 1

There’s a lot to do. The Eastern Roman Empire is a complete monolith by this point, with lands stretching from Greece and the Balkans to the Middle East and North Africa. It’s a little overwhelming at first, so I take the time to look through each settlement, and note where my trouble points could be and in what regions I should focus my initial resources. The more rebellious regions are actually scattered rather annoyingly throughout my lands, so I get to work starting on some new buildings that should help ease unrest and also give the Empire a little cash injection. At the moment, I’m only making around 4000 coin per turn; not bad, but given the size of my lands there’s a lot of room for improvement. So I sort out my governors, merge some of my armies into larger forces (thereby saving a little cash) and scout out the enemies that are already in my lands.

A quick snapshot of my capital circa 395AD

To my displeasure, the Visigoths are already raiding me. I end the turn only to be instantly attacked by two fairly large Visigoth horde armies, who besiege and plunder the town of Trimontium in northern Greece. Not a great start, but somewhat expected. I’m going to have to play damage control with these invaders for a little while until my Greek army can resupply and grow to a point where I feel comfortable sending them against pike-wielding tribesmen. That ‘pike’ detail is quite important too, I’ve never been especially good fighting against pike units; the key is to use ranged forces against their weak armour, but if that first battle at Trimontium taught me anything, it’s that I need more ranged forces on the whole, because the Visigoths love their pikes.

395AD Summer - Turn 2

I now really start to focus on building up my Greek army - newly anointed my First Legion. They should be ready for action by the next turn, but for now I just upgrade the units to the newest Comitatensis Spears, which should help a fair deal. I then prioritise the building of farmland; I’m currently only at 50 food, which is a rather low amount for a large nation relying on keeping an army strong. If that food runs out, my armies start to starve - and I just can’t allow that to happen with all the enemies gathering on my borders. With the turn at an end I’m dragged into a couple of Western Empire wars that I’m hoping won’t affect me too much, while I also reject joining the Middle Eastern Ghassanids against the Sassanid Empire - well aware of the force they could bring to my Eastern territories. Oh, and a small nation in Africa declares war on me - seems like a bad idea.

 My troops face the annoying Visigoth pikemen.

395AD Winter - Turn 4

After cleaning up trouble and moving troops around in the Autumn, it’s time to get serious for Winter. After seeing Alaric’s Visigoths destroy another city, I decide it’s time to take them down. Spotting an opportune moment when the armies split, I send in my First Legion to take off the head of the invasion and wipe out both Alaric and his army. At the battle of Trimontium I defeat the main Visigoth horde suffering around 600 casualties from my 2000 strong army. Not a bad first major battle, but I did lose some men stupidly - I’ll chalk it down to inexperience with the Eastern Romans for now. So that’s Alaric dealt with, around 15 years earlier than in real life and with a lot less collateral damage.

396AD Summer - Turn 6

I’ve made peace with the remaining Visigoths. They ran out of my lands, clearly fearful of my approaching army, and offered me a peace settlement. No details, just white peace; I probably could have pushed them for terms that advantaged me, but I just wanted to end hostilities and give that part of my empire a chance to rebuild before the inevitable arrival of the Huns. What’s not helping with that is a pretty terrible disease outbreak that’s spreading across my Empire at a rather alarming rate. I’ve started to put some investment into sanitation buildings like fountains, but it looks as though I’m a little late to it. The poor sanitation of the Empire was something I missed at the beginning, and now I’m paying for it. For now, I just need to stop the disease from reaching my Legions.

Alaric's army is surrounded and crushed.

Despite the disease, things are looking up. Only, when I end the turn, a full-sized army belonging to the African Garamantians attacks one of my border cities and captures it. I’ve got an army on the way, but it’s an unfortunate set back none the less.

Check back in a week for the next part of Holding Back the Hordes when I’ll take on the Garamantians and go about solving my disease problem.