Some might question the prominence and, indeed, starting strength of some of these factions, yet, after all, it is a game, not an accurate historical simulation. The player has the choice of playing a variety of factions either half of the Empire, the Sassanids, the Huns and a whole swathe of barbarian factions depending on which DLC packs one has: The Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Suebi, Franks, Alans, Burgundians, Saxons, Allamans, Langobards, Picts, Ebdanians, Caledonians, Jutes, Danes and Geats. In the west, Honorius is on the throne in Milan, whilst in the east, Arcadius rules in Constantinople.
The game kicks off in AD 395, immediately after the death of Theodosius the Great – the last emperor to rule a unified Roman Empire before its division into East and West. I would certainly question the tone of the opening narrative, which is rather tiresomely sanctimonious and moralising. Many, for example, might question the logic of a technology tree in which the Romans almost seem to rediscover past talents from the earlier empire, and, in which, by adopting religious enhancements, older technologies are forgotten. It is, of course, an approximation and it is also created with the idea of playability in mind, and thus liberties need to be taken. We can’t expect complete historical accuracy – it’s impossible to simulate the complexity of reality – but with Attila we get a satisfying approximation of the initial set of circumstances and existing conditions. This game too has its flaws and is not as perfectly balanced as it could be, yet its strengths are so great that it ultimately shines through.Īs with all Total War games, it is the attention to detail that makes Attila such a wonderfully immersive experience. Total War: Attila makes up for all those shortcomings, including many of the shortcomings of Total War: Rome II – a flawed masterpiece in itself. Yet it was, I felt, poorly balanced and unsatisfying. The team at Creative Assembly have gone there before – the 2005 Barbarian Invasion expansion of Rome Total War I dealt with the same period of history and, indeed, contained many of the same ideas present in Attila, such as the existence of horde factions – groups with the ability to pack up and move as a group, thus not being rooted to a city or province. Total War: Attila is a game I have dreamed about for decades: a grand simulation of a period of history that is all too often neglected. Even as late as the 450s and 460s, had the Vandals been driven from Africa, a task which should have been far easier than it was made to look, the west might have found its feet again, though things were already quite far gone by this stage. There were many turning points and missed opportunities.
Clumsy policy, poor leadership, lack of responsiveness, in-fighting were all factors which had plagued the Empire throughout its history. The unique combination of internal and external pressures faced by the Western Empire, some of which were all too deliberately deflected from the east, were not insurmountable. Yet it didn’t collapse then, and it needn’t have done so in the fifth century.
Had the Empire collapsed during the third century “crisis” we might have assumed, with historical perspective, that this was no less inevitable. The what-ifs and may-have-beens are innumerable and incalculable, yet there was certainly nothing inevitable about what happened. The fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century is a problem I’ve spent far too much of my life thinking about, including doing a PhD on the subject.
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