Game Guide - General advices Total War: Attila Guide

Last update: 11 May 2016

Complete the prologue. In Attila prologue serves as a tutorial, which consists of information about game basics, controls, managing the country or fighting. There are many valuable information in it, completing it will be good even for veteran players of Total War series. While playing the prologue keep attention to hints that show under your advisor image. There you will find many advices and explanations about each aspect of the game.

Use the encyclopedia. In-game encyclopedia requires internet connection to work, but consists of many useful information, such as buildings available for each culture, abilities of commanders and units statistics. There you will find instruction with explanation of game mechanics and control description as well.

Utilize hints. After moving your cursor on a name, icon or number wait a moment for a window with hint to appear. If you see a plus next to the text, wait another while and further information will show. Not always are they comprehensive, but in most cases they're enough to understand what specific name or icon means.

Plan carefully. Attila is a complex game, full of nuances and random situations. Sometimes a campaign planned for next ten turns can end after two of them because of lost battle, disease or political crisis. For that reason, avoid playing hastily and try to always have a backup plan in case of trouble.

Plan only slightly ahead. There are dozens of factions fighting each other in the game. New can be born during the game, as conquered provinces free themselves, rebellions outbreak or civil wars. Your influence on their decisions and actions is limited. Because of that, it might happen that a province that you wanted to conquer after the end of current war will be destroyed in the meantime by barbarians traveling through Europe. It is another reason not to plan too much ahead. It might happen that your plans become out of date one turn after you created them. It is better to give yourself one major objective - like conquest of whole Gaul - and then realize it with small steps, while always being prepared for change of situation. Be ready both for conquest and colonization of a province and you will be able to get control of it no matter of situation.

Don't search for a winning strategy. There is no strategy in Attila that works in every situation. Sometimes it is better to conquer your neighbor, other time you should trade with him or harass him with agents. It is different to play with stationary barbarian kingdoms, and different with Huns Horde that is always on move. In general, if what you do gives positive effects, then it is a good strategy and in most cases you shouldn't change it. Only modify and improve it, if in some cases it doesn't work. When playing, look for solutions to specific problem, not method for easy victory. With the level of complication found in the game, such strategy doesn't exist.

Slowly learn the game. Attila consist of many complex mechanics. Just households and bonuses they offer are few dozens, and it is only a small fragment of characters mechanic, that has impact on battles, province management and political situation. Because of that, don't try to learn whole game at once, instead do it gradually. It is best to sacrifice one or two whole games for calm learning and experimenting. Otherwise, you will easily get lost in the amount of options, dependences, complex menus and modifiers. Even after many hours of playing you might learn something new, so really, there is no reason to rush.

Listen to your advisor. How often he appears can be changed in the options, but the presence of advisor can be very helpful. He will be the first to inform you about possible bankruptcy, show you a possibility to use a terrain in battle or suggest you to lower the taxes to fix public order. His advices can be hard to utilize and not always correspond to your plans, but it is always a good idea to keep attention to them.

Keep attention to the color of icons. Green usually means positive stuff, red negative and yellow both positive and negative. It works similar with green arrows faced up and red arrows down near armies, division icons or public order. It is not always clear what they show, but the color is an obvious signal that something good or bad is happening. No matter of color, skull means bad news.

To get more comprehensive information read description of attributes or bonuses represented by icons. Especially since developers have made mistake in some cases of colors, as with the "A Byword of Cruelty" attribute. Its icon is yellow, but all three modifiers offered by it are negative.

Don't focus on bonuses. At the beginning of the game check general details, best on the ruler or other member of ruling house. You will see, that he have lots of bonuses coming from his basic statistics, traits, skills, household, wife or province in which he currently resides. The amount of bonuses will increase with your progress in the game and will be influencing even those aspects of gameplay that you never know of. For that reason, it is futile to search for optimal skills and items set. All bonuses will be useful at some point and the number of sources where you can gain them is to wide to control them. It is wise to change the companion of the general to one that instead of more trading profits or ship speed bonus gives boost to stats of cavalry that he commands. But you shouldn't think too long whether a bonus for defense, attack or speed will be better - they will all come in handy.

Situation when you create character for specific task is exception, like a general to lead army of horse archers. In such case you should pick special bonuses so that your units will be more effective in combat. But in large, diversified armies it won't matter. If you lead all sort of units, there won't be many bonuses useless for you.

Play in window If there are 40 or more factions in the game, calculating turns can take very long. It especially affects large nations, worse computers and situations in which you see enemy armies on campaign map. Army hidden under fog of war is still being moved, but it happens far faster that in case of revealed army which every move you can see. When playing in window, you can use ALT+TAB shortcut and for a while do something else instead of watching for few minutes as faction icons change. However, you will need to check from time to time if you received diplomatic massage or have been attacked, it is the only serious inconvenience. Anyway, in both those cases the game will patiently wait for your reaction so you don't need to rush yourself.

Explore differences in controls on various maps. Moving the diplomatic map can be done with the left mouse button. Meanwhile, moving the campaign map is done with the middle button. It's a small, but troublesome difference. At first it might give you trouble, but you will quickly get used to it.

Check which game elements open the encyclopedia. You can get to game encyclopedia in two ways - by the icon on upper left corner of the screen, or with the right mouse button. The button will work if after moving cursor to a question mark will show next to him, but not always. For example, you can press the right mouse button after moving your cursor on the public order and nothing will happen. Do the same with the formation and you will immediately see its section in the encyclopedia. Because of that, experiment a lot, check earlier which categories can be found in encyclopedia. They should be a suggestion for you which icons and names will open it, and which won't.

Increase units movement speed on campaign screen. Press space during your turn. Thanks to that, all armies on Europe map will move faster. This option works during enemy turn as well, but sometimes need a few presses before it recognize the instruction.

Hold space during battle. It will show next to unit icons information about their state, such as morale level and tiredness. However, in case of large amounts of units it can be hard to read and force you to zoom o rotate the camera.