Preparations to war | War Total War: Attila Guide

Last update: 11 May 2016

Before getting into war and fighting few battles you must make some preparations. They can be divided into two categories - backup and army, best in that order. Sometimes it is impossible, other time situation allows you to change the order, but it is most comfortable to start with backup. It will allow you to avoid many trouble in future.

Backup is a phase in which you prepare your economy and stabilize country before starting a military conflict. It requires you to expand your country for upcoming war. You must gather money for buildings, soldiers, mercenaries and agents, and to maintain the created forces in the future. You must increase food production and make sure that it will hold through whole campaign, which will allow you to replenish decimated armies. You must place buildings, that allow you to recruit soldiers, upgrade them, increase recruitment speed and making agents. Finally, you must increase or stabilize public order. Army is an important factor for its growth, so it's moving out might lead to sudden break of civilian morale.

Of all those elements money is most important, as having it allows you to satisfy all other war needs. You can spend it onboard or gather it in case of upcoming conflict. If it's the first case, then you should invest in economical buildings, that generate more money and allow to recruit better units. The second can be done everywhere. It will be enough to have one province where you will create armies which will march to other parts of the country.

As for smaller preparations, you should develop military technologies and secure other nobles loyalty, so that in case of loss or long war they won't make any trouble. In theory you should secure loyalty of your allies, dig the trust of enemies to each other and similar, but the larger the country, the harder it is to do it. Thus, this phase is available only for small countries, with whom they still want to talk.

Second phase, army, means chartering regular formations and mercenaries. It is better to base armies on regular formations and leave mercenaries for hire on critical situations, like the lack of archers or cavalry before an important battle. Although the choice of mercenaries is usually much wider than regular formations, the cost of hiring and keeping them is much higher. Mercenaries are great as a cannon folder, formations send to most bloody battles or a quick support in situations when you immediately need additional forces. But you shouldn't make them the main part of your armies. It is a too expensive tactic, even in case of large countries.

Don't forget about training and upgrading your formations if you have provinces in which you can do it. A better armor or weapon for single formation is not much, but five archer formations with better bows can make a serious difference on the battlefield.

Part of your army are, although not directly, agents as well. Thanks to them you can create some chaos among enemy ranks, learn more about enemy forces, sabotage supplies or lower the authority of enemy generals. All three agent types are able to generate chaos among enemy, so in case of war it is a good idea to make use of all of them.

Every army must be lead by general, and a general should be selected adequately to requirements of campaign. For example, there are skills, traits and households that give bonuses when fighting barbarian tribes, which is useful for both empires generals when attacking barbarian provinces. Other give defensive bonuses, which might be crucial when protecting a settlement from enemy assault. List of skills, traits and households is large and varied, so you will always have from what to choose

You should order your leaders based on rank. Those with higher rank, which have more traits, skills and households, should lead main, most powerful forces. Lower rank generals should serve as backup, marching behind main forces and, if needed, help during battle. Thanks to that they will gain experience, but most heaviness of fights will be on their more experienced colleagues. When preparing for battle, you should have one experienced and few inexperienced generals on the bench. They will be useful in case of death of other commander. Thanks to that, a single lost battle won't lead to catastrophe, and a fallen general will be immediately replaced by another one.