Total War Attila: Slavs, Valentines Day, and the Swansong of The Hun

Pictured: Slavic Cataphracts

About a week ago, Creative Assembly announced what looks to be the final DLC for Total War: Attila, and this one comes in with about 2 months left before the release of CA's next big title, Total War: Warhammer. It may be a little while before we see another historical title from CA, and while this DLC doesn't exactly look as though it will revitalize the game, it may be just the thing that's needed to round out Attila's lifespan. The Slavic Culture pack is a faction pack, much like those that preceded it, containing 3 new playable faction. These factions will effectively be the final missing piece in the puzzle of Attila's campaign map. Much like the other faction DLC that came before it, this one will attend to a part of the map that is otherwise quiet, without majoy playable factions present. Like those that came before it, the Slavic pack will likely shift the meta of the game, making campaigns play out differently than they had previously. This faction announcement also comes with the news that it may be free, if CA is victorious in the Make War, Not Love competition, currently running on Steam.

Those that are familiar with my blog may recall the positive review I gave The Empires of Sand DLC. While I don't always like DLC, and believe that a game charging full retail price should always ship as a complete product, I do also believe that DLC is an important part of game development, and can vastly improve a gamer's experience if handled well. I ranted angrily at Attila's release, when CA shamelessly brought out 3 DLC's in quick succession, which I felt devalued the game (note, one was a pre-order bonus, but that has its own pitfalls). Empires of Sand came much later, spacing itself out, and coming at a time when the game was growing stale. Slavic Cultures also feels like it has come at just the right time. While CA has recently released a DLC for Attila, the Age of Charlemagne, it is a separate campaign, and does not affect the main game. A change to the main campaign at this time will spice things up one last time.

Slavic pack will introduce a whole new culture to Attila. Currently, the factions in the North-East of the map use the Germanic unit roster. The Germanic roster has copped a lot of flak for being the "generic unit roster" of Attila. It is the base roster for most of the Barbarian Kingdoms, the Great Migrator factions, the Longbeard factions, and were until recently the basis of the Alans. Attila's DLC seems to have spent most of its time chasing after cookie-cutter unit rosters, and replacing them with better developed ones. The Slavic pack will replace the factions in far-east Germania, and The Steppe with Slavs, who will have their own look and feel (view the roster here).

Who you calling German?

The new factions are the Anteans, the Sclavenians, and the Venedians. The theme of these new campaigns will be building of wonders, and the desperate fight to hold off the nomadic hordes. Life in the east of the map will be hard to begin, since you are starting in the lands that the Huns will be ravening, and it looks as if CA has built in a new "Last Stand" mode, in order to help you survive those early days. Other than that, these three factions will have bonuses such as:

Antians- These guys are consummate ambushers and, and gain bonuses for fighting in woods or by rivers, but are penalized for fighting in open ground. This will likely be annoying at first, but would lead to a unique play style. Their starting position is closest to Germania, with its prodigious forests, so it might not be too bad early on.

Sclavenians- These fellas might be the easiest ones to play of the bunch, as they gain bonuses vs nomadic tribes. Given that they start in the farthest of the eastern positions, this makes sense. Also they gain bonuses to income for enemies killed, so expect them to be the most combat-intensive faction.

Venedians- This faction gets a huge bonus to farm economy, and no penalties to squalor or happiness for the presence of farms. This is cut by a penalty to their income from commerce, industry, and culture. Their starting location is farther north than any other, so they will likely avoid combat with hordes early on, but suffer from contact with the Nordic factions. I expect a slower-paced campaign, with easier food management.

The other thing to address here is the Make War Not Love competition. According to CA, if they win Sega's little competition, they'll give us this faction pack free of charge. I like it when CA does little pro bono factions for the users, and it is sporting of them to make it up to us the players to work for our supper here. You can help get this content free, simply by playing the main campaign of Attila, and fighting as many battles as you can. You cannot auto-resolve these fights, and only victories are counted. I'm currently trying out The White Huns, and I recommend that if you want to get involved, you play a migratory faction (Huns, Vandals etc.), and that you sack and burn as many towns as you can. If Total War does not win the competition, the DLC will likely cost the usual amount for a 3 faction DLC ($8AUD in my case).

I'll look at the content in greater detail once it releases, but for now, I can say that I'm happy to see one last boost to this game as it gets closer to bowing out. In spite of my occasional frustrations, I believe in CA, and in Total War as a franchise. I believe CA is a company that loves and respects its users, even when it does occasionally clash with them on some issues. Total War: Attila was a great title, and stayed strong till the end. I hope this bow out cements its place in the hearts of its fans.

Age of Charlemagne : Big Heart, Tiny Dollars

Right action is better than knowledge; but in order to do what is right, we must know what is right... So, I chose for it to be right to rock!

While I've recently been as vocal as I'm able to be over the whole TW: Warhammer fiasco, I've also been as positive and praising of TW: Attila's DLC and expansions as possible. While the early DLC angered many fans over the "Cut Content" debate, the later stuff was all pretty excellent, with Empires of Sand earning a special place in my heart (all hail the spice king!). The latest, and perhaps least expected move from CA in the lead up to next year's big release was the release of the Age of Charlemagne expansion a few days ago. The expansion was spotted in the code a little while back, and there had been speculation over what it would cover. While community responses have been mixed, I'm happy to say that I've really enjoyed the campaign and period so far, and it has given me a healthy dose of nostalgia for Medieval 2, which was a candidate for the greatest Total War game of all time to me, and many in the community.

Age of Charlemagne covers the reign of the legendary Frankish king, and acts as a great background to the Middle Ages. The period between the games focusing on Rome and the Middle Ages is often a bit of a grey area for most people, as the so called "Dark Ages" seem to have less glamour. What I liked so much about Attila is that it covered the fall of Rome with as much lavish detail as Rome 2 covered the rise. The dark and apocalyptic Attila still left a gap between itself and the easily recognizable era of the Medieval games. Considering the speculation that Medieval 3 may be the next game in Total War's historical game franchise, a campaign for Attila that helps tie those periods together is a welcome piece of content.

I'll get it out of the way by saying that the campaign is pretty small in scope, with its campaign map excluding North Africa, the Eastern Steppe, Greece, and upper Scandinavia. Instead, AoC focuses on the Carolingian Empire, the often forgotten empire that succeeded Rome as the great power in Europe. It also includes the Iberian Peninsula, and allows the players to try their luck at the Reconquista. I played as the Kingdom of Asturias because I remember one of my longest and most enjoyable campaigns in Medieval TW 2 was as the Spanish Kingdom, and this AoC campaign was such a wonderfully nostalgic throwback for me. It felt great, tying the end of Attila's main campaign to the beginning of Medieval's. Before I knew it, I was riding Jinetes in circles around my Cordoban rivals, engaging in full javelin warfare, only to eventually unlock and establish the knightly cohorts that would come to rule Spain for almost a thousand years. I did notice very quickly how limited the unit rosters were in comparison with Attila, though, it never really seemed to be that big of an issue. Each playable faction had its own idiosyncrasies, with the Franks dominating with their knights, the Avars being literally the only faction with horse archers, and the Danes fighting exclusively on foot. Pike and crossbow wielding units had disappeared, and virtually no professional romanesque armies or barbarian warbands remained, with the peasant levies taking over the main role, and elite knights monopolizing the role of warriors.

There seems to have been a lot of effort put into capturing the feeling of the early Middle Ages. The maps and unit icons all are done in an illuminated art style, contrasting with Attila's more literal unit cards. This raised an early spectre of Rome 2's ridiculous pottery artwork, but while that design was practically indecipherable (trying to select a unit from the lineup was like selecting from a row of stick men), the unit cards here are obvious and easy to recognize at a glance. It feels closer to Shogun 2, which also had a highly stylized art design, but was at least simple to interpret. The limited unit rosters also feel closer to Shogun, which makes the game simpler, though it won't have a great deal of replayability.

My biggest complaint about the DLC pack is that there are a number of really cool factions in the game that are completely unplayable. The Irish, Welsh, Slavs, and Sicilian Duchy all have really cool units. The Irish in particular have a really fleshed out army, with unique units such as Kerns and crossbowmen (the only army to retain crossbows), and yet, they are unplayable. I don't just mean they can't be played as a faction, they are not even playable as a custom battle faction. This is really weird, and feels limiting to the game's replayability factor. Modders have been swift to unlock these factions, but it feels like such a mistake on CA's part to not just unlock them for custom battles from the outset. For those pessimists out there, CA has confirmed that they will not be adding them as a further DLC, but will simply leave them locked... umm, yay?

The biggest question for my readers is, of course, is it worth it? Yes. In the tradition of TW DLC, Charlemagne's story is well crafted, and reasonably priced for what you get. It seems to be aimed at delivering three distinct stories, firstly the tale of the Franks, secondly the struggle for Iberia, and thirdly it includes Britain and the Danes. The story in the East is a little less fleshed out, with only the Avars and Eastern German duchies duking it out (see what I did there?). It tickles the right amount of nostalgia, and brings true knights in shining armour back to the TW franchise for the first time in a decade. For the $15 (AUD), the content is pretty solid, and gives us all a temporary fix of medieval madness while we wait on the next historical game to be announced. I enjoyed it, but it has almost slipped under the radar in all the excitement and controversy building up for the waaaaahhgg next year.

Total War: Warhammer, and the future of CA

The Future of Creative Assembly and Total War

By Tim Hunter

Earlier this year Creative Assembly announced one of the largest, and most impressive mergers in the history of popular culture. The idea was simple enough, and feels like something that should have been done years ago. Take Warhammer Fantasy Battles, still the most popular miniatures game played in the world, and merge it with Total War (TW), a video game series that has mastered the art of depicting gigantic battles on sweeping landscapes. The idea is almost as old as the Total War series, itself. Warhammer has given its players the ability to open their minds to vast battles, sieges, and other worlds entirely, all simulated through their imaginations. Total War simulates great battles in all their cinematic glory, allowing the player a birds-eye strategic view, but also the ability to zoom down and witness the full bloody minutiae. Game modders have made dozens of Warhammer modifications for Total War games over the years, inserting the colourful Warhammer world into the Total War game engine. With an official meeting of the two brands, it would seem like the match made in heaven has finally come to earth. However, all is not well, and gamers are already outraged by the invasion of potentially anti-consumer business practices from the companies handling the title.

I’ll begin by saying that I’m a huge fan of both franchises, and have been since childhood. While the miniatures game has lost its appeal to me, I’ve remained a staunch lover of the literature and video gaming adaptations of the franchise. The Warhammer world is grim and gritty, inventive and iconic. It has remained a unique series, while inspiring many authors of fantasy fiction with its characterful world. Its stories range from bulk fantasy schlock to some of the best-written work of the genre, especially in the hands of industry legends like Dan Abnett. Total War has also held a close place to my heart, allowing me to spend days of my time building empires, seeing history through an entertaining lens, and fighting battles in startling detail. Some of my fondest gaming memories arose from the Total War games, and even my mother encouraged me to enjoy my time with them as a teenager, since they engaged me with history and stirred my creativity. 

It is for these reasons that I, like so many fans of both series, have been shocked by the recent announcement from Total War’s publisher, Creative Assembly (CA), to launch Total War: Warhammer with a pre-order downloadable content pack (DLC) that specifically removes one of the most famous and iconic factions from the game for those who do not pre-order or pay for them post-launch, The Warriors of Chaos. People not familiar with the series might not appreciate the magnitude of this, but it might help to imagine a Star Wars game without The Empire, or Lord of the Rings without the orcs of Mordor. Putting aside the questionable practices of DLC in general, especially pre-order or day-one DLC, Warhammer fans have exploded with righteous indignation that a faction that is so iconic, so very central to the conflict of the Warhammer fictional world would be removed from the standard retail game. 

Aside from this sheer knee-jerk reaction, the problem with this announcement is that it throws into sharp contrast the questionable direction that CA and their publisher, Sega, are taking both franchises. The problem is threefold, firstly that the practice of pre-order DLC encourages consumers to purchase before the game is released, and therefore bypassing the process of reviews and consumer research. This alone should put customers on their guard. Total War: Rome 2 launched in 2013 with its own questionable pre-order bonus, and the game was plagued with bugs to the point that it was unplayable for months, leaving those who pre-ordered with a distinctly shoddy experience. Whether or not this pre-order pushing was done to bypass the unfavourable reviews, or simply to impress shareholders is unknown. 

Secondly, this content has been announced five months in advance of the game’s launch. This means that the content is clearly already built into the game, and there is no reason other than profit not to release the content along with the rest of the game. Among the greatest fears of the gaming public is that publishing companies will take a packaged product and then dice it up into smaller pieces, so as to charge a much greater fee in the long run. DLC has become a staple of the gaming industry, and can add longevity to a game purchase by updating and reinvigorating it, however, the idea of breaking up the content for DLC sales before the game is even available seems to defeat the original purpose. A world where game developers can simply remove parts of a game before release is kind of like one where an author can simply remove chapters of a book, and sell them later, claiming that they aren’t part of the core reading experience, but he’ll sell them to you if you want an expanded experience. 

The final problem with this practice is that it defies everything that CA had previously said about their release. When Total War: Warhammer was first announced, CA clearly stated that there would be four playable races, each with their own campaigns, and story lines. Given that there are about fifteen playable races in the Warhammer world, putting only four playable factions in the game seemed a little light. The Warriors of Chaos were perhaps the most conspicuously absent, since they play such a large role in the Warhammer franchise. CA’s response was that Total War: Warhammer was planned to be released as a trilogy of games, with each game expanding on the playable factions and world map. This alone seemed a little on the unusual side, and verging on profiteering, since the game would likely have to be purchased at standard retail pricing in three stages, though it was not an unheard of business practice (the Starcraft series also uses this model). For CA to announce this model, and then suddenly announce that one of the most popular Warhammer factions would be released as DLC seemed like a sudden backflip. How will the player be able to experience the full game? Will they have to buy three iterations of the same game to access all the content, or will this be DLC-based, with factions being released individually over time? It seems as though CA is trying to have it both ways, and the only loser here will probably be the consumer, stuck with a product delivered in expensive pieces rather than as a whole. 

Currently, fan outrage has been overflowing on forums and gaming websites, with community celebrities, such as Joe Vargas, expressing heartfelt outrage. CA’s business practices are likely the result of pressure from their publisher, Sega, who likely needs the TW franchise to perform financially, and to justify the rights to the Warhammer licence that they’ve paid for. However, I hope that the outrage has been heard, and that CA passes on the negative feedback and indignation of the community to Sega. With the game’s release date still five months away, it will come down to community pressure, and unity against the combined might of CA and Sega. If Sega does not relent, and the game is still financially successful, this could be the proving ground that Sega needs to make such practices standard for future game releases. Should the community outrage become a strong enough movement, and the community vote with their wallets by refusing to pre-order or buy the DLC (perhaps boycotting the game entirely), then this could be an unpleasant lesson for CA and Sega about how best to monetize their games without invoking community ire. Five months remain, a long time for this conflict to come to a head.

Geek Control 2 Major Tim: Total War Attila, All Hail The Spice King

Following on from my TW: Attila blog, the one reviewing the Empires of Sand DLC, I thought I might recount a little about my primary campaign as the Aksum. I hadn't played an Attila campaign in a while, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the EoS pack actually added factions that I had really been hanging out for, specifically ones that would challenge the Sassanians in the south-east of the campaign map. The Sassanid Empire goes pretty unchallenged throughout much of the game, and is surrounded by sycophantic tributary states that fund its rather one-sided war against the Eastern Roman Empire, all while the ERE gets violently beaten in the back of the head by marauding tribal factions. It suffices to say that the Sassanians are basically the "easy-mode" of TW: Attila. The new factions of the EoS help by putting some pressure on the Sassanians from below. I would say that the Sassanians are still the easy faction, since the EoS factions have to spend some time squabbling before turning on either the Sassanians or the ERE. Sassanian players need not despair too much, the early game will still favour them, and be pretty easy to get ahead, but if the Aksum or Hymjar manage to get over their squabbling, they could become a mid to late game problem.

The Aksum had a lot of appeal to me, mainly because I always found north-east African kingdoms to be pretty fascinating, and was always a bit disappointed that Africa as a whole seemed to be relegated to the background of most TW games. There is a rather spiky modern misconception that Africa is a homogeneous continent (almost as if it were one country), and that it is technologically backward, or inferior to other parts of the world. This misconception spreads into the general view of Africa historically, with some people thinking that Africa was always behind the rest of the world, even in the dark ages when Europe's highest level technology was wells with less than 10% feces. TW has had a bit of a sad history of ignoring Africa and China, both of which have amazing cultures and military histories, so it was gratifying to see at least one of those issues addressed.

 

Pictured: Some happy African gentlemen sharing their culture with Romans.

 

The Aksum campaign revolves around your position on the coast of Africa, and the spice trading lanes of the Indian Ocean. My nerd alarms went off within seconds as the game started making one "spice" reference after another. The missions had coy little referential names, such as: "The Spice Must Flow". I've always enjoyed having a bit of a roleplaying aspect to my gaming experiences, even if it is mostly just in my imagination, so I spent a little time trying to figure out who "I" am in this game. My first thoughts were of Xaro Xhoan Daxos from Game of Thrones, and it seemed pretty accurate to the situation.

 

 But after looking at myself in the mirror, trying to be half as cool as that guy, and making a few attempts at sucking my gut in, I decided that I was probably more like this guy:

 All hail, The Spice King!

It seemed pretty accurate, and besides, I'm basically playing this campaign with a Harkonnen level of cunning and viciousness. 

The key to getting started with an Aksum campaign is to decide off the bat who you'd like to fight, and how you'd like to theme yourself. Part of what appeals to me about CA's DLC packs, as opposed to free generic factions, is that the rosters have a lot of variety, and the campaign has a lot of missions and optional ways to play. If you choose to fight your way north and betray your neighbors, and the ERE, you'll have a tough time of it, but you can secure your first province and start pressing on towards Aegypt, and all the young Cleos therein. However, the game kind of encourages you to start out by targeting the Arabian peninsula, and with good reason: the spice routes to India are located all along the coast. You have powerful friends in India, all of whom would love to see you grow as their sole trading partner, and fill your mutual coffers through a spice monopoly (They're basically House Corrino).

Typically, you'll find yourself compelled toward the east, as the campaign is kind of going that way. Fortunately, the Hymjar and Sassanians are all kind of hostile towards you already, and capturing the spice ports will come with the kind of rewards that make the whole endeavor so worth it. Spice ports provide a ton of cash, and make you a sexy trading partner to other nations. Plus, it is pretty obvious that the game wants you to go this way, so unlike other factions, the Aksum can recruit some pretty excellent units from the spice ports, which I think most people will use as the backbone of their armies. These spice units carry unique Indian weapons that are earned as part of your deal with your eastern partners, so it makes your army stronger, and look cooler, so you can be all like:

The other major decision to make at the start of your campaign is which religion to go with. The Aksum start out as Eastern Christians, which makes it easy to buddy up with the Romans and their protectorates. Until you start pressing into the Mediterranean there won't be anyone to fight except the Sassanians or Romans, so the choice is kind of linked. If you stick with Christianity, you should almost certainly wage war on the Hymjar and Sassanians, but if you are contemplating making peace with these guys and going north into Roman territory, you might consider the alternative, Semitic Paganism. The bonuses are both pretty good, and the opposing temple forms offer pretty cool advantages (Christian churches reduce corruption or improve farming, while the Pagan temples can add moral and unit buffs). Where this is more of an issue than other factions is in the endgame unit selections. The EoS factions all have two sets of top tier units, differentiated by your faction's religious choices. The Christian path nets you access to some decent top tier spearmen, and some badass cavalry (basically African knights of St George), while the Pagan path gives you some cool stealth infantry, and more tribal-esque warriors.

 

Oh yeah, these guys look like friendly chaps

It all depends on what you really value, and I actually changed my mind about half way into the campaign. I really wanted those cool tribal warriors, but found that the neutral units, especially the Spice Warriors and Spice Guard, kind of neutralized the need for top-tier infantry. Ultimately, sticking with Christianity helped out with my relations with the ERE when I finally declared peace with the Sassanids, and access to powerful cavalry that were kind of lacking in my campaign. 

I'll tell you more of the adventures of the Spice King soon, but for now, if you are thinking of picking up the DLC, or specifically playing as the Aksum, hopefully this whetted your appetite and gave you some starter ideas. Go forth, son of the Ibex, and make the spice flow!

Geek Control 2 Major Tim: Total War: Attila, Empires of Sand

Empires of Sand: Total War: Attila, and the return of factional DLC

A Review by Timothy Hunter

 

Today saw the release of Total War: Attila’s latest downloadable content pack (DLC), Empires of Sand, and the content is highly-polished, but also a revitalizing set of new experiences for the game, which is reaching the end of its tenure as Total War: Warhammer approaches. Total War: Attila is possibly my favourite entry in the Total War (TW) franchise, and was a vast improvement on the fiasco that was the Total War: Rome 2 launch. Attila released clean, with nowhere near the degree of bugginess as its predecessor, and from a gameplay standpoint it was more balanced, and played more smoothly. It also had its own share of controversy, with rampant DLC spamming in the month following release. As a mouth-foaming TW fanboy, but also a savvy PC gamer, I was both overjoyed to see an expansion to Attila, but also nervous about getting ripped-off by DLC. 

Total War: Attila was excellent on release, with a good spread of factions, focussing mostly on the twin Roman empires, their Sassanid rival, and the migrating hordes that rampaged westward, leading to the collapse of Rome. It is one of my favourite periods of history, and it gave the player the chance to be the bulwark of civilization as the Romans, or experience the full-blooded catharsis of burning it all to the ground and salting the earth as the migrating barbarians. Add to that the experience of revitalizing the Persian Empire in the form of the Sassanids, and you’ve got the core experience of a fantastic game. The DLC for the game has all been exceptionally high quality, with the new factions all being polished, and offering new playstyles and campaign experiences. However, Creative Assembly (CA) had profit margins to meet, and was likely under pressure from its publisher, Sega. The DLC started with the Viking Forefathers, which came free to any that chose to pre-order the game. Pre-order DLC always piqued my suspicion, as it meant that the content was being specifically extracted from the game to help push pre-orders, or as I like to call them, “pre-review orders”. I took to it hesitantly, but couldn’t resist the thought of purging the world with that sweet, sweet Nordic fury. The DLC was also available for post-release purchase, so at least it wasn’t playing the scummy “exclusive content” card that PC gamers revile. All seemed well, but within two weeks of launch CA announced the Longbeards DLC. This is where it started to go downhill. I bought the Longbeards pack, and was again satisfied with the quality and polish that had clearly gone into it, but was already getting pissed at the frequency and speed that it was coming out. Releasing a content pack for purchase only two weeks after launch says to me, “this was totally part of the original game, but Sega saw a way to choke an extra $10 out of you, so we removed it.” This was the final bit of goodwill I had left, and when CA announced the Celtic Culture Pack two weeks later, that is three DLC packs in the space of a month after release, I and virtually the whole TW player-base collectively stared down CA and said, “Up with this we will not put.” The Celtic Culture Pack received a critical drubbing from the community, in spite of the fact that it was clearly a well-designed. 

The problem with Attila’s DLC was that it was clearly all great, but released far too quickly, and too close to the game’s original release. It devalued the original purchase, by making it seem that the consumer had bought an incomplete product, and that they were instead being drip-fed the full game, paying more in total than a full game should cost. What’s worse, releasing DLC so frequently caused a spree of corrupted save files, since the game had to update to accommodate the new factions. Considering TW’s legendarily long campaign times (dozens if not hundreds of hours to complete a campaign), this meant that during the first few weeks of the game’s release that Attila’s bug-free reputation came under severe criticism. The critical backlash also comprised a near-community wide boycott of the Celtic Culture Pack. This seems to have sent CA into damage control, and no factional DLC was released for months. CA did release a campaign DLC pack for Attila, which was accepted by the community, largely on the grounds that it was not just another factional DLC, and it was given a reasonable stretch of time before being added to the game. 

All this brings us to our current situation. Empires of Sand feels like it has been timed perfectly. My biggest concern with the rampant DLC spamming in the month following Attila’s release was not that we would see too much DLC, but that we would end up seeing none at all, and end up with an incomplete game. Attila’s map felt a bit barren (even before you introduce it to Attila and his ravening hordes), and I personally felt it was still so western-centric, with most of the playable factions concentrated in Europe. The East of the map was the grudge match grounds for the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanids. I genuinely believed that some factions in the North African and Arabian regions would spice up the game, and with Total War: Warhammer approaching, it looked like that end of the map would go unfinished. Enter Empires of Sand, which feels like a perfect closing act for TW: Attila. The game was growing staler with its age, and Empire of Sand has added a little new flavour to the map that felt truly missing. The new Desert Kingdom factions comprise the Aksum, the Himyar, and the Tanukhids. All three factions feel well-thought out, and not just reskins or half-assed clones of armies already in the game. 

The Aksum are a north-east African tribe, and are themed around their role as spice merchants, monopolizing the trade route to India. As such, their unique campaign centres around completing missions to improve trade relations, secure resources to trade with India, and mercilessly crush your trade rivals and hear the lamentations of their stock marketers. If all that talk of trade has you fearing Phantom Menace flashbacks, don’t despair, much of the profit comes at the tip of your khanda. The faction is well-modelled, and cool looking, with awesome silk outfits and unique Indian weapons. It is gratifying also to finally play an African faction in Attila, one that is savvy, technologically advanced, and with a unique campaign goal: making the spice flow.

Next are the Himyar, and these guys are the new kids on the block in the Arabian Peninsula. In the vanilla game, the Sassanid Empire goes all but unchallenged in its Persian realm (it is basically the game’s easy mode to play Sassanid). Now, the Himyar rise in the south to challenge that rule. Hymyar get a number of cool desert-themed units, including axmen with terrifying silver masks, reminiscent of the immortals from the film 300, or the sons of the harpy from Game of Thrones. Their campaign not only brings you into conflict with the Sassanids, but also sticks you with the ticking time-bomb of an ancient dam that threatens to burst and wipe you out if you don’t pay careful attention to maintaining it. This is what John Oliver meant when he said that the best way to make routine maintenance of infrastructure seem sexy was add in the threat of it exploding violently in full HD. 

Finally, we meet the Tanukhids. These guys represent the latest horde faction to enter TW: Attila. Horde factions are kind of what sets TW: Attila apart from previous entries in the TW franchise, and they represent migrating people without homes. Much like the Huns, these guys will probably be most fun to play while in their horde mode, rather than settling down, and make them great for action hounds that love to watch the “civilized” world burn. Their gimmick is that they gain food from sacking cities, making it more of an imperative than a leisure sport as it is for the Huns. I like this trait, which makes more sense in the desert, where food and grazing lands would be harder to come by, making your horde’s quest for food more understandable. 

Should you buy this? I feel like CA has finally earned this one. The DLC for TW: Attila was a step and a half above the content packs from previous TW games, where it often felt like you were paying for nothing but cheap reskins that a modder could have made in a weekend. Attila’s DLC has all been uniformly high quality, but just felt like it was being force on the player too hard, and too fast. This lot has been given time to brew, and more particularly, it feels like the timing is just right to refresh the game one last time before Total War: Warhammer goes live. You’ll make up your own mind what you value as a consumer, but as someone that has both loved, and been stung by DLC before, I can say that this is one I will spend a good while enjoying while the storm that is Warhammer builds on the horizon.