Here they are, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Four? Drop it. There are hundreds of thousands of them, and they multiply faster than your slaves manage to clean up after the master's orgy. As you finish your first glass of wine in the morning, a dozen more Horsemen of the Apocalypse jump into the saddle and look forward to bursting into your villa, slaughtering the servants, quartering you alive and burning the whole house for the glory of Heaven. Because the roof that cannot be rolled up and put in a cart is the roof of a tomb, and the tomb is inhabited exclusively by the dead.

Approximately such ominous predictions were probably listened to by the imperial Roman nobility, basking in luxury, at the end of the 4th century of our troubled era. That's when it starts.

The air filled with smoke and blood

Total War: Attila did not become a "named" part of the series, as where the campaigns were based from and to on the adventures of a cunning Corsican. Attila inspired by another page in the history of the series total war- addition Barbarian Invasion, and even dedicated to the same era, which foreshadowed one of the blackest nightmares of the civilized world. Only here this era was shown in all its perishable splendor. And with all the modesty of visual means.

The small pile on the left is the Huns' camp. In addition to production functions, it is useful in that the units in it do not suffer from the vagaries of the weather. Even from frost!

But the most noticeable difference from Rome 2- artistic. It catches the eye right from the splash screen in the main menu: against the backdrop of a red glow from a distant flame, endless hordes are jumping, militant Mongolian music is playing. Demonization in the flesh, although the Huns, the perpetrators of the Great Migration of Nations, plunged Europe into the darkness of the "Dark Ages" not for occult reasons. But who cares when the world collapses?

Each of the playable factions was provided with a mournful introduction, where the player is reminded: comrade, the hour of reckoning for free days is approaching. Or vice versa - we will burn the Eternal City, we will trample the crops! On the campaign map, the colors have faded, red and black predominate, and fire is blazing everywhere as a symbol of reckless crushing power. Fire colorfully devours the lands that you chose to completely destroy. The boundaries of the zone of aggression around the army are marked by dancing flames.

In battle, fires are expanse. Archers with fire arrows burn not only enemies under fire, not only houses and barns - even the trees in the forest where the skirmishers are hiding will flare up from arrows flying through the foliage.

The eye will not rejoice! In dynamics, the fire is even more impressive. And very useful, by the way, if you do not want to leave potential enemies in the rear.

At the same time, the desired mood is still not achieved with the success that the developers had hoped for. Partly - because of the caution of artists who did not dare to go against reality and, for example, add crimson tones to the sky. Partly - because the game is more complicated than usual, but only thanks to the wrong properties at all Total War: Attila that advertised in the first place.

My name is Horde

At the forefront in the action of the new total war- of course, the decaying Western Roman Empire and its enemies, the Hun tribe that came from Mongolia. Byzantium will have time to mothball and fall only in the 15th century, all sorts of Franks, Saxons, Goths are just a dancer for the people of Attila, and the eastern empire of the Sassanids missed all the fun and went to be devoured by the future Arab Caliphate.

That is why Rome and the Huns are played completely differently than before.

In 395, the Eternal City owned almost all of Europe, excluding Scandinavia, Northern Germany and the territory of the future Scotland and Ireland. But the greatness of Rome is fragile: unwashed savages from all sides try the borders to the tooth, and someone gnaws at the empire from the inside. The army of Rome is small, incomes are negligible, and the popularity of the Senate and Caesar himself in the regions is falling. The elite is split, control is slipping away... in short, playing as Rome will turn into a painful struggle with the rules of history. Just have time to fight off the barbarians, retreat into the depths of the possessions and frantically count denarii, with a shudder foreseeing the cost of provisions.

The symbols are now even clearer, but it can be difficult to separate the infantry from the spearmen in the crush.

The faction of the Huns is difficult not so much to manage as to understand. Steppe nomads are really nomads, they do not have cities, but they cannot capture. Because the horde! In fact, this trick has already been used in Barbarian Invasion, and in Attila just slightly modified.

Each army of the Huns (as well as other nomads) serves as a mobile city, where yurts for various purposes gather and the Hun hordes train. In order for the "parking" functions to work, the horde will have to be camped. To do this, you should keep a quarter of the movement points of the army: that is, advance three quarters of the route - and pitch tents.

At the same time, a lot of little things pop up that could not get into the field of view. So, several hordes cannot be kept in the same area at the same time: they quarrel and receive powerful fines to the already meager income, and they eat beyond measure. It is better to keep the hordes at a distance and bring them to the equestrian fist only for mass battles.

In terms of income, standard building income is always higher when the horde is encamped. Many incomes are inaccessible to her: from trade, for example. The method of earning recommended by the game - raids on every little thing with a demand for tribute - works badly: the tribute is ridiculous, barely enough for travel, and the tributaries strive to make an alliance with your enemies and start the war again. It takes valuable moves, resources, and people to reason with them again.

Close combat always turns into a dump. This is especially dangerous for the cavalry, which will be taken apart for offal in no time, as soon as it stops.

The military doctrine of the Huns is a complete equestrian fetishism. Mounted archers, mounted swordsmen: why brake infantry when there is maneuverable cavalry? That is why battles on behalf of the Huns are demanding on fine motor skills. Run, give a couple of volleys, run away; swoop in, clanging blades, and gallop away, dropping manure. Even small villages become a cemetery for small Hun forces, because there is nowhere to turn around, and the enemy has many opportunities to arrange a dump and tie down the actions of the cavalry. We will mournfully keep silent about the siege: more than one company of cavalry found its stupid death at the gates.

The game for the Huns is perhaps as intense as for the Roman Empire, but much more mobile, flexible and multivariate. If you want - rush to the Caucasus, butt heads with the Sassanids, if you want - gnaw on Byzantine merchants, if you want - a hooligan in the Gallic forests. Everywhere it will be equally difficult for the Huns, and equally interesting for us.

Who will remember the old

Something in Total War: Attila returned on the urgent advice of the public (fans simply knocked down the rating on Metacritic). For example, a family tree. Now there is more fuss with domestic politics, and the promotion of the right people and the persecution of the unnecessary have become a routine.

Similar dilemmas will confront you if you like the path of intrigue and careerism. The set of actions is not rich, but the consequences for the elite are great.

Diseases and epidemics have returned in a new form: now they do not fall on you "by the will of the gods", but serve as a direct and logical consequence of poor sanitation and high pollution. For example, good workshops and populated urban centers generate more and more garbage and sewage, and wells, as well as ditches and other primitive means of sewage disposal, will be useful to neutralize them. One more headache.

The professional growth of commanders is now expressed by a full-fledged skill tree (armies got the same joy at their disposal). Among the perks are both regular increases in zeal, prestige and cunning, as well as percentage increases to any parameters, whether it be the maintenance of cavalry units or the speed of movement on the campaign map. True, these bonuses are distributed along the tree stupidly, and some extra perks will have to be taken to get to more useful things.

A family tree is more like a return of an old debt than a generous gift. To whom illegitimate children?

But as for the promised brutal street fighting with barricades and crushing in the squares, it did not grow together. That is, formally there are barricades in the game, they are allowed to be built, but not so much as to correct the course of enemy troops. And the streets, perhaps, are too much to make a cunning maze out of them.

But still, the rules of the siege have changed a bit: the blockade of the city has lost its meaning, since it lasts ten or even all twenty moves. Help will eat you all the baldness, until the townspeople finally surrender, and the military ranks will noticeably thin out.

The story of how the next part of Total War, which does not have any cardinal changes in stock, suddenly managed to significantly shake up the established gameplay

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Times have changed. A calm and relatively stable era of Roman rule was replaced by a chaos of change. Huge hordes of Huns are advancing from the Sarmatian steppes to Europe - bloodthirsty nomads who dream of world domination and live by robberies. Along with the Huns came a change in climate: winters became colder and crops poorer. Even the most ferocious Germanic tribes are forced to leave their homes and send them to the west in search of a better life. Thus began the Great Migration of Nations. That's how it starts.

Surprisingly, but Creative Assembly managed to amazingly accurately convey the atmosphere of this gloomy era. Compared to, where the main mechanisms were significantly redesigned, there are much fewer changes. At the same time, paradoxically, the gameplay has changed very much, and it has changed precisely in accordance with historical realities.

The first thing to say is that for the first time in a long time, the gameplay for different types of factions differs dramatically. The main campaigns went, of course, to the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. The future Byzantium is in a twofold position. On the one hand, she is the biggest player on the map. It has the strongest economy with a bonus from each controlled settlement at the end of the turn, and also the largest army. On the other hand, it also owns a rather large territory, and it is precisely its lands that lie in the path of all the numerous barbarian hordes moving from the East. That is why all fans of large and developed civilizations should pay attention to it. The campaign here promises to be challenging, interesting and eventful.

We advise only true lovers of challenges and severe trials to take control of the Western Roman Empire. Even in the column "Basic difficulty" when choosing a faction, there is an unambiguous "Legendary" here. And indeed - the heir of the great Rome will have a hard time. The territory under their control is huge, the treasury is practically empty, corruption is rampant, and the beaten and crippled legions can be counted on the fingers. At the same time, the barbarians, greedy for profit, are in huge quantities a rod on the rich lands of the Romans from all sides. It is very difficult to keep and save something in such a situation. What to say about the seizure of new territories.

The third most powerful territorial power was the Sassanid Empire of the Persians. The gameplay for her, by the way, is most reminiscent of what we saw in. A large and calm territory, a lot of satrapies and ample opportunities for territorial expansion. Among other things, the Persians are perfectly drawn, and their cities generally resemble something from oriental fairy tales.

The most controversial faction unexpectedly turned out to be the Huns themselves. Initially, in an interview with representatives Creative Assembly told us that they would not be a playable faction. However, they were made not just playable, but the main faction in general. A personal story was even written for them and separate videos were shot. It's funny, but the campaign begins even before the birth of Attila, so we will gradually observe how, with incredible pathos, the future leader will be born, gain strength, and only then begin to conquer everyone and everything. This is where the main problem of the Huns lies: their campaign is too scripted.

Huddling in the back of a map with three armies and waiting for the birth of a great commander is incredibly boring. You cannot occupy cities, and robberies and recruiting mercenaries do not always help you survive the winter. You can, of course, set up a tent camp, making the army, in fact, a mobile city, but this does not fundamentally change the situation. By the time Attila matures, the entire map will have already been divided and plundered by the resettling peoples, and bonuses, such as an increase in the morale of the army for each faction that is at war with, often lead to the fact that absolutely everyone considers it their duty to kill every Hun they meet. This, however, is still much less of a problem than the scripting of the campaign, because if without the love of overcoming difficulties you can hardly be called a real fan, then the artificial imposition of following the story is rather annoying. It would be better, after all, the Huns remained a faction, which cannot be played.

It was also possible to take minor factions like the Franks and Saxons under your command. Here, in general, everything is standard: we are slowly growing and increasing our international influence, simultaneously fulfilling small intermediate goals. The Franks, for example, can start building their empire much earlier than history suggests.

The most interesting were suddenly campaigns for migrating peoples like the Goths and the Vandals. They start the game with just a couple of armies that have left their native places in order to capture some territory and settle on it. The local gameplay is the exact opposite of the intense and brutal survival of the Roman empires. We merrily travel through the Roman villages light, plundering and burning small towns, trying to crush the few legions in numbers and not stumble upon an enemy ambush. Some city can be captured, some left painlessly, and at this stage there is no need to take special care of either religious preferences or the economy - an idyll. The beauty of these campaigns is that they provide a huge number of opportunities and options. Do you want to repeat the success of the Vandals and get to Carthage itself? No problem! Play pranks in the east? Easily! Arrange merry pogroms in Western Rome? Easy peasy!

The author of these lines conducted an interesting experiment: having chosen a vandal army, he moved directly to Italy and ... in some 15 moves captured not only the Eternal City itself, but the entire Apennine Peninsula. Moreover, deftly making alliances with all the barbarians and separatists surrounding the dying empire, they managed to pull all the forces of the Romans from their own borders. As a result, already on the thirtieth turn, Italy was completely assimilated, its inhabitants were satisfied, and the cities were rebuilt, despite the fact that the fire of war was blazing around and most of the neighbors were suffocating from robberies and violence. It turned out to be so exciting to play for the Vandals that your obedient servant chose their state for the main campaign. By the way, the migrating peoples turned out to have very interesting features. So, for example, the same vandals receive increased profits from robberies (incredibly convenient support for the economy), and the Ostrogoths have bonuses when fighting the Romans and can even hire Roman troops.

In contrast to the protracted and measured wars for territories, chaos reigns here on the global map. Around someone is constantly robbed, cities are captured, factions appear and disappear, and many settlements are ruthlessly wiped off the face of the earth. This, by the way, is one of the main features of "". The city can not only be captured or plundered, but also completely destroyed. This is accompanied by colorful animation, reminiscent of the drop of a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. After that, charred ruins gape in its place, and in order to found it again, someone will have to spend a fair amount of money and send an army there as settlers. This is very expensive, so there are more and more such ruins on the map - the AI ​​is not distinguished by special ceremony.

Unfortunately, he does not differ sometimes and mind. If on the tactical map he feels much smarter (he clearly forms in a square when surrounded from the flank and competently uses cavalry), then on the global nomads behave extremely ambiguously. At times, they are very clever at avoiding open battles and holding back the armies of the defenders, and under certain circumstances, they can unexpectedly surround and destroy the player's grouping. At the same time, however, in front of our eyes, during such maneuvers, four armies of the Huns began to frantically rush through the winter swamps and the turbulent Black Sea, where they safely perished from non-combat losses and exhaustion.

These changes are by no means limited. The game has significantly added all sorts of small details (which, as if, were not enough anyway). There's a Sanitation stat to keep an eye on, armies now have their own loyalty bar, and warlords and governors now gain experience points that can be invested in various skills in the talent tree. Religion also plays an important role. The timely adoption of Christianity can decide the fate of the entire country in the future. The main change, however, was the political life within their own faction. To say that it was complicated is to say nothing. Moreover, if additional control tools are usually useful, then the abundance of details and the need to monitor the relationship between faction members seem like overkill and overload the already rich in nuances of the game.

Periodically, members of the ruling family suddenly start a squabble with one of your generals, and the ruler has to smooth out conflicts at the cost of his own influence. And someone will definitely be offended. If the offended person was also an important provincial governor (a new important feature of territorial administration) or a pumped-up military leader, then the civil war unleashed by him can result in significant problems. Wards have skill branches, satellites, a huge number of features and parameters. They can be appointed to positions and awarded orders. All this fuss, which only becomes more over time, seems extremely redundant and unnecessary.

The tactical component has also undergone changes. So, among the barbarian units, you can often meet women, and the formations have become much larger. Moreover, they must be used without fail - otherwise the units can become completely uncontrollable. The idea of ​​barricades and stakes was continued, and the benefits from them became much greater. Fire plays an important role in the game. Fire arrows do more damage, but from now on you need to be extremely careful with them. A tree accidentally located in the line of fire can catch fire, and from it the fire will spread to the nearest buildings, eventually setting fire to a good half of the city. Moreover, the buildings that burned down during the assault will then have to be repaired on the global map.

Total War: Attila is the sequel to Creative Assembly's popular strategy series and one of the best games of the first half of 2015. In our review, we gave it 8 points out of 10. In this article, we have collected the most popular questions about the game and answered them.

How to play

The goal of the game for the barbarians is simple and global: go through all the lands of the world, robbing, devastating and burning everything in the bud. If you choose a more civilized state, you have to fight off the nomads, and then go on the counteroffensive.

What's new

While in previous games you first built your empire, in Attila in many cases you start the game with already developed civilizations. The massive kingdoms in Attila will have to defend their own lands, the barbarians will have to plunder their neighbors, and the nomadic Huns will have to walk across Europe like a swarm of locusts.

Your rule may also be threatened from within the country. You will be represented in the campaign by members of your ruling family, whose loyalty is bought by appointments and marriages. Balance is important in governing: by keeping everything under your heel and cracking down on opponents, you bring tyranny closer, and using a carrot only convinces supporters of your weakness.

Attila's most notable innovation is the hordes. The horde mechanic allows the player to create mobile settlements. When a horde is on the move, it is no different from a traditional army. However, at any moment this army can settle down and start training troops and learning new technologies. More than half of the game's factions, including the fearsome Huns, can turn into hordes.

Where to buy and download

You can buy the game on Steam.

When will the pirate come out

Gmbox does not support piracy.

How to play online

Online play is available in the licensed version of the game.

As in Rome 2, the game's multiplayer features both individual battles and a campaign mode that takes place on the same map as the single-player mode. Also in multiplayer you can participate in nine historical battles.

Total War: Attila crashes, what should I do?

If every time you start the game it gets stuck on the loading screen and sometimes returns you to the desktop, update your video card drivers.

If you get error 53, disable the antivirus firewall and start the game. This error occurs due to the fact that the program does not allow to exchange information with the game server.

If the game does not launch at all, check the integrity of the game files on Steam.

When will the patch come out

For Total War: Attila, two patches have already been released: one on February 4, and the other on February 25. If the first patch contains mainly performance improvements, gameplay fixes and patches that treat constant crashes from the game, then the second one adds new content to the game, fixes the balance, improves the interface and optimizes the game. When the next patch will be released is still unknown, however, most likely, it will be released along with the new DLC.

Where are the saves

Example path: C:\Users\*username*\AppData\Roaming\The Creative Assembly\Attila\save_games

What to build

Different factions differ from each other in starting conditions and gameplay in general, so there is no universal development path. The economy of the Romans, for example, is in a bad state at the start, so when playing as them and getting a break between barbarian raids, it is worth considering the construction of trade buildings. It is better for the Huns, who do not have the opportunity to settle down, to divide into hordes and develop them separately.

All factions, however, should think about the construction of buildings that improve sanitation in the regions - this will help prevent the plague.

How to move or change the capital

No way. Even after migration, your capital will be the first settlement you occupy.

How to defeat the Huns

After several victories against Attila, you will receive a message saying that Attila's next defeat will be his last. After defeating him again, another message will appear confirming his death. Such a loss will reduce the ability of the Huns to produce armies and allow you to defeat the nomads.

How to unlock all factions

Only 10 factions are available in the main game. The remaining nine are unlocked through the purchase of three DLC (Culture Pack) sets: Viking Forefathers, Longbeards and Celts.

How to appoint a governor

Only male members of your faction can be appointed to the position of governor. Go to the "Family" tab in the faction window, select the required character and transfer it to the position from the list panel on the right.

How to change religion

Change is possible if 35% of your population are representatives of the religion you need. After that, open the "Factions" window, go to the "Summary" tab and click on the "Convert" button next to a specific religion. The destruction of temples of your current religion, for example, Christian cathedrals in the Western Roman Empire, will help speed up this process.

Why are barricades needed?

Barricades are used in sieges to protect your cities. True, they are placed only in predetermined places and are not very durable.

Where to watch political events

Political events after their first appearance can be re-opened by clicking on them in the upper right corner.

Where to get wood

Barter wood with a faction that has stocks, or capture a city near which it is. Then build the building needed to mine it.

There is something intriguing in the projects of irreversible decline, collapse and even total degradation, because as they say: “breaking is not building”, and indeed, any story ends sometime. It was to these conclusions that the developers from Creative Assembly came, unanimously believing that it was time to bring the Total War Rome real-time strategy franchise to the finish line. Fortunately, creatives are not some triarchs with their favorite , so instead of a dull forcing of the line, we got the opportunity to put our hands on the already skinny necks of the Roman Empires, completely rotten in diseases and corruption. Like the Opposing Force from the half-life universe, we are offered to look at the events of the fall of great empires from the side of the eternal antagonists of the Romans - the barbarian tribes of the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Franks, Huns, as well as other lovers of ancient culture and part-time nomads. Looking ahead, we note that Total War Attila is not a remake of the Barbarians addon for the first part of Rome, but an almost full-fledged part of the series, with many noticeable updates and significant interface optimization, which cannot be said about performance, but let's go in order.

Briefly about the game mechanics of the Total War line

If you are fond of, then at least out of the blue, you have also heard Total War products. This hybrid strategy took the top RTS due to the fact that it correctly combined the strategic and tactical parts. Indeed, sometimes it is difficult for us to distinguish tactics from strategy, but in the case of Total War Attila, everything is quite simple. On the global map of the world, we make moves, as in , and during battles we switch to the already familiar micromanagement, leading our legions. Of course, we can close our eyes to diplomacy, sanitation, mass culture, religion, and a dozen more "boring" elements and factors of this epic, because loading saves every half hour is so exciting and fun.

The decline of an empire is not for the faint of heart

Let's start with the fact that playing for the "rotting imperial West" is not just a worthy challenge for skilled commanders, but a real stress test of your skills and everyone's understanding of this gameplay. The proletarians bathe in lice, swell with hunger, bureaucrats of all stripes and ranks fill their pockets with taxes with impunity, and not a trace remains of the former border forts. The empire is literally bursting at the seams, and the number of available legions can be counted on the fingers, so do not be surprised that despite all your attempts, after a dozen moves, flocks of dashing bearded men annihilate a quarter of your provinces at 0.

In a nutshell, Legendary difficulty is an eternal torment, but experienced players quickly found holes in the mechanics. For example, it is possible to “politically incorrectly” terminate the alliance with the Eastern Empire and thereby save yourself from a couple more packs of radical vagrant groups. The same thing happens with religion: why keep expensive temples and cultural values ​​if manufacturing chains and elements of the military-industrial complex claim their place? The people will still be dissatisfied, so we use this benefit to suppress riots and other democracy, which in general can disrupt the atmosphere of the game, but significantly increase the chances of a favorable outcome.

View from the side or features of the game for nomads

Another thing is nomadic and not very barbarian tribes, the gameplay of which clearly resembles the modern culture of tourism - they came to the clearing, had plenty of fun and left behind only dirt and ashes. Thus, our vagabonds roll from one location to another, break camps, simultaneously cleaning up everything behind them with a wall of fires. The scorched territory is one of the most spectacular innovations of Total War Attila, the essence of which is the so-called "wipe" of the region, which practically dooms it to death, since the restoration of such locations flies into colossal sums for a thin treasury.

It would seem that the game mechanics directly insists that it is time to burn out this intelligentsia with "fire and sword", but as practice shows, for any short-sightedness in Total War Attila, you will have to pay bitterly. We remind you that the horde is not one or two, but tens of thousands of hungry mouths that need to be fed and warmed up in the cold season (yes, the seasons have returned in Attila, so let's welcome frostbite and minuses to stats). Thus, cutting out the entire district under the root, we lose our sources of food and income. In addition, scorched earth is by no means suitable for pastures, so the veterans of the line recommend grabbing less armchairs and thinking more about the future.

Features of passing for the faction of the Huns "liberals"

One way or another, the West and Ostrogoths, as well as the tribes of the barbarians, can still play for “detuning”, as in, for example, but the hordes of the Huns are a separate story. These Freefolk do not break long-term camps and are constantly on the move, so their main farm is in raids and raids. Having one of the best cavalry among the factions, the Huns can afford a strategy that is quite flexible in terms of waste and counterattacks, but again, there are features here. The fact is that large detachments of 50+ horsemen in urban conditions begin to stray in three corners, which turns them into an easy target even for yesterday's outcasts with pitchforks.

It is interesting that our hero of the occasion, the semi-legendary leader of the barbarian tribes - Attila at the beginning of the campaign was not even born yet. In other words, playing for the Romans, you will still have to live to see the great bulk, and only then will you experience all the charm of nomadic culture and everything that follows from it. In order to prevent an instant defeat, we recommend creating the so-called buffer zones in Illyria, Austria, and Galia, where you need to place 1 legion each. Actively develop defensive infrastructure and beware of incendiary shelling, as the game physics in Total War Attila is close to reality, where a whole city can blaze from one random arrow, and without any pigeons there.

A few words about innovations and optimization

The main difference between the Total War Attila strategy and in terms of interface and graphics is a serious work on the mistakes and wishes of the fans. Now all the necessary information about your state comes in separate tabs, and not in a single stream, as it was in the previous part. At the same time, on the contrary, they removed the excess from technological progress, leaving all the necessary branches in one window, so in terms of interface and user friendliness, the Total War lineup took a step forward. The global map has darkened, bright colors have diminished, leaving the glow of fires to illuminate these dark times. The textures of the fields and meadows now actively display the seasons, and the forest finally looks like a real grove, and not like a couple of bushes in the middle of the map. Indeed, graphics updates are always pleasing to the eye, but they also require much more system resources, so decide for yourself what you choose - plus 30 warriors per squad or global illumination of bushes.

Summing up the continuation of the Total War line

The real-time strategy Total War Attila will perfectly brighten up the leisure of veterans of the series, thanks to truly hardcore campaigns for the Eastern and Western Empires, in which there will be many random events and unpredictable events. These stressful surprises will test all your tactical leadership skills and most interestingly, you will have to learn how to play the game mechanics like a pig on a spit. For those who are getting acquainted with the Total War line for the first time, we still recommend starting with the original Rome or its equally good remake, since without proper preparation, the features of the local gameplay will quite shake your nerves.

The Forgotten Realms mod for Total War: Attila adds many new (forgotten, as the name suggests) kingdoms, states, or simply tribes to the Grand Campaign. Most of them become available for the player's choice. Victory conditions are spelled out for everyone, the lines of units have been worked out, that is, all the paraphernalia necessary for a full-fledged campaign has been created.

If you simply list the features of the modification, then they are as follows:

• Added 28 factions
• Added victory conditions
• General models for all factions
• All factions are equipped with individual features
• Lines of units are prescribed for all
• Added missions and tasks
• All nomadic tribes can settle
• In general, the camp has undergone restructuring

As you can see, the list looks quite serious and thorough. It has everything you need for a good mod. “Good wife, good home. What else does a person need to meet old age? - said the character of one popular film. By the way, do you remember which one? So, to these words we can add: new factions, new units in the mod for "Total War: Attila".

"Forgotten Realms", that is, "Forgotten Realms". What factions, according to the authors of the mod, have the game developers forgotten? Oh, there are quite a few. And even having stuffed 28 pieces into the game, not everyone will be able to catch on. What can you do, such an era - states arose and crumbled in a matter of years.

Initially, in Total War: Attila, two hordes of Huns were playable in the Nomad group. Added to the mod:

• Boudiny
• Sabirs
• Magyars
• Roksolany

To be honest, I haven't even heard of all of them. Who are the Budins and Sabirs - without an interent and “I don’t remember”. Roughly the same story with the eastern empires. Earlier in this section there were only Sassanids. Added to the mod:

• Anthropatena
• Afrighids
• Makran
• Armenia

Don't be scared. We will not list everyone. There are very many of them. But I wanted to indicate the approximate composition of the Forgotten Realms mod team. Next, we will be more brief. The Slavic brotherhood was replenished with three West Slavic tribes from the territory of present-day Poland and Germany. Apparently, these are the so-called Polabian Slavs.

The ranks of the northern peoples condensed. Due to all sorts of Jutes-Angles-Saxons. But the center is still in the east. The “eastern states” section appeared in fashion, and as many as six small, often single-province factions were shoved into it.

For one of them, Abazgia (on the territory of modern Abkhazia), I tested the mod.

Abkhazia is a typical one-province oriental minor. At the start, one region and one defective army. Not even agents. But the income is quite decent. And if you conclude trade agreements with the surrounding factions, of which there are many, then it becomes generally good.

Rushing to hire an army is not necessary yet. Abkhazia is located very favorably. From the south, one-province Transcaucasian peoples. Not only do they not pose a threat, but on the contrary, they are rushing with might and main to conclude non-aggression pacts. We graciously present these treaties to them and expand to the north and east. In these directions are wastelands. So when you master them, you will have to ring not with steel, but with gold. For a couple of years, I calmly colonized them and began to develop them.

We build barracks in the capital. But it's hard and slow work. Initially, you can hire only the most lousy rogue like Caucasian spearmen. Yes, and they are formed in two moves. So these units must be protected from the very beginning. They are really good.

The emphasis in the troops of Abkhazia is on mounted archers and light infantry. Mounted archers (from the start, it seems, as many as three squads), when used correctly, are a valuable acquisition. Action on the flanks, entering the rear, diverting the enemy's shock cavalry - in general, there are a lot of options for their use. We must save.

The composition of the Magyar army was very surprising. I expected the horde to have large masses of cavalry, but nothing like that. They have cavalry, but only three units. And not a single detachment of mounted riflemen. The infantry is represented mainly by spearmen, whom my Bosporans cut down in close combat like d'Artagnan of the cardinal's guards.

A little later, that is, by the year 400, we were already able to produce our own infantry in commercial quantities. All these, however, are light infantrymen. But at least among them there are fighters with axes and swords. And this variety can already be used against the enemy, aiming shock infantry at their spearmen.

Then the offensive is carried out in the direction of the Crimea. For, as my Abkhazians declared, Crimea is ours. Chersonese is a very large walled city. If the opponent's stack sits there, it will not be easy. I actually had to. The assault used two stacks of ground troops and one almost complete fleet. Yes, yes, do not be surprised, my Abkhazians are noble sailors. True, at this moment there are only two types of ships - slingers and swordsmen. The combined strike decides a lot. Chersonese fell.