Sega gives us a tantalizing taste of Total War: Attila (preview)

Total War: Attila is the next big installment in the Total War series developed by Sega’s The Creative Assembly studio. The game is shipping sometime in 2015, but I’ve gotten a good look at it in a preview.

Attila is a kind of sequel to Total War: Rome II, the massive real-time strategy game that debuted in 2013. It’s based on the same engine, and it uses a lot of the same strategic map of Europe and near-Asia as Rome II. But while Rome II focused on the rise of the Roman Empire, Total War: Attila takes place during the decline and fall of that empire as the barbarian hordes, such as those led by Attila the Hun, put it on the defensive.

“2015 is a big milestone for us with a lot of games coming out, and they represent the ambition for us to push Total War into new areas,” said Al Bickham, the studio communications manager at The Creative Assembly, in a press briefing. “We have uniquely crafted this game to offer deep challenges for our hardcore fan base. Attila is proof that we will always make good, heavy, historical single-player games.”

Above: Total War: Attila can zoom in on soldier-to-soldier combat.

Image Credit: Sega

Naturally, if you fail to hold back Attila’s armies, Rome will burn. You have the option of playing factions such as the Western Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire (with Constantinople as the capital), the Western tribes such as the Franks, or the Eastern empires. I was able to try out an Eastern empire called the Sassanid, or the Persian empire.

Your job is to expand your holdings by invading other territories and fighting off those who invade you. The strategic map looks beautiful, enabling you to view the known world with its lush vegetation or arid deserts. It ran a little slow for me on my computer with a dual Nvidia GTX 680 graphics card, but I’ll assume the developer will fix that with the final game.

The cinematics go on for a while, and they’re reasonably well done as animations from the game engine. The opening animation for the Persians was a little cryptic as I had no idea which leaders were attacking a particular Roman city.

The core of Total War: Attila is the same as its predecessors. The game uses the Total War: Rome II engine, and it combines real-time combat between armies on a 3D battlefield with the Civilization-style strategic campaign where you manage your empire. But while last year’s Rome II enabled you to take over the known world, this time it’s different. The quality of the 3D graphics is getting better and better so that you can see flames licking the rooftops of a burning city while soldiers are clashing on the ground below. The sweeping views of the vast armies, with thousands of soldiers marching toward a city’s walls, are breathtaking. Rome, the eternal city, is a glorious monument to power, culture, and learning. But it is a civilization that may be snuffed out.

In these games, you can zoom out to see the strategic map of Europe on the edge of the Dark Ages. Then you can zoom in on cities and meet the enemy on the battlefield. The armies and landscapes are rendered in beautiful 3D graphics. You can zoom out to get a bird’s eye view of the action or zoom in during the battle to see individual soldiers fighting desperately.

Above: Total War: Attila campaign map

Image Credit: Sega

Attila opens in 395 A.D., when Roman civilization was on the verge of collapse. Climate change has forced migrations of the barbarian tribes from the East to the West. Those tribes come crashing like waves on the empire, which has now split into the Western Roman empire, centered in Rome, and the Eastern Roman Empire, centered in Constantinople. The Goths, the Visigoths, and the Vandals are all showing up. They flee the million mobile warriors of the Huns and smash into Rome. The campaign lasts about 70 years.

Rome has 600,000 soldiers at this point in its history — the most it ever had. But the armies are spread so thin that it seems like there aren’t nearly enough. It’s a time of deprivation and disease. You can wipe out a city, burning it to the ground, to deny its resources to the enemy. If your army catches the plague, you can march it to the enemy’s city and besiege it in hopes of spreading the germs to the city. Diseases can also travel along trade routes. It’s a very evil kind of germ warfare.

The Creative Assembly has improved the faction management. You can go into the family tree and use the characters in your empire in appropriate roles. You can assign them leadership roles, adopt new members into the family, and train them in governance. You can see a character leading the troops in battle, and he brings his unique skills to the battlefield. Your characters live longer than they did in Rome II, so you can invest in them more.

City management is a lot easier, but it’s also more sophisticated. You have to take care of the city to prevent disease from breaking out. If you don’t invest in sanitation, diseases are more likely to spread. Each region is influenced by the religious beliefs of the population. That layers on top of the national borders of the different empires.

During the course of the game, you have to build up the empire’s health so that you can be ready when Attila the Hun finally arrives. You have to pay attention to building the walls of each city. You have to make sure it has the right features to help it withstand a siege.

Above: Total War: Attila

Image Credit: Sega

I started out with a reasonably strong Sassanid empire on the grounds of what is now modern-day Iraq. I had a number of cities and four armies with about 1,000 warriors each. I started expanding a few of the cities but tried to be careful not to run out of money.

I attacked to the north, striking in a surprise attack against the region of Atropatene. In the first battle, I chose to besiege the city and build equipment such as towers and battering rams. Meanwhile, I sent another army against a smaller locale, Rhaga. I vastly outnumbered the small garrison and stormed the city. The enemy set up one barricade, but I hit it with three archer units. The defenders ran, and I chased them out of the city. I had to capture points such as towers and the palace in order to win.

Next, I attacked the city of Ganzaga, and the story was pretty much the same. Civilians ran away from my soldiers — something new for the Total War games — and birds flew around to add some ambient life. I took over the city and assigned a skill point to my general. I also set up my research, signed some treaties, and finally attacked the enemy’s capital, Ectabatana.

That was a big battle as I had to send my battering rams and siege towers against a big wall. My soldiers smashed the gate and mounted the walls. After a few bloody street battles, the enemy fled. I conquered the city and occupied it. Then the Atropatene region ceased to exist.

I am very much looking forward to this game’s arrival on Windows PC and Mac in 2015.

Above: Total War: Attila concept art

Image Credit: Sega