Total War: ATTILA

love the end of the world doomsday setting
some of the best siege battles in the series
charlemagne campaign is nice
worth it

crashes, lags glitches. game is a mess

I like that you have both missions & base building. The different bio-domes makes every run through feel different. Also working in a group on horde night for shared experience is such a game helper it's insane.

Great game I played thrones of Britannia first so that is my favorite, but this one and EMPIRE are are perfect games as well excellent games well done.

Currently the game is a slide show. Freezes every couple seconds. Both as in its vanilla and modded forms.
My PC is not weak by any measure. I'm able to run Cyberpunk almost maxed out but this game barely functions.
Its really dependent upon CA to update this game to fix the current optimization issues that make it unplayable. Just several seconds into a campaign the freezing starts.

For reference I'm running:
-i7 12th gen at 3.25 GHz (water cooled)
-3080 TI 12 GB DDR6 (water cooled)
-64 GB DDR5 RAM
- game is installed on an SSD

As is the common trend with CA they rush development of a game and abandon it all too soon. That is what happened to this that even when coming back years later still find features missing such as UI scaling.

GAME UNPLAYABLE IN CURRENT STATE

Regardless if you have mods or no mods, the current state of Attila is unable to be completely processed anymore and has frequent and disastrous game freezes and odd rubber-banding (no idea how).

While PHYSICALLY you're able to load in you're still in for 90% waiting on a frozen screen and 10% actually playing.

I really love trying to preserve and rebuild a crumbling empire against an overwhelmingly powerful onslaught. It's so much fun!

This is the BEST Total War release that I almost completely ignored for 9 years after purchasing. The timing of the launch directly after Rome 2, marketing prevarications around compatibility issues meant most people could not make the game work even if they tried.

Now, after 500 hours in game - this is why Attila is the first game to try in the series:

- Success is almost completely dependant on skill. If you learn the mechanics and units, there is always a way to survive the apocalypse. These mechanics mimic the real challenges and solutions a countries' leader would face very well too. Sometimes you have to cut off an arm to save the patient, migrate to better lands, morale is a significant deciding factor.

- This game nails immersion. There are civilians running around the besieged city that your soldiers will stab, also in towns during field battles, your decisions will prompt interesting traits for governors and generals, the unit design is both historical, detailed, and varied across the map (although if you spend too much time around Germania/England, Creative Assembly was not too creative about how to make those factions feel distinctive).

- Surviving and defeating the Huns will affect the majority of the macro strategy for most factions. It is so rewarding if you can learn the game well enough to survive and defeat them. Sadly this was a total missed opportunity with the Sea Peoples in Total War Pharaoh Dynasties.

- Now after a decade of hardware improvements, this game runs well on most devices and you can truly make it look better than most modern releases with max settings and the extensive list of mods that improve graphics and combat animation.

Here are some great choices to write your chapter of history:

1. Succeed the failing Roman Empire as the Ostrogoths using your own AND Roman units. Hold the border with the Huns while expanding elsewhere and adopting a failed but wealthy empire.
2. (Hardest) try to hold on to as much as the crumbling Western Empire as possible and change history by surviving.
3. (Easiest) become a global trade superpower as the economically well-endowed Eastern Roman Empire. This gives you plenty of money for their sexy unit roster.
4. Take Egypt and the Holy Land as the emerging Himyar to create novo-Persian trade superpower in the Mediterranean. Yes, their elite units wear golden masks this is very important.
5. If you are an expert at keeping fighting family members together to preserve a powerful dynasty, play the Sassanids. They also have one of the most fun unit rosters.

You will have an exceptional experience with this game if you enter with the following expectations: learn to accept loss to survive sometimes, focus on mismatches and morale to beat armies 3x your size, and give it some time to grow on you. This game prepares you for how to deal with any coming collapse of empires pretty well.

An amazing game to get into and play. I have logged almost 500 hours into this game and soon I will be playing again for another campaign. It's one of those games that keep you in and wanting more, ranging from building your faction to being able to fight every battle and win against all odds. I would recommend this game to anyone.

I like the apocalyptic feel and that you actually have to struggle to survive.

It is the most detailed historic Total War, and a blast to play once you've gotten used to it.

A game for those who seek enjoyment through punishment. Mods are fun though.

the last great total war game before the klan (warhammer fans) infested everything

I only use this garbage game for LOTR mods. Make a LOTR Total War. Stop being gay and retarded Creative Assembly.

Total War: Attila gives me those vibes of surviving Armageddon against the last riders of the Apocalypse. Everything feels dirty; everything feels beaten up; everything feels desperate and weary. Very unique in the regard and gives me a lot of reason to comeback again and again.

Creative Assembly’s Total War: Attila (2015) stands as a brutal, often punishing strategy game that immerses players in the twilight of the Roman Empire. Unlike its predecessor, Rome II, Attila embraces a more apocalyptic tone, emphasizing destruction, migration, and survival mechanics that push both players and AI factions into constant turmoil. It delivers a gripping, if sometimes overwhelming, experience that thrives on chaos and resilience.

The game’s greatest strengths lie in its dynamic systems—scorched earth tactics, a reworked family tree, and the devastatingly unpredictable Huns. However, despite its depth, Attila suffers from occasional performance issues and Creative Assembly’s limited post-launch support. This is where the true heroes of Attila step in: the modding community.

The 1212 AD Mod – A Masterpiece of Dedication
If Attila is a solid foundation, the 1212 AD mod is the grand cathedral built upon it. Transforming the game into a late medieval epic, 1212 AD doesn’t just introduce new units and factions—it reworks mechanics, enhances visuals, and deepens gameplay to an extent that rivals full-fledged expansions. The mod offers a historically rich sandbox, breathing new life into the medieval period with its extensive faction roster, intricate economy, and overhauled battle dynamics.

More than just a mod, 1212 AD is a testament to what passionate developers—many of whom learned coding, scripting, and balancing along the way—can achieve. Whether fixing AI behaviors, refining diplomacy, or balancing mechanics via Lua scripting, the community-driven effort behind 1212 AD proves that Attila’s true potential lies in the hands of its players.

Final Verdict
Total War: Attila is a brutal, uncompromising strategy game with a vision that, while ambitious, was never fully realized by Creative Assembly. However, the modding community—especially the creators of 1212 AD—has turned it into a masterpiece of medieval warfare. If you own Attila and haven’t tried 1212 AD, you’re missing out on one of the finest Total War experiences ever crafted.

⭐ Base Game: 8/10 – Innovative but flawed
⭐ With 1212 AD Mod: 10/10 – A true medieval strategy masterpiece

units stutter like crazy unplayable

Fine Strategy games which give challenges and many route to create alter-history.

Welcome to the dark world of a collapsing empire. It's very difficult, only play if you hate yourself. This game may be brought up in divorce proceedings.

I just want to know what’s wrong with these million dollar companies leaving games in unfinished states. It’s absolutely impossible to enjoy this game because every action you do gives your characters a bad trait, including but not limited to garrisoning, recruiting, moving, governing and so on. Your characters all wind up useless after a couple turns and that’s if they’re not already born misshapen coward bad administrators. There is literally nothing you can do to stop this. 0 immersion. For once I would like to have a character with 0 negative traits or even just normal ones, it’s always the worst traits on my family members. You get traits like inbred even if you marry from a different country. The entire RPG aspect of this game is broken so if that’s why you want to buy it, don’t.

The campaign accurately recreates the experience a young English girl has with Pakistani immigrants

Great graphics and easy to start playing, but prefer the simplicity of Rome, Napoleon and Medieval Total War 2.

Very good game but for some reason it doesn't show the launcher when i launch in the game it just launches the game and because of that i cant play with mods. Can anyone help?? (i play on linux)

So far the best game in the Total War series. The replayability of the campaign is insane
10/10

Performance is really awful, I'm on a relatively good spec ( 12400F + RX6700XT ) and still getting unstable sub 60 fps with some stutters on both campaign & battle map. I've tried some optimization methods but the gains are small. Tuning down the graphic does help a bit, but the visual is just sucks to looked at, in comparison I can get a smooth stable 85+ fps on Warhammer 3 In high settings.

I wish I could enjoy Atilla , since I really like the battle. But the optimization is garbage.

I have played the majority of the popular Total War titles but i always find myself coming back to Attila. This game is super fun and challenging, and a great way to pass the time.

The game is still buggy as all hell, the path finding is laughable and still plenty of system just do not work. Don't waste your time or money on this unless you are willing to play a heavily modded version of the game.

great game, its a bit tougher than the other total war games but thats not always a bad thing, and the 1212AD mod is amazing, defo recommend the game and mod, a solid 8.5/10

I won't recommend this game now as it's just abandoned by CA. The game is a stutter-fest with players having to go to config file and editing the config scripts to provide usage of more cores and copying and pasting shader files of Britannia. The game is stutter-fest and still 32 bit which cannot go beyond 4GB of VRAM.

Do not buy this game, do not offer money to companies who have no respect for their own product. The game's setting is one of the best and battles are far far better than Disney Rome 2. Cavalry charges are impactful and everything is a spectacle to watch but CA decided to abandon it and doesn't offer any scalability for modern hardware.

My system has a i7 13700K with 4080 and the game kept on stuttering with FPS going to single digits.

The UI also scales extremely poorly with higher resolutions having tiny minute UI.

Do not buy this.

Auto complete doesn't work, if I have to manually spend 25 minutes doing every 75% battle then you're just wasting my time. Game freezes every 15 minutes or so for 60 seconds at time. Neutral factions can raid you without it being a war declaration. Auto complete battles, even if they are guaranteed instant loss, take 30 seconds to complete

Fun with mods, Really a great game in my opinion and if you are a big fan of the roman empire then this and rome 2 are the games for you

The hardest total war game, but that also means I'm hard. hehehehehehehhehehehe

Never played the basegame but the 1212 mod is amazing. Guess the engine and all is good enough to enable such a mod. (recommendation based on the price on sale - 11€)

It feels like the last time the series really tried to innovate. While there were frustrating parts, like the endless horde spawns, it still stands out as a strong entry. Looking back, it feels like a turning point, as everything after seemed to go in the wrong direction.

Once you think you've destroyed the huns, they respawn with another 12 stacks. stupidly powerful. they will whittle you down until you're dead. they need to either change this, or otherwise, the game sucks.

I recommend this game, but i am having issues on launching the game now.

I love strategy game and total war scratches that itch so to speak.

Too much bugs: loosing building slot, shut-down during some terms. Yet this company still ignore these problems.

been a fan of total war for over 10 years now and attilla is the total package.

The quest to save the Roman Empire and thus, the human race.

I've owned Atilla since not long after it launched, but I've only started playing it in December of 2024. Before that when it came to historical total war, I was addicted to playing Rome in Rome 2 in the grand campaign and its side-campaigns. I really do love Rome.

But I finally got to the stage where I was like, I should try Atilla. And so I have! I sat there at the faction select screen for a long while, reading each one and seeing who they were and what they were about, and I figured I'd go with one of the Britain factions since they're easy for beginners, and I am a Brit, so makes sense.

But then my finger slipped and I loaded in as thr Western Roman Empire, oh no. The first ten hours I would say were a disaster of me trying and failing to hold onto the rightful land of the Empire against the unwashed barbarian menace, and a good few times I suffered army defeats that I was like "I'm sure this is the end of this run." but with Roman might I managed to push it back from the brink and slowly but surely begin making ground and I think by the 15 hour mark, I felt like I was actually ready to start expanding and not defending. (I was fighting nearly every battle to try and lessen my losses so my playtime is pretty stretched)

Now I am here at the 40 hour mark, and most of Europe is under the Empire, and my re-taking-expansion into africa on the road to Aegyptus is going well. Sadly the Eastern Roman Empire has been obliterated, though Bizantium is holding out stubbornly and I'm preparing two Legions to begin cutting my way through Asiatica and start liberating some land from the Sasanids.

So Atilla, while I shot myself in the foot starting as a very difficult faction for my first run on normal, I have enjoyed every second of it and am super glad I finally decided to give Atilla a try. Next playtrough? Why Eastern Rome, of course!

Fortuna favet fortibus.

Total War: Attila is a game with great potential, but its performance issues, underwhelming technology tree, and frustrating political mechanics are significant drawbacks. While its deep strategic gameplay, rich narrative, and stunning visuals make it a compelling choice for strategy enthusiasts, the technical problems make it a frustrating and often unplayable experience. If you have a high-end system and can overlook these issues, it can still be rewarding. However, for those with lower-end systems, it might be best to steer clear.

I would say this is probably the best Total War game out there. It's basically an updated version of Barbarian Invasion, from RTW 1, but it does so much well. The systems are better than Rome 2 and Thrones of Britannia, while still being exciting. Since this game, they've sadly brought a couple of bad games.

Hoping a future Rome 3 or Medieval 3 follows something like Attila mixed with Medieval 2/Rome 1.

Nomadic historical Total War is worth a go, if nothing else to master playing as the Huns with their notorious missile cavalry and the Hunnish bow (better velocity and range than the British longbow according to my Rome box set documentary, with the agility to use on horseback!) - the dreaded faction to encounter in Medieval 2. I hated with passion playing against these guys when I was a kid. Now it's my turn. Hehe. It's not as good as Rome II but the same kind of settlements, maps and 'political intrigue' (although not as complicated). It's worth it as like an add-on to Rome II and won't disappoint. Always check out the Historical Battles with all Total War games, especially the Shogun 2 & Fall of the Samurai historical battles because they are amazing!

A Fun Total War, the raze mechanic that resembles a nuclear bomb blowing up is awesome. They need to bring that raze mechanic back in future total war games. looking forward to playing this game for 100 hours or more

I dont know, but battles in Attila seems better than in Warhammer 3. So definetly positive thing.

Pretty much just a gimped, worse version of Thrones of Britannia. Just buy ToB instead. Cheaper, no agents, better optimized, no bullshit, and less of a pain in the ass to capture and manage settlements. Yes, the map in that game is smaller and only in Britain and Ireland, but it's still the better game. If you want a big map, buy Empire, or, as much as I rabidly hate the senate system in it, Rome 2. All this game did was piss me off and make me wonder why I wasn't just playing ToB instead. Worst TW game I've played to date, and makes Napoleon seem a lot better despite my hatred of that one, too.

the best UI and the most mechanically perfect TW title I've played out of over a dozen. takes the "Rome 2" formula and makes it perfect. the politics are a humongous improvement, but every part of the gameloop feels better

without mods this feels like a saga game, still fun but without that grand scope that the other TW games have since its based around Attila's invasion of the decaying ERE/WRE. Mods change this game up to be Medieval 3 and that makes me feel some special kind of way
7/10 w/out mods
9/10 w/mods

After 1,234 hours on Attila I have to give it a positive review, it's a fantastic game that receives way too much hate. As far as DLC goes I'd just get what looks good to you but honestly the base game is very solid, I do feel it needs the desert kingdoms DLC though to be a full experience. My only real complaint as far as mechanics are concerned would have to be how absurdly broken the Huns are but a single mod can fix that issue fairly well.