Creative Assembly released Attila on 17 February 2015 and set the Grand Campaign in 395 AD, the year Theodosius died and the Roman Empire split permanently in two. Ten factions are playable in the base Grand Campaign, and the Western Roman Empire opens with more provinces than it can garrison, more armies than it can pay and a treasury already sliding. A cooling climate drives fertility down across the north while the Huns arrive from the east. This is the Total War where burning your own city is frequently the right decision.
Starting Total War: ATTILA can feel overwhelming. This guide tells you exactly what to focus on during your first hours so you don't waste time on things that don't matter yet. For the full progression path, see our walkthrough.
What Kind of Game Is This?
Total War: ATTILA is a strategy game built around Razing, sacking and occupying settlements and The migration and horde mechanic. The core loop involves mastering these systems to progress through increasingly challenging content.
What to expect: Time investment in learning mechanics, experimentation, and gradual mastery. The game rewards patience and knowledge.
Choosing Your First Build
| Build | Beginner Rating | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Western Roman Empire | Excellent for beginners | Balanced approach |
| Eastern Roman Empire | Excellent for beginners | Balanced approach |
| Sassanid Empire | Excellent for beginners | Balanced approach |
| Huns | Excellent for beginners | Balanced approach |
| Visigoths | Excellent for beginners | Balanced approach |
Our recommendation: Start with Eastern Roman Empire. It offers the most forgiving experience while teaching core mechanics.
Avoid Visigoths as your first pick. It requires deep knowledge of game systems to use effectively. Once you're ready, check our classes guide for all options.
First Session Step-by-Step
Step 1: Learn Razing, sacking and occupying settlements
Capturing a settlement gives three answers. Occupation keeps the buildings and inherits the public order problem, sacking takes the money and leaves the settlement intact, and razing burns it into a ruin any faction can later colonise. Playing the Western Roman Empire you will raze provinces you own, denying the Huns anything to capture, which is a decision no earlier Total War asked you to make.
This is the foundation. Spend your first 15-30 minutes getting comfortable with how Razing, sacking and occupying settlements works before worrying about anything else. Our combat guide breaks this down further.
Step 2: Head to Roma
The old capital, still enormously valuable and no longer the seat of the Western court. Holding Roma is a public order and prestige question as much as a military one, and losing it to a horde is one of the fastest ways a Western campaign unravels.
Clear the main content here before moving on. Everything teaches fundamentals you'll need later. See our maps guide for all locations.
Step 3: Get Your First Upgrade
Look for Limitanei: it's the most accessible early upgrade. The frontier troops who historically controlled the border and acted as an early warning system against incursions. They are cheap, they are not good, and that combination makes them the correct garrison unit for provinces you intend to keep but cannot afford to defend properly.
Step 4: Understand The migration and horde mechanic
Migratory factions including the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals and Alans can abandon their settlements entirely and travel as hordes carrying their population inside their armies. A horde builds camp structures within the army, recruits while moving and can settle again wherever it takes a region. The Huns are the extreme case, since they cannot hold permanent settlements at all and are built to keep moving.
This is the system most new players overlook. Invest time here early. It pays off throughout the entire game.
Step 5: Push to Constantinopolis
The Eastern capital and the strongest defensive position on the map, sitting on the strait between Europe and Asia. Its walls and its position mean a competent Eastern player can lose most of the Balkans and still be entirely secure behind them.
Essential Mechanics Explained
Razing, sacking and occupying settlements
Capturing a settlement gives three answers. Occupation keeps the buildings and inherits the public order problem, sacking takes the money and leaves the settlement intact, and razing burns it into a ruin any faction can later colonise. Playing the Western Roman Empire you will raze provinces you own, denying the Huns anything to capture, which is a decision no earlier Total War asked you to make.
The migration and horde mechanic
Migratory factions including the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals and Alans can abandon their settlements entirely and travel as hordes carrying their population inside their armies. A horde builds camp structures within the army, recruits while moving and can settle again wherever it takes a region. The Huns are the extreme case, since they cannot hold permanent settlements at all and are built to keep moving.
Climate cooling and fertility
The campaign models a cooling period across its hundred year span. Fertility drops in northern provinces as turns pass, food output falls with it, and factions in Scandinavia and Germania are pushed south by conditions rather than by armies. A Danish or Geatish economy planned around turn 1 fertility will quietly starve somewhere around turn 80.
Sanitation, squalor and plague
Every building adds squalor and sanitation buildings subtract it. Let the balance tip and plague appears, then spreads along trade routes and with moving armies, cutting growth and public order across an entire province. Armies carry infection, so a besieging force can lose a campaign to a disease it picked up two provinces earlier.
The family tree, gravitas and civil war
Settled factions run a family tree where gravitas is the political currency. Generals accumulate it through office and victory, and if one family accumulates too much relative to yours the result is civil war. The politics panel lists adoption, marriage and rather less diplomatic options for managing a rival who has become too successful.
Common Beginner Mistakes
1. Trying to hold the entire Western Roman Empire
The starting provinces cost more in garrison and administration than they generate, and a player who defends everything is bankrupt by turn 20 with no army left to defend anything.
2. Building economy structures without checking sanitation
Squalor accumulates quietly, plague arrives suddenly, and a province that looked prosperous for thirty turns loses growth and public order in three.
3. Settling a horde too early
The horde state gives mobility and recruitment while you look for good ground, and factions that settle at the first opportunity often end up in the north where fertility is about to collapse.
4. Ignoring the family tree until the civil war notification appears
Gravitas accumulates over many turns, so by the time the warning arrives the rival family is already stronger than yours and the war is largely decided.
5. Fighting the Huns in a set piece battle on open ground
They are horse archer heavy, they will not close, and an infantry army with no cavalry screen will be shot to pieces while it walks. Fight them in terrain that limits their movement or do not fight them at all.
First 5 Hours Checklist
- Understand Razing, sacking and occupying settlements and The migration and horde mechanic
- Choose Eastern Roman Empire as starting build
- Clear Roma main content
- Acquire Limitanei or equivalent upgrade
- Reach Constantinopolis
- Ten factions are playable in the base Grand Campaign: Western Roman Empire, Eastern Roman Empire, Sassanid Empire, Huns, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Alans, Franks and Saxons. Everything else on the playable list comes from a culture pack, so check what you actually own before planning a Langobard campaign.
- Razing is not a punishment mechanic, it is an economic tool. A ruined settlement denies the enemy a target, removes the garrison cost, and can be recolonised later, which is why the standard Western Roman opening involves burning provinces you technically still own.
Tips for New Players
- Ten factions are playable in the base Grand Campaign: Western Roman Empire, Eastern Roman Empire, Sassanid Empire, Huns, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Alans, Franks and Saxons. Everything else on the playable list comes from a culture pack, so check what you actually own before planning a Langobard campaign.
- Razing is not a punishment mechanic, it is an economic tool. A ruined settlement denies the enemy a target, removes the garrison cost, and can be recolonised later, which is why the standard Western Roman opening involves burning provinces you technically still own.
- Sanitation is per-province, not per-settlement, so a single filthy minor settlement will spread plague through the province capital. Check the province summary rather than each town individually when you queue construction.
- Fertility falls over the campaign in the north and the effect is severe. Any faction starting in Scandinavia or northern Germania should have a plan for moving south, and Attila's own migratory pressure arrives on top of a food problem you already have.
- Armies carry plague between provinces and across borders. When an infected army returns from a campaign, park it away from your best province until the infection clears rather than marching it straight into your capital's garrison.
- Gravitas is a zero sum contest between families. If a rival general is winning battles and holding offices while your own family stagnates, civil war is a matter of turns, and the politics panel gives you several ways to prevent that which do not involve waiting.
- Horde factions can build camp structures inside their armies, which means a migrating faction still has an economy and a recruitment chain. Do not treat a horde as a temporary state to be exited quickly; the Vandals and Visigoths can campaign as hordes for decades.
- Provincial edicts apply to a whole province and can be swapped every few turns. Rotating a growth edict during construction and a public order edict after conquest is far more efficient than leaving one set for the entire campaign.
- The Last Roman campaign pack puts you in Belisarius's expedition to Africa with five playable factions including the Roman Expedition, while Age of Charlemagne jumps to 768 AD with Kingdom of Charlemagne, Westphalia, Kingdom of the Danes, Avars, Kingdom of the Lombards, Kingdom of Mercia, Kingdom of Asturias and the Emirate of Cordoba.
- Fire is a real battlefield mechanic here. Fire arrows and burning buildings change how settlement battles play out, and a defender who ignites the right structures can break an assault that outnumbers him considerably.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which faction should a new player choose?
Not the Western Roman Empire, whatever the campaign selection screen implies. The Eastern Roman Empire has a functioning economy and defensible borders, and the Sassanid Empire is even more forgiving because no horde is coming for it. Save the West for a second campaign.
How is Attila different from Rome II?
Same engine lineage, very different pressures. Attila adds the migration and horde mechanic for whole factions, a cooling climate that reduces fertility over the campaign, razing as a standard strategic option and fire as a battlefield mechanic. The result is a game about managing collapse rather than expanding an empire.
Do I need the DLC?
No, the base Grand Campaign has ten playable factions. The culture packs add Viking Forefathers with the Danes, Geats and Jutes, Longbeards with the Alamans, Burgundians and Langobards, Celts with the Caledonians, Ebdanians and Picts, Empires of Sand with Aksum, Himyar and the Tanukhids, and Slavic Nations with the Anteans, Sclavenians and Venedians.
Why is my whole faction starving?
Two causes usually stack. Fertility has dropped in your northern provinces because of the campaign's cooling, and you have built military or industrial buildings on tiles that previously produced food. Check the province food balance every ten turns rather than only when the notification appears.
Can the Western Roman Empire actually survive?
Yes, but not by defending its starting borders. The workable approach is razing or abandoning Britannia and the outlying provinces in the first ten turns, disbanding armies you cannot pay, and consolidating around Italia and the African grain supply before the Vandals reach Carthago.
More Total War: ATTILA Guides
- Total War: ATTILA Total War: ATTILA Overview
- Total War: ATTILA Best Builds
- Total War: ATTILA Tier List
- Total War: ATTILA Walkthrough
- Total War: ATTILA Tips & Tricks
- Total War: ATTILA Weapons Guide
- Total War: ATTILA Combat Guide
- Total War: ATTILA Boss Guide
- Total War: ATTILA Maps & Locations
- Total War: ATTILA Crafting Guide
- Total War: ATTILA Classes & Characters
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