Multiplayer gaming is a great way to keep in touch with friends or make new ones. Whether you win or lose, playing with others results in better stories and a greater sense of fulfillment.Īt the end of the day, our relationships with our co-stars are the most important thing in the world. You can play on Normal difficulty without all the artificial player debuffs and enemy buffs, while still having a challenge due to harder battles, a late-game player threat, and someone working against you diplomatically to make sure you don’t snowball. More Campaign Challenge Without Unimmersive Buffs/Debuffs More Battle Challenge Without Unimmersive Buffs/DebuffsĪ live-human will be adapting to your tactics, and parrying with their own, so you no longer need to crank-up the battle difficulty to have a challenge or rely on un-immersive heroic victories.Ħ. In a multiplayer campaign you get to try your hand at using different factions across the map.ĥ. It gets tiring using, and battling against, the same units over and over. You get to experience a wide variety of authentic battles against other generals instead of a computer re-running the same scripts and calculations to (im)perfection.
More Interesting/Less Predictable Battles With another player expanding and influencing the campaign map, the power dynamics will shift in new unique ways, and all sorts of memorable landscapes will emerge.ģ. More Interesting/Less predictable Campaign Evolutions You will learn more about, and have a higher appreciation of, Total war game mechanics and strategies by playing with other people.Ģ. Why multiplayer Total War campaigns are the way to go: The 5 Commandments of Multiplayer Total War Campaigns:
So, we just kinda wandered off at some point.”
At no point did my captains report back, “Well sir, we would’ve met them in battle on the shores of the Mediterranean, but it looked like they weren’t quite sure how to get off their boats. The same goes for the tactical aspect as well. From Shogun 2’s, “Did the Oda just completely abandon their capital city?” to Rome 2’s, “I think I just saw General Octavius eating a jar of paste”, Attila ’s strategists seemed much more capable of properly reacting to their surroundings. There are a number of solid, well thought out tweaks and minor additions, but no one’s revolutionizing the genre over here.įor what it’s worth, the AI seems to have improved since the last couple outings. All in all, the game almost feels like Creative Assembly’s attempt at an apology, as if they’re saying, “Guys, we know we goofed, but check out the way it could’ve been!” This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course, but praising the developers for new ideas in Attila would be somewhat akin to praising EA for successfully releasing another iteration of Madden. The “ Crusader Kings-lite” dynasty tree, along with all its accompanying internal slapfights, has also been tweaked to match the era.
The ability to create unique armies complete with badass names (Lightning Riders is a personal favorite) makes a welcome return and is possibly one of my favorite additions of the past couple Total War iterations. Aside from the new type of nation, Attila is by and large an expansion on the mechanics introduced in Rome 2, albeit much more honed and tightly developed.