Total War/Strategy Games (Post your Campaign tales!)

Because no other genre gives you as unique and personal a story each time.

 

Playing as the Western Roman Empire on Very Hard in Attila: Total War. Never played more than ten turns of it before, so was very excited to play such a unique sounding campaign.

Basically, it's not about making gains; the first 70 turns at the very least are dedicated solely to minimizing losses. From the start, I realised that the mistake I made in past playthroughs was trying to hold onto all the starting territory. The Western Roman Empire is a crumbling society; its infrastructure is deeply sick. Heavy corruption makes most of your land drag your economy down. You have the resources for, at best, three armies to defend an empire that initially holds Spain, Britain, North Africa, Italy and Western Europe. But maintaining an army isn't your immediate priority; the rotten economic structure of the empire means that, if the high chance of disease outbreaks isn't going to cause dozens of rebellions, the universal collapse of public order will.

And the world hates you. There is no faction at the start who is willing to be your ally. The barbarians of the North want to slice up your land, the Africans want to push you out of the continents; the hordes want your food.

I've heard the developers call it the hardest TW campaign they're ever made and, to this day, it's the only one with an initial difficulty rating of 'Legendary'. I now see why; you literally play it in the complete different direction normal TW campaign go in. It's not about gaining land, but strategically losing land. Full details so far:

In short, Italy is still standing, untouched by the barbarians hordes. But the lands that circle it are wastelands, partially because of my deliberate decision to raze any of my former, non-essential provinces as opposed to reclaiming them, to create an circle of uninhabitable waste around my northern provinces - the gateway to Rome. This has so far forced the barbarians to stay in the North, where our armies currently are sitting, watching each other. Hopefully the winter, climate change and lack of fertility is doing (or will do) as much damage to them as I'm expecting it to. But that all relies on me being able to keep them where they are.

Eastern Rome is posing a threat, but I think there's every chance that they will collapse within 30 turns. I need to figure out how to play this particular problem.

My economy is, miraculously, stable but lacks a future. I need to figure out how I can get around the current fullstops there.

I've only got 15 more years till Attila arrives.

 

Cool Story Bro

 

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