Total War: Attila was a great return to form from The Creative Assembly after the disappointing and buggy Rome 2, but it’s not without its issues. And anyway, you can always do with a few new units, right? Fortunately there’s a tireless modding community out there hard at work on various fixes, tweaks and ambitious conversion mods. Here’s the pick of the bunch so far:
Description: First up, a bunch of new units for you to play with. Attila’s unit roster is generally pretty solid, but there are a few factions that could do with a few more unique choices. This mod adds 22, across all factions.
Description: A simple little mod that allows you to zoom in and out further when in the game’s battle mode. Fixes the oddly sticky camera that CA seems to favour these days.
Description: A big mod featuring a wide-ranging list of changes to the game’s economy system, campaign AI, unit balance and more. Not without its problems – the AI tends to pump out huge army stacks, but is strangely reluctant to use them – but makes quite a few welcome alterations, and is still a work in progress.
Description: One element that Attila certainly didn’t get right was its clunky, impenetrable political mechanics. This removes some of the frustration by handing your faction leader a few extra points of influence each turn, meaning he’s less likely to be stabbed in the back by a rival family member.
Description: Spices battles up a bit by increasing the chance of those cool combat animations to 100%. Rather than poking at the air awkwardly, your soldiers will now proceed to hack bits off the enemy. Combines nicely, if gruesomely, with the game’s blood pack DLC.
Description: Veteran Total War modder Dresden returns with another mod focused on realism and historical accuracy. The unit upgrade and garrison mechanics have been altered, as have the battles themselves, with tweaks to unit morale, armour effectiveness and more. There’s actually three parts to the mod; two and three add new textures and models, and you can find them through the link above.
Description: In Attila you can only recruit a limited number of settlement Governors, which tends to mean you get a lot of family members and loyal subjects sitting around twiddling their thumbs. This removes the limit, allowing you to assign a Governor to every province you own.
Description: As if Attila’s campaign didn’t last long enough as it is, this mod increases the turns per year to 12, adds a whole bunch of new factions to play, and attempts to improve the series’ notoriously iffy siege AI.
Description: Once your archers run out of arrows in vanilla Attila, they’re basically kind of useless. This mod gives them a new ability to gather fresh ammunition once they run dry, but to avoid balance issues it will take them time to do so.
Description: Defensive towers are incredibly deadly in Attila, to the point where I’ve had battles in which they’ve wiped out twice as many enemy soldiers as my actual troops. This tweak reduces their range, and halves their damage. They’re still useful, but it no longer feels like you have Rambo up there firing his M60 at people.
That little lot should keep you busy for a good long while, but there’s plenty more to look forward to from the Attila modding community. I point you in the direction of ambitious total conversion mods like Rise of Mordor and Medieval Kingdoms, which add orcs and chivalric knights respectively. We’ll continue to keep an eye out for the best community-created content.
