Total War: Attila: Age of Charlemagne - Review/Impressions

For those of you who know me I generally do Shout casts for CoH 2 and on occasion make crictical content for games. Recently I stumbled upon a DLC for one game and to be completely honest I had to write out a rant and make a video about it. There are people here I know that play the Total War series so I feel it's necessary to post this here in the "Other Games" section. Hopefully this helps you guys who may be considering dropping 15 bucks on it.

What do I think of this DLC. I've got mixed feelings. There's only so much you can do when working with a game that feels like a standalone expansion. It falls victim to many of the same pitfalls that Attila and Rome II Emperor's Edition has. The Battle AI is still dumb, Campaign AI is still as ineffective as ever the building options are still limited and the generals feel more like 2d stereotypes rather than characters but these issues can hardly be solved with a DLC can they? ON the other hand the game is leaking with polish, beautiful assets and a beautiful world map leads to some stunning battles at least till the lines join and the inner character of the game is revealed. So the question is; Why do I bother with Total War Attila Age of Charlemagne?

Firstly I want to clarify that while I'm a long term fan of the series, having started with Shogun: Total War, I'm not a hardcore fan of the series. I play other games from a variety of genre's but I have spent many years (and almost failed some exams) spending to much time playing Total War. Hopefully you'll understand that this criticism is coming from a place of love.

So let's dive into the game. First up Age of Charlemagne is a DLC campaign which in the past has usually taken the core of the game given it a new map and wrote a half arsed but sometimes decent story to go with it. So how does Age of Charlemagne measure up? About as well as you could expect - that is to say, it follows the mould. The units are primarily improved reskins of older units, nothing to fancy nothing special. It's rather disappointing if not unexpected, for those who felt like this DLC could of been a quasi Medieval III to sate your thirst keep looking. This is Attila with a different map, which is disappointing. True the early modern period was limited in information but their is barely any theme here, we have the generic "Levy Spearmen" and "Armoured Spearmen" then finally "Royal Spearmen" the units just feel bland and devoid of national flavour with the expectation of perhaps the Vikings and Moors. The armies I built as Charlemagne were of identical composition as the armies I built as the Mercians. The Armies visually differed of course, the Creative Assembly's art team as usual has done an exquisite job in making the units look beautiful aesthetically, the new unit cards are fantastic and imitate quite nicely the Bayeux Tapestry. All this graphical finesse however feels wasted by the fact that the units are so damn generic Levy Spearmen may well be historically accurate but theme is vital in all creative works. Having Frankish Spearmen be called Frankish Spearmen actually helps quite a lot and gives the illusion of diversity – even if the stats are the same. Here is a situation and tell me what sounds better.

1. The enemies Levy Spearmen are charging our Levy Spearmen on our right flank damn those Levy Spearmen!

2. The enemies Lombard Spear Warriors are charging our Frankish Spearwall on our right flank, damn those Lombard dogs!

The games use of the generic hurts it and damages it's theme, which is a shame considering the diversity in the units themselves, the Mercian Levy Spearmen look different to the Frankish ones but when they 're the size of ants that doesn't matter as much as the unit card name. It's something the Creative Assembly should think about when creating future historical Total War games – hopefully they'll go all out on theme for the upcoming Total War: Warhammer.

So thematically the DLC fails, which is a shame considering Attila was dripping with theme - the end of the world. You may think that this means other areas were improved then? Sadly no, the CAI still targets you, badly. It plays to defeat you, not to build an empire of its own; and it shows. The AI will still not take advantage of other states weakness' preferring to watch the player like a hawk. It leads to a much more challenging campaign at the start mind you – but takes a lot out of the strategy and immersion that the game should be emphasising. It's a shame that the game relies on this artificial difficulty. Especially when Shogun 2 overcame many of these issues. During the Age of Charlemagne I never saw a small empire grow – in fact besides from maybe the occasional province I never saw any empires but my own grow – certainly not to the extent that they did in Shogun 2 anyway. The AI still prefers to raid you constantly rather than settling down – infact over the 2 campaigns I played during my time with Age of Charlemagne I only saw them take a territory of me one time, every other time they raided and pulled back weakening their army until my Palace Guard came and wiped them of the face of the Earth after 7 turns. The CAI has more issues than just that – between failing to resolve famines and building a blacksmith in every town and city it controlled the AI was damn right idiotic and couldn't pose a challenge once my Empire became stable. Sadly I think Shogun II will remain the height of Campaign AI for Total War for some time to come and even that game had it's issues.

Now the battle AI is just as idiotic, it clumps multiple units up to charge one of yours which would be fine... if it outnumbered you which it rarely does. This simply leads to one of your units taking heavy casualties while your other unit get around the flank of the mismanaged mess and hits it hard. Causing it to run. Sadly when running most units rally on their first round after about 15-30m of running – even if a n enemy unit is hot on their heels. This is ok when you have a strong battle line to buy them time to rally up but most of the time it just leads to them being charged by the perusing unit and routed from being charged in the rear. Gee thanks but I'd rather them just keep running. Now the battles aren't the terrible mess they were in Total War: Rome II but the aforementioned lack of unit diversity takes it's toll. There's only so many times you can see the generic levy spearmen attack generic levy spearmen with the AI using the same boring and ineffective strategy. The game would benefit from drop in battles massively. The games combat works but it's still lacking in a strategical depth. You can easily win battle after battle just by training the best troops and charging them headlong into the enemy. Co-op mitigates this considerably, there's no need to interact with the lacklustre BAI if you're lucky enough to have a reliable Co-Op partner. The game feels so much better when you're fighting a player – the battles go from a disorganised charge of rabble to a beautiful symphony of plays and counter plays each player desperately trying to gain the advantage. Pre-organised online battles however are a total cop out, the lack of variety means that you're better off just using the vanilla game.

So Co-Op is the DLC's greatest strength but is it fun because of the improved challenge or because you're simply playing with a friend? I'd have to say it is better because of the challenge, it feels like you are playing a different game. You can play on normal difficulty and not feel like the battles are push over. You can actually feel like you're building towards an end game goal; the destruction of the empire your friend worked so hard to build. So yes Co-op makes the game fun. But does it make the game worth $15 USD? I'd have to say no.

The DLC is fun, but it needed more. It feels too much like Attila despite the fact it should feel like the dawn of the medieval age. Thematically the game should feel like a rebirth of the West it should feel like the rise of Charlemagne but instead feels like a mod. Arguably worse, most mods have much more thematic unit variety – even those which are historically accurate. So Why do I bother with Total War: Attila: Age of Charlemagne? The answer is I'm not. I can't honestly in good faith recommend it, there's simply much better alternatives. Save your money and wait for Total War: Warhammer and just search for some mods. There's some great ones available online at Total War Center and on Steam Workshop. Thanks for reading this I hope it helped make up your mind. Good gaming.

Here's a less coherent video for those of you interested. Not my best work but still covers a few topics I may of missed. (All together I have about 20-25 hours in this DLC by now and have played 2 factions.


TL;DR: A glorified mod. It would be like if the British Forces were slightly reskined USF units with the same stats, same voices and even worse bugs. If you think Relic is lazy, Creative Assembly will show you the true meaning of sloth. Avoid at all costs. (Hell burn your money in a fire over buying this DLC)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKlnjwzT1IruAZFb0EA-5pQ

I have to say my one complaint about this campaign is the Theme of Sicily unplayable. Like ImperialDane said during his Age of Charlemagne review video, why cut out the Byzantine power in Italy that has unique Roman influenced units but have nations such as Mercia that has the same number of units that don't feel as unique? I'm glad mods made the Theme of Sicily playable and hopefully CA makes them playable in a free update.