EPT![[image loading]](http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/325610/header.jpg?t=1487587491)
Pictured above: not a very nice person
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Eurasian steppe riders must have a pretty good PR department these days. For years people have debated whether the biggest monster of all time was one of the big three: Hitler, Stalin or Mao whilst for centuries roving packs of equestrian bastards have, in this one’s opinion anyway, already won the universe’s all time achievement award for pointless mass slaughter. It’s speculated that approximately 1 in 200 men today can claim direct descendance to Ghenghis Khan; either his sperm was as desirable to women as a low-fat ice cream that cancels period pain or that’s the result of depopulating Asia so thoroughly, perhaps both. In any case, what I’m here to talk about isn’t the Mongols but rather their distant cousins, the Huns, as depicted in Total War: Attila. I got no games to talk about (cool shit comes out next week, also AssCreed: Origins) and besides I’ve wanted to write this for a while since I find the Huns to be one of my favourite villains in all of gaming.
Admittedly it’s an awkward classification. Total War games aren’t about good and evil, they’re about everyone wanting some and remorselessly bulldozing all the other sods in your grand quest to coat the given world map in your team’s colour. But with TW:A the setting kinda demands some prickishness. One the one side you have the Roman Empires sprawled across most of the map akin to a beached whale, a once mighty thing now doomed to an undignified and eventually explosive end. On the other you’ve got shitloads of barbarians ready to mass migrate all up in this beach, akin to the Wildlings from Game of Thrones, except instead of fleeing the zombie apocalypse they’re fleeing a biblical apocalypse, aka the Huns. Historically Attila never completely toppled Rome but the Western Roman Empire never recovered after his conquests, succumbing to all the migrating Barbarian tribes who finished the job and carved out their own kingdoms. The Romans labelled Attila “The Scourge of God” and it certainly wasn’t for pinching a few pennies when the collection plate was passed around.
It’s said that history’s written by the winners but sometimes it’s written by the people who write things down. The Huns were illiterate so our only sources are of Roman origin and it turns out if you kill a bunch of people and blow shit up the comment section may just turn against you. Consider this nugget from Jordanes, a historian of the time: “[the Huns] are a savage race, which dwelt at first in the swamps, a stunted, foul and puny tribe, scarcely human and having no language save one which bore but slight resemblance to human speech”. Whilst it’s possible this is just racism it probably has more to do with Attila’s predilection for extreme violence, sacking city after city, some completely off the fucking map. It’s true that the Romans only had all this territory since they excelled at extreme violence too back in the day but they also believed in literacy and functional plumbing so I’ll consider them the sympathetic party in this instance.
To translate this into the game them Creative Assembly lads had to fiddle with the game’s mechanics a fair bit. So many little things are tweaked to make the Huns completely abhorrent cunts that radiate malevolence ‘neath their every footstep. For starters, TW:A introduces a mechanic wherein territories can be razed to the ground. Since the Huns are what’s known as a Horde faction and can’t claim territory or cities, when they conquer a place they can opt to obliterate it completely. Previously in TW when a city was lost you could comfort yourself with the knowledge that you could take it right back but after the Huns have done their thing that city has to be completely rebuilt from the ground up, an expensive and time consuming process that leaves you vulnerable for many turns. And if you defeat a Hun army then you have gained nothing aside from a defence budget that probably doesn’t have to pay nearly as many soldiers.
The heartbreak of losing a city is one thing, the lingering despair that comes from zooming out and noticing vast swathes of Europe are now completely desolate is very much another. There was civilisation here once, it’s gone now. Sure it was a civilisation that practiced slavery and the only rights women received was the right to do what their dads and husbands told them to do but it was civilisation dammit. Even if you’re not actively warring against the Huns, merely observing the trail of destruction they leave in their wake is miserable in itself.
And if you are fighting the Huns well best of fucking luck to you. Romans and Barbarians mostly fought each other so as a result tailored their armies around being the best at melee infantry combat. The Huns, being a canny lot, mostly show up on horseback equipped with composite bows. You might think those overlarge shields the Romans liked so much offer worthwhile protection but those composite bows can launch arrows with such force it hits like a rifle round. You can’t pin them in combat and you can’t outshoot them so what the fuck? For some reason the Huns also get to bring in catapults that are so good at raining down fiery long ranged death you’d Attila had figured out how to transport howitzers back in time.
So you might think you just have to beat a few Hun armies and they’ll piss off, right? Wrong! Until Attila himself spawns (quite a few turns into the game) and you defeat him in battle three times (a much cooler ending than in real life where he died of a nosebleed at a wedding) the AI will just continue to spawn Hun armies non stop because fuck you. And when Attila does show up the world’s climate goes to permafrost for a few years and he brings a few stacks of the meanest motherfuckers ever to draw breath along with him. It might seem a little cheap the AI has to resort to downright cheating but the point is that the Huns are villains. Villains cheat. Works for me.
You can play live and let live with the Huns, especially if you butter them up with some tribute now and then. The Slavic barbarian tribes particularly rely on such appeasements. But you don’t need to be at war with the Huns to suffer their wickedness. For one thing, nearby desolation forces migration. You can’t refuse refugees and despite how legitimate their need for asylum it brings down Public Order, just like in real life! Additionally if a Hun horde is in your territory your growth is severely reduced and your units do not replenish. For a laugh they might start raiding the countryside, just fucking daring you to do something about it. Take their abuse with good cheer or give them an excuse to set all the children on fire, yeah tough decision that.
Being a Total War game the option stands for you to play as the Huns yourself and if you don’t think having faction traits themed around the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse brings the point across then open up the Technologies tab and see what some of the available researches are called. ‘Invasive Pastoralism’, ‘Organised Extortion’, ‘Methodical Oppression’, ‘Systematic Ransacking’. It’s pretty unequivocal who the bad guys are here. Truth be told I actually don’t like playing the Huns that much. The absurdity of how uneven bringing horse archers to an infantry jamboree coupled with the lack of empire cultivation drags the game down for me. The moment I knew playing Huns wasn’t for me occurred when I moved my horsemen into a meagre barbarian territory and before I could wipe them from the map they packed up and all fucking left, commencing their migration and briefly becoming a Horde faction themselves. I hadn’t even declared war on them yet! Just being there was enough for them to know they had to get the fuck out, and who could blame them?
All this is why I like the Huns so much as game villains. They’re not particularly well written like GLADoS or Andrew Ryan, you can turn the difficulty down so beating them in battle’s piss easy and in some situations you can play a whole campaign without fighting or even seeing them (particularly if you play as a Middle Eastern faction, who are rather perplexingly developed for a game ostensibly about that Attila guy but oh well). It’s the culmination of all these little factors that set them apart. Most Total Wars are about empire building. This one’s about empires tumbling down. About trying to carve out your own little piece of what’s left, and of battening down the hatches and simply trying to survive a metropolis sized fire-tornado inexorably scorching the world. And it’s all the Huns’ fault. Thanks Attila! I’m glad you’re fucking dead!
