A game’s mod scene is like a fine wine: it becomes ever more refined with age. As such, it makes sense to step back from the hustle-and-bustle of Creative Assembly’s newest release and take a look instead at what’s available for the studio’s other mainline historical strategy games. One of my personal favourites in the series is Total War: Attila, and it’s great to see how its mod scene has fermented in the years since release.
When I was younger, I used to believe that a game was complete when it came out of the box. Then one day I stumbled onto the mod scene for Total War: Medieval II and ever since then what was once sacred has become profane. Now, I shout the praises of great mods from a megaphone and expect that mods will undoubtedly extend the life of many of my favourite strategy titles well past that of the vanilla version.
Total War: Attila may not be the best loved out of all the historical Total War games, but it did set the stage for things to come in the Total Warhammer fantasy line. Let’s take a look at some of our favourite user modifications.
These are the best Total War: Attila mods:
This mod was flagged by one of our readers, and it’s currently ranked fifth out of all of the Attila mods available via Steam Workshop. It sets the start-date nearly a thousand years later than the vanilla game, right smack in the middle of the time frame Crusader Kings 2 covers. It features 57 playable factions with thousands of newly crafted units for the era along with custom building chains and single-region provinces.
Fall of the Eagles is one of the most comprehensive and popular overhaul mods for Attila. It adds new unit reskins and models for several factions, and adds some significant changes to the garrison, climate, and battle systems. Like the previous entry, battles are tweaked to be a bit longer, though there is a compatible sub-mod that allows for faster combat while maintaining the balance system, for all of those, like me, who are more concerned with the strategic than the tactical.
If you are familiar with recent titles in the Total War series you have likely heard of Radious overhaul mods, and for good reason. Radius and his team have made a name for themselves in the Total War mod scene with some extremely popular overhaul mods for both Shogun II and Rome II. The reason for this success: an ability to tap into the communities grievances, rectify them, and package it all together as a single comprehensive experience — an absolutely enormous labour of love.
One of my recurring pet peeves with the Total War series is with the consistent rigidness of the campaign’s camera. Creative Assembly never seems to let it go as far back as I’d like and it constantly seems stuck at an awkward angle that doesn’t give me the strategic perspective I’m looking for. The Olympian Campaign Camera seeks to resolve this by adding some much-needed flexibility to the strategic view, allowing the camera to pull a bit farther back and a bit closer to ground level.
Much in the same way as the previous entry, this is a must-have quality of life improvement. This mod does the same thing as the Olympian Campaign Camera, but for tactical battles, rather than the campaign map. Freeing the camera from its unnecessarily narrow axis just feels liberating. Again, this doesn’t unshackle the camera completely, but does give the option to go back farther and get closer to the ground.
One of my biggest grievances with the Total War series in general is that the lines between provinces aren’t always clear at a glance. This mod gives some clarity by making the barriers between each province just a little bit bolder. This makes it easier to see where each province begins and ends and makes visualizing the political boundaries of your territory much easier to recognize while also maintaining the maps well-crafted geographic features.
The Romani unit pack greatly expands upon the number and variety of Roman units, adding a total of 104(!) units for the Western, Eastern, and Expeditionary (from The Last Roman DLC) Roman factions. If you’re going to be playing a run of any Roman faction, it makes sense to go all in and use the much more fleshed out unit rosters available from this mod.
Look, bland looking water graphics aren’t going to make or break your experience, but ask yourself: why shouldn’t I have nice things? So treat yourself, toss out that plain, old, regular water and get some fancy new Natural Water from this mod.
This alternate history total conversion mod posits a world in which the assassination of the Eastern Emperor and his heir just before the start date results in both halves of the Empire fracturing and splintering. Because of this, instead of two roman factions, East and West, Rome is divided into two loose hegemonic spheres based out of Ravenna and Constantinople with virtually autonomous warlords ruling the provinces.
