Frankly, Attila requires more of a supercomputer to run than any of the games that came after it. There's also a case to be made that Attila is as much of a fantasy game as the Warhammers, if you're like me and you find the following to essentially be fantasy: unrealistic rosters (Sassanid automatic crossbow cavs, stupidly heavy Hunnic infantry, and OP Slav poison arrow archers immediately come to mind), arbitrary unit tiers, inane hyperbole employed by all character depictions everywhere, and absurd portrayal of fire arrows (being shot out of wooden towers no less like thats not a huge waiting to happen) being absolutely everywhere such that the overarching theme of the game is literally burning everything, from palisade walls and entire city blocks by infantry units in less than a minute, and even entire ships. I'd felt that Creative Assembly had an unhealthy relationship with fire arrows beginning with Shogun 2, but Attila really brought it to the fore. I wanted to like the game, with it's massive improvements on political systems and naval landings over its predecessor, but the incessant lag and the absurdities (IMO granted - there's relatively little primary sources from this period and Creative assembly interpreted those very ... creatively) resulted in me losing interest in the game quickly. I am really interested in the time period, and I had hoped that the mod scene would go a long way towards ameliorating a lot of my concerns with that game due to the fact that many of my objections are based on moddable design decisions, but the fact that CA finished developing the game while leaving it in its poorly optimized state coupled with CA's decisions to make Thrones of Britannia a completely new game rather than an Attilla DLC and to suddenly go back and start making content for Rome 2 means that Attila's remaining player and modder base is very small.
I apologize to the community for this poorly written rant, but it really does feel good to rant on the internet sometimes, and this thread seemed like a good place to give the game a piece of my mind. I often feel, especially when reading rants like mine above on steam comments and discussion threads, that the reviewer is acting kind of entitled, which makes me want to disregard their viewpoint. I guess I'm being hypocritical in that regard.
Anyway, thanks for reading!
TLDR;
Attila Total War in particular doesn't deserve to be considered a historical title in this snobby authors opinion.
P.S. In answer to the poll, my vote would be for the nonexistant option 5. I actually do enjoy "failhammer" but I won't buy all the newer titles that CA sells. The biggest reason I like the Warhammer games is because they go out of their way to suspend realism. As this post shows, realism and authenticity are important to me in games that promote themselves as historical. Because Warhammer and Warhammer 2 do not do that, I don't hold them to the same standards I hold CA's other titles. I actually think Warhammer 2 is one of CA's best games, because it really plays to the strengths of the total war series: It provides good battles with lots of beautifully animated and tactically unique units, offering factions that play the game very differently thus enhancing replayability. On top of that, unlike many other games with good battle mechanics, it makes the outcomes of those battles matter in a fairly well designed grand strategy map that the player attempts to conquer.
My snobbiest statement of this entire essay is this: I would actually prefer that CA stick to fantasy and mostly fiction-colored settings (like Romance of the Three Kingdoms). My reason for this is that they have made it apparent in my extremely snobbish opinion that a realistic portrayal of warfare and historical accuracy/authenticity/whatever are low priorities to them. I wouldn't be bothered by this if it weren't for the fact that CA's games are marketed as being authentic to their settings. I'd prefer that if CA did make a new historical title, it would be extremely carefully researched so that it could bring the gamer to a setting that offers the player many of the same dilemmas a real ruler of the setting would have had to deal with. Barring that, I'd like a game that is far more moddable than games made on the warscape engine, namely the ability to mod campaign maps, battle maps etc so that CA could offer their usual trope-driven modern politically influenced color of the setting with mostly fictional though supposedly historical faction rosters. That way a dedicated team of modders could make the setting more authentic while CA can spend far less time and money into developing the setting to appeal to what it considers (and probably is if I'm being honest) a wider audience.
Good Lord I'm such a nerd. My apologies for the post script rant.