Losing campaign on Normal

**EternalSilence** · February 14, 2017, 04:24 AM

Hello,

I've been stacking the hours on all total war games, for more than 12years.
However, from all Total War games, Attila is the one that got away.
I normally play campaigns on hard/very hard

Been trying to play Atilla a bit more. (only have 30hours)
But for some reason i keep losing against the CAI and the BAI.
For some reason i dont understand te randomness of this game/statistics.
I did start a mercia campaign, made non aggression pacts with anyone i could, made trade agreements. All went well.
I started to but buildings that improve the public order.
Had one city giving me 150 food/turn. (so i had food surpluse)

Then 6 turns into my new campaign a full stack army attacks that one city (with all the food making in it).
BOOM, food shortage
I was losing men immediatly and my public order went negative.
Tried to make my full stack army, and i attacked that invading army. The enemy army was full of Tier 2 units. (was like 12turns into my new campaign)

How the hell?
Lost the battle, obviously, and the campaign was over and out.

I never liked the 'very dark' look (gamma/brightness) of this game.
The dark colours are so dark, its like you look at one big black blob fighting eachother.
Than i see screenshot with bright colours of the armies, and i wonder how the hell the colours are so nice on their screenshots?

(intel core i5 4690k, gtx 1070, 16gb ram, ...)

Tips & tricks?
How important are agent?
I have seen people call them very very important, even crucial on playing the campaign (even on normal).

**Forward Observer** · February 16, 2017, 05:19 PM

This should be moved to the strategy and tactics forum, but I'll take a stab at your question.

OK, since Mercia is not a faction in the main game, I'm assuming you are playing the Age if Charlemagne DLC expansion. I played my first campaign in AOC as Mercia because on the normal level as it is rated as an easy faction. It is easy, but a little tricky to get started.

Since you didn't mention any combat until turn 6 when you were attacked, I can tell you immediately what your problem is.

Like most factions in all of the Total war games, you always start out at war with at least one minor faction that usually is on one of your borders. They also will never have any ties to other factions. This gives you an immediate initial conquest objective to start the game with no real diplomatic entanglements to worry about.

In the case of Mercia, you are at war with two minor factions--each controlling one of the two settlements in Wales on your western border. The third faction in Wales is not friendly, but does not touch your border, so they are not an immediate threat. You will have to eliminate the two warring factions early on or you are never going to progress. They are allied to each other, but they will not initiate a combined attack. However, you only start with one army, so one of the two enemy armies can always be where you aren't.

You should be planning how to attack them and not waiting for them to attack you. You can only recruit 3 units per turn and sometimes not even that due to other needs. The two enemy factions on the other hand will each be pumping out 3 units every turn. If you delay contending with them, you can never catch up. However, you can get a jump on them by hiring a few mercenary troops when needed.

I had nothing to do today, so I went back and played the first eight turns of a Mercia campaign. I tried several tacts, all of which worked, but settled on one that had me capturing both enemy settlements in Wales and essentially eliminating both warring factions by turn 6. The King of the last faction was out to sea with one other unit, so I had to wait until turn 7 to knock him off with my little two ship navy. Starting on turn 7, I'm in control of all of Mercia, 2 settlements of Wales, and one of Wessex. I still have to get the public order of London in Wessex under control, but that shouldn't be too hard.

The only other threat starting out is the Kingdom of Kent in one of the Wessex settlements right below your London settlement. They are a tributary faction to you and they resent it. They are building units every turn along with disfavor, so on any turn they may declare independence and sack London. You have no way to defend against this early on if you are going to be dealing with the two warring faction on your western border. The simple solution to this is to release them from the tributary treaty. You will lose a bit of income, but you will still have a trade agreement with them and your relations will start to immediately improve.

You can actually have your first winning battle in turn one eradicating a Kingdom of Powys army along with their king.

Rather than boring the others in this forum section with how I did it, I'll post a solution when they move this to the proper forum or you can send me PM.

Cheers