Welcome to my guide on how to play as the huns. In this guide you will find all sorts of tips and tricks that I have found during the time that I've been playing as the huns. The information will range from the basics of every faction like loyalty and power to specific campaign movement and army composition.

The guide is divided in 9 sections:
General:
1.General tips and information: Politics withing the faction
2.General tips and information: Diplomacy
3.General tips and information: Campaign movement
4.General tips and information: Battles
Huns:
5.Huns: The family
6.Huns: Battle tactics and army composition
7.Huns: Diplomacy
8.Huns: How to start
9.Huns: Important stuff/reminder

I'll start of by listing some general tips that can be used while playing pretty much any faction. This section is more of a reminder to more experienced players and an introduction to the newer ones.

As a faction in TW: A you will have to deal with politics and sometimes get your hands a bit dirty. These tips will be for you to keep your hands as clean as you can and to make sure nobody gets the genius idea to rebel against your absolute power.

1.When you open the politics tab you will see your family tree. Your goal should be to keep the power bar at the top around 50-60%. The reason for this is that there will be no real disadvantages if you do so. Once your power gets too high you can begin having problems with loyalty and growth in cities/hordes. The things that influence your power are 1.dominion and 2. control.

Your % dominion depends on the influence your family holds within your faction against the influence the other people hold. If your family has 75 influence in total and the other people have 25 influence in total, you will have a dominion of 75%. As the huns you will not have to worry about dominion as your family starts with 100%. Unless you let all your generals die so that you need to use people outside the family, you will always have this at 100%. Factions that do not start with 100% dominion can make it rise by adopting influential people into their family or marrying them to female family members. You can also lower other people's influence by using the "diminish populartity" political action.

Your % control depends on the political events that happen in your faction. Every time that you start a political action like promoting someone, ect. something unexpected can happen. With unexpected I mean bad. Most likely someone from another family or sometimes even from your own family doesn't agree with whatever action you tried to take and is causing trouble. There are most of the time 2 ways to deal with this: 1. Have the character who initiated the political action spend more influence to "force" it through or 2. Give up, which causes you to lose a % of control and ofcourse cancels the political action. Fortunately not only bad things can happen. Sometimes you will start the new turn with the pleasant surprise of getting a % of control as part of a random event. You can also increase your control by choosing the "gather support" political action.

The power is the balance of dominion and control so if you have 50% of both you will have 50% power. As the huns getting 50% power is thus pretty difficult as it would need you to have 100% dominion and 0% control to keep it at 50%. I like to keep my power between 60-70% and have my dominion 100%. If you would however like to lower your dominion so that you can have a bit more control you could always hire someone outside your family as a general and have him gather some influence.

I have no idea what happens when either your dominion or control reach 0% (or if it's even possible at all). All I know is that neither you nor me will want to find out.

What I do however know is the next important thing: loyalty. Your loyalty shows how loyal your subject is to the ruler of your faction. Only male characters have loyalty. Loyalty is really important and should always be as high as possible. If the loyalty of one of your subjects drops to 0 he will start a rebellion. He will found a new faction called "yourfactionname seperatists" and forever leave your faction. I don't know what happens if the one to rebel isn't a general, but if he is, he will take a part of the troops of the army he is stationed in and gather troops to fight you. To make sure this doesn't happen you have to look at the politics tab every turn to check if there is nobody with low loyalty. My standards for low are 1-6. To higher the loyalty of someone you need to use another subject (I personally prefer using the female members of the family for this since they don't need influence to get promoted ect.) and initiate the "secure loyalty" political action. As I said in the previous part, sometimes something unexpected can happen which will require more influence so be sure to keep some reserves (if the action costs 25 influence originially be sure to have atleast 40).

Now for a part about the usefulness of wives. Wives are really useful in TW: A. They can gather influence each turn and also increase the stats or the amount of influence their husband gets. I personally use them to "secure loyalty" or "diminish popularity" since they do not need influence for things like promotions. The other thing they are obviously useful for is ensuring your general has a successor. Having 1 or 2 kids at most may be normal now, but back then they couldn't have enough. Ofcourse having a son is the most desirable result because they can further the family tree, but even when you have a daughter you can use her for political marriages. I'm not sure whether this is only for the huns, but my general has 7 ligitimate children so you shouldn't really worry about not getting a son(he's still in his thirties BTW). To get a wife you can either use the "seek wife" political action or "trade" one from another faction. Since wives are so important you should only take good wives with a lot of buffs. Wives can also give debuffs so be sure to choose a wife that will be useful.

I've been talking a lot about influence but maybe some of the newer players are wondering:"How do I get more influence?". The answer to this is simple:FIGHT!. By defeating armies and besieging settlements your generals will gather influence. As I said previously their wives can also have buffs that increase the influence they can get. Wives and nobles that aren't generals (forgot the term used for them) generate influence over time, which makes them really important when it comes to political actions.

Now to finish the political section of this guide I would like to talk about what I think is the most annoying and dangerous political event that can happen. Sometimes when you use "secure loyalty" on a character it will say that "drastic measures" need to be taken. You will have 2 options here (and the option to give up). Or you will castrate the character ensuring that he will never be able to have children again (bad idea if you want to keep your family tree alive) or blind him which decreases cunning, authority and zeal -5 (if your character is a general this will make them a lot worse). Both these options are bad and will have heavy consequences. I advise you to just give up and try again. If for some reason you really have to do it, be prepared to have something bad happen. Obviously the person you just blinded/castrated won't be happy and he'll show it with an assasination attempt. I'm not sure whether this always happens, but after castrating/blinding a character he will use the "assasination" political action on whoever blinded/castrated him(this is done automatically and can't be cancelled). This can result in him killing the character or having the character send an assassin as counterattack which can kill the blinded/castrated character. If this happens you can use a CHEAT/TRICK. You can just reload your last save (hopefully right before you ended your turn leading to the assassination attempt) and hope that nobody dies. I've had this happen to me and I had to reload twice to make it so nobody died.

If you aren't a new player you will probably already know this, but I still want to include it for those who are new to TW.

In TW: A (and all other TW games) a lot of your time will be spent trying to get trade agreements, alliances and declaring war on other factions. All of this is done through the diplomacy tab. Here you will see all the other factions that you have encountered and their relation with eachother and you.

As the huns you cannot make any trade agreements, but with all the other factions (in case of migratory factions when they settle somewhere) you will have the ability to trade with other factions if a trade route is possible. The amount of money you get from a trade depends on the materials that both side can trade and also the time that you have been trading. The longer you've been trading with a faction, the more money the trade route will give you. As the huns you don't need to trouble yourself with this, but as one of the sedentary factions this will be a great source of income. To make the most out of trading you should capture settlements with trade resources (you can see on the map which settlements have resources) and try to maintain good relations with the people you trade with.

There are three types of military "pacts" you can make with other factions. 1. a non-aggression pact, 2. a defensive alliance and 3. a military alliance. All these pacts should not be broken before 10 turns have passed (else whoever broke it will suffer a diplomatic penalty). A non-aggrassion pact is literally a pact where both sides promise not to attack eachother. A defensive alliance is a step higher. With this "pact" both factions promise to help eachother when one of them is attacked. It is a great way to ensure you won't get attacked in the back, but don't forget that not everybody is honorable. A military alliance is the highest form of "pact". This "pact" ensures that both factions help eachother when they are attacked and when they attack. If faction A who has a military alliance with faction B declares war on faction C, faction B will also join the war. As I said before this is a great way to protect yourself from attacks in the back, but it won't be the first time someone gets betrayed by the AI...

Then there are client/puppet/vassal/... states. These are factions who have a "lord" faction that they listen to and give money to every turn in the form of a tribute. As the huns I have yet to play a campaign where my 2 starting tribute states, the Greuthungians and Gepids, do not betray me. Even if I give them gifts and have 50+ friendlieness with them, they still betray me when they get powerful enough. I have no idea how trustworthy the other client states are, but you shouldn't trust them too much and keep a close watch on them.

Another useful feature is the "military access" demand. This makes both factions able to send their armies through eachother's territory without diplomatic penalties. This can be used both to backstab someone or to be backstabbed by someone. This is a pretty risky agreement and should only be used with reliable factions.

You can also arrange a marriage with another faction using one of your/their daughters which will give a tiny increase in friendlieness (it gave +15 for me last time, but I'm not sure if I was just unlucky to have it be so small).

these are all the diplomatic actions that directly involve you. Next I will talk about the diplomatic actions that "manipulate" another faction into doing what you want them to do.

first we have the "join war against..." action. This action asks a faction to join you in your war against another faction. This is very useful to make new allies and to weaken/divide the faction you are currently at war with.

Secondly you can ask a faction to break any of the three military "pacts" being a non-aggression pact, a defensive alliance or a military alliance. This is used so that you don't have to deal with 2 factions that are in an alliance when you only want to wage war against one of them. Beware though, alliances are built upon trust and will not easely be broken.

Lastly you can ask a faction to break a trade agreement or cancel a client state. Breaking a trade agreement can be used to weaken a state financially while cancelling a client state can be used to avoid having to declare war on the "lord" state.

All these agreements and demands are built upon trust and good relations, but how do you know who will want to trade with you and who will want to have an alliance with you? Who will betray you and who will be loyal to you?

When you start negotiating with someone you will see a portrait of their leader with lots of traits under it. For example it will say: reliable, aggressive, expansionist, hates rival empires,... . All these traits influence whether or not someone will like you or not. People who are reliable are valuable allies and will (almost) never betray you, people who hate rival empires will be reluctant to deal with you, ect. . These traits apply only to the ruler though. If someone else takes the throne, he will have other traits and your good relationship with one faction may turn sour when a successor takes the throne.

The second important factor when it comes to diplomacy is the "total attitude value" or as I call it "friendlieness". This value shows you how much a faction likes you. under 0 is bad while above 0 is good. When you hover over a faction on the diplomacy map you will see what they like about you and what they hate about you. for example it will say: they approve of: war with the ... +22 or they condemn: treaties with the ... -15 . Keeping your allies happy is an important thing and not that easy. If you have a lot of money however you can always bribe them with a gift which will give a temporary boost of friendlieness.

Checking the diplomacy tab every turn to see if you can get some agreements is an important thing to do. Friendlieness changes every turn and while a faction may not have agreed to something the previous turn, maybe they will the next turn.

TW: A has a huge campaign map to explore and there are loads of features that can influence whether you die an early death or march home as the victor.

I'll start with the stances that your armies can make. You have 4 types of stances:1.normal marching, 2.forced march, 3.raiding and 4.fortifying position/encampment.

1.I don't think I need to explain normal marching, but just to be sure: next to the integrity bar of your forces is an orange/yellow bar with action points. Each "step" your army marches, takes a set amount of action points. When your action points are depleted you can no longer move your army for the rest of the turn.

2.forced march: Forced march gives you 50% more action points and thus you can march further. The downside to this is that if you get attacked your units will start in the "winded" state (mildly exhausted), you can't attack anything and you can get ambushed more easely. Forced march is useful when you have to flee an army or have to reinforce an army and don't have enough action points to get there.

3.raiding: The raiding stance is used to raid money from the region and the trade routes where it is used. Raiding can also be used to lower the growth and public order in the region where it is used. This can slow down the pace at which the region can make new buildings and also lower public order enough so that rebellions happen in the region. The downside is that your units start in the winded state when attacked and that it takes 25% of your action points. Raiding a region also gives diplomatic penalties with the raided faction.

4.fortify position/encampment: Encampment is used by the migrating factions and functions the same way a city does. It has buildings, food and public order. the fortify position stance however makes it possible to "entrench" an army in a fortification. These fortifications include towers and barricades which makes them pretty dangerous to attack. The downside is that the army obviously can't move anymore and both actions take 25% of your action points.

Now I'll talk about the peculiarities of the map. The earth obviously isn't just a flat plot of land. There are rivers, seas, mountains,... .

On the campaign map there are lots of rivers and these take a huge amount of action points to cross (not sure but probably more than 30%). The fact that the map is filled with them might make this slightly annoying, but they can also be used to escape chasing armies.

Mountains are mountains...you can't climb them with your armies...go around them...

Every time that a unit goes from land onto the sea they will use a lot of action points just like with the rivers. So if you decide to go somewhere by boat and can barely move your army after they're on sea, don't be surprised.

The last important thing about the campaign map is attrition. Attrition will happen when troops are subjected to circumstances they can't handle. The most common one is snow during winter. Every time that you move through a snowy part of the map during winter, you will lose some men. The amount you lose depends on how far you march so it's better to wait it out than to have more casualties. Naturally just standing there won't be good for your men either so if they stay in the snow they will also get attrition. In short just stay home during the winter...or be like the sassanids who live in the desert and don't have to deal with that... If that wasn't bad enough already, it seems that TW: A wants to promote the fact that global warming is becoming an issue. If you live in the northern part of the map you will not only be plagued by snow during the winter, but also during spring after some time! Yay! If you want to capture the northern settlements I have only 1 tip: do it fast because winter is coming!

When you think TW, you think: HUGE BATTLES. Atleast that's what I think. In TW: A you will have huge battles, but those battles won't always be fair. Here are some tricks on how to win battles that might seem impossible.

There are roughly three types of units: cavalry, melee and archers. A solid army has around 50% melee units, 25% archers and 25% cavalry(This is more for "normal" armies and not cavalry specialised factions like let's say the huns). That means that in an army of 20 units 10 will be melee, 5 will be archers and 5 will be cavalry. For sieges it's ofcourse different with less (or no) cavalry and about 3 siege engines.(this is all just based on my personal preference though)

The role of the melee troops is to keep the enemy in place, the role of the archers is to wear the enemy down before the actual fight and provide support and the role of the cavalry is to flank the enemy and cause massive routing.

The most important thing during a fight is the morale of the troops. Morale can and will change the result of a battle. How you handle it will be what decides whether it changes the battle in your favor or not. Morale is represented by a face which will be green and smiling when morale is high or red and angry when morale is low.

After a couple of battles I have noticed that the AI (just like a lot of players) likes to keep his general at the back of the army to protect him. That will be what you aim for. If you kill the general of an army the fight has already been won. The most popular tactic is to keep the main bulk of the army busy while a detachment of cavalry flanks the enemy to take the general out after which it charges the enemy army and causes massive routing. This has also been the tactic I've been using and I have to say that it's pretty effective. You should ALWAYS aim for the general. Ofcourse if your general gets taken out the chances that you will lose are also a lot higher. Don't let your general fight if he doesn't have to.

Fatigue is also really important and is represented by a pair of legs. The more you make a unit run around the battlefield, the more they will be fatigued and the more the legs will be red. If a unit is really tired it will begin to move sluggishly and it's combat potential will also lower. keeping your troops in place for a bit after making them run around is a smart thing to do.

Another important thing is knowing when an enemy units has truly been defeated. An enemy unit is ONLY truly defeated when their icon turns into a white flag on a gray background. Even if their icon is flashing white and they're retreating they can still recover. When an enemy unit is broken you have to do everything you can to finish it off. If you don't finish off a broken unit entirely they can regroup with the other units who fled and still be a threat. Likewise if an enemy general unit is broken and flees before there has been an actual "the enemy general has been killed" notification, that means the general is still alive and you have to chase him down with all your might!

When you start with the Huns you will notice that your family is pretty much the only family with influence. This is pretty advantageous and should stay like this. You shouldn't hire anyone outside of the family and if you really have to, don't forget to adopt them or marry them to one of your daughters. Your family will keep on growing and whatever you do you should always try to keep them alive and fertile(don't go around castrating them). The more people you have in your family the better.

Since your family is the only one with any influence your dominion will be 100%. That means that if your control gets too high you will have high power which you shouldn't try to get. Try to keep your power at around 50-70% so that you don't suffer any negative penalties to growth and loyalty.

When you start the game one of the first things you should do is promote your generals to dread riders and also secure their loyalty so that they don't betray you (I speak from experience). Every time that it's possible keep promoting your generals.

If one of your male family members has an open spot for a wife let him use the "seek wife" political action and look for a wife with good buffs like + influence per turn and + stats. Avoid wives that give debuffs as the plague.

Wives will mostly be used to use the "secure loyalty" action and to secure political marriages.

Something also worthy of notice is the fact that in the beginning your khan is getting kinda old and might drop dead next turn so be sure to keep your generals (his sons and possible heirs) alive.

What are the huns known and feared for? Their cavalry! As the huns most of your army will be made up of cavalry. The units in your army that aren't cavalry should only be siege engines. Ofcourse this is merely personal preference and doesn't mean that you shouldn't have infantry in your armies, but I advise against it since late game the best units you will be able to field will be cavalry.

In the beginning the backbone of your army should be the horse archers. They're cheap, effective and some of the first troops you can recruit. Because of this the amount of horse archers in your army will probably outnumber the amount of other cavalry. Later on you should aim for a 50/50 division of horse archers and other cavalry.

The huns are totally OP in my opinion. The best tactic I've come up with is to first bait out any cav that the enemy might have with the horse archers. The cav will probably not even reach you before it flees because of the casualties they'll take by chasing horse archers. Afterwards you will bait the main army with your melee cavalry and your general. In the meantime your horse archers will go behind the enemy army where the general is 90% of the time. They will harass the general with arrows and if they are with enough even charge him so that he dies ASAP while the main army is still following the rest of your cav. After the general dies you should switch your arrows to the whistling arrows and target the main army. If you have enough ammo left you might be able to route the enemy by using the arrows. If you don't have enough ammo you should just let your melee cav charge into the enemy while they're getting shot. The charge is likely to break them which will cause the other units to route and will make you the winner. Don't forget to chase down the broken enemy units and kill all of them so that they can't regroup.

In a siege you will obviously have a bit more trouble with your cavalry army. The best course of action would be to buy mercenary onagers or build a workshop to build your own. If you don't have any of those don't panic. To take down the towers that guard the gates you should use flaming arrows. This can take a lot of ammo so don't be surprised if you don't have a lot left afterwards. When you fire at a tower be sure to protect yourself against it so that it doesn't fire on you. A tower can decimate a unit of horse archers in little time. Once the towers are down you should use a battering ram to break the gate. If your archers have ammo left, let them fire upon the enemy and maybe even route a couple of units. Once you are out of ammo you can charge through the gate and kill everyone in your path. Beware that this is pretty risky and may end in failure, but unless the enemy outnumbers you by let's say 2:1 it shouldn't be a problem. After you charge through and kill the enemy you should hurry to the victory point and capture it. Beware that the general stays at the victory point most of the time and could pose a threat. If any towers can target you while you capture the victory point, capture them by sending a detachment of troops.

Diplomacy as the huns is rather annoying. You can't trade with anyone and nobody likes you. You start off with 2 tributary states : the Greuthurgians and the Gepids. The Gepids stay small most of the time while the Greuthurgians tend to grow pretty big. When the Greuthurgians get big enough they will likely betray you unless they adore you like you're a god. The Gepids on the other hand tend to stay loyal unless you begin destroying the other germanic tribes (which I did).

Making friends as the huns is both easy and difficult at the same time. Having people like you is easy. If you want to appeal to the WRE and ERE attack the northern tribes and the Sassanids. If you want to appeal to the northern tribes and the Sassanids just attack the Roman empires. If you do enough damage you can get people to be very friendly towards you. This however doesn't last that long. The damage you did will gradually matter less and less to them eventually leading to pretty much being back at the start where nobody likes you. I have no idea how to get people to keep liking you, so if that's what you were looking for in this guide I can only say: good luck. Luckily we don't need people to like us as the huns! Even better, the more factions we are at war with, the happier we are (+1 integrity for each faction you are at war with). My advice is to not piss off the Roman empires or the Sassanids until end-game since they're really powerful and just pick on the small northern tribes and such.

The intital challenge for the Huns says hard, but it isn't that difficult.

Turn 1

During the first turn you should make a fourth horde with "the children of the larch".

and have "the tempests" sack the Sclavenian city "Gelonus" while "the blood riders" move to join them.

You should also get atleast 1 storyteller's yurt for priests and 1 bartering ground for spies.

When you open the faction tab (family tree) you should promote both your generals to dread riders and have any single male character use the "seek wife" political action. If you have enough influence for the "secure loyalty" political action then do so too.

For technology you can choose wether to start with civic or military.

Turn 2

You should have "the tempests" and "the blood riders" farm the city by having them cycle through sacking the city a couple of times to level your general.

"The children of the larch" and "the scourge of the steppe" should move towards the Sclavenian capital Karikos and do the same there. "the children of the larch" should be the ones to besiege the city while "the scourge of the steppe" stays in reinforcement range in camp mode while recruiting around 6 units.

Following turns

You should repeat the farming process and not forget to rotate your armies so that all your generals get enough exp. Buying a mercenary onager for the siege of karikos is also really helpful.
I recommend farming the cities until your generals have the "overlord" perk which gives a huge boost to growth. How long you actually farm them depends on you and your circumstances.

I said "and your circumstances" since you might have begun noticing the fact that the northern tribes kinda hate you. Most of the time they will start sending their armies around the 10th turn. Your client state the Greuthurgians will also most likely betray you too. So be prepared. When you notice that they are sending huge armies don't panic. My battle was a battle of 16 units(me) against 34 units (them) on hard difficulty and I still won easely with the tactic I mentioned previously(it is time consuming though). Don't be scared! Hold your head up and be proud! Oh and don't forget to sack first and then raze since you can do both within the same turn.

The finish the guide I would like to list a couple of important things that could really help. I might've already mentioned them, but just to be sure I'll do it again.

1. Do NOT trust your tributary states. They WILL stab you in the back. DO NOT subjugate any other factions since the income they generate isn't worth the risk.

2. As the huns you can NOT trade. Your money will be made through your buildings, raiding and sacking.

3.The Huns have 100% dominion and you should try to keep it that way!

4.With the battle tactic I previously mentioned, numbers do not matter in a battle. You can take down forces that outnumber you 1-4:1.

5.ALWAYS aim for the general and use whistling arrows to break enemy troops.

6.Recruit the max number of agents you can and lvl them ASAP.

7.Check the loyalty of your subjects every turn. If it gets too low use someone (preferably a female family member) to use the "secure loyalty" action.

8.Do NOT castrate/blind characters that you will really need. Worst case you will have 1 crippled character and another character assassinated.

9.Do NOT waste your money on giving other factions gifts as the Huns are naturally troublemakers and hated.

And a little trick/cheat to end it all. It may be kind of cheap, but if you really need to have your agent succeed or if you don't like the consequences of your political action you can always reload and try again. Both of these events are based on chance. If you had a 99% chance to assassinate a character, but failed, chances are that if you reload and try again he will die. Likewise if there was a 1% chance of something bad happening during one of your political actions you can just reload and try again for a different outcome.

If like me(and a lot of other people) you have been having trouble getting chased/declared war on for no reason by states you barely interacted with, you should try installing some mods. There are a lot of mods that make this game a lot more enjoyable. You have mods that reduce the imperium diplomatic penalty (which most likely is the reason you're hated by factions you don't even know) or that change the game mechanics in general. I personally think that TW: A isn't complete without the Radious mod.

if you want to look for some mods this site is your best bet http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?2105-Total-War-Attila-Mod-Threads&sort=views&order=desc

The Radious mod can be found here http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?680541-Radious-Total-War-Mod-(Updated-25-2-2015)

Because some mods can have conflicts which may cause your game to crash or may cause some mods to stop working you should also download this mod manager http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?680966-Tool-Mod-Manager

It tells you which mods may conflict with eachother and also makes it possible to alter the loading order of your mods.

These tips and the information are based on my own experiences and may not be entirely correct or complete. If you find a mistake or know something you think should be mentioned in the guide please tell me in the comments so that I can improve the guide. Lastly I would like to say that I am by no means a pro at TW and that making mistakes is human so please don't bash me xD. I hope that the guide helped and wish you all lots of fun moments in TW: A.