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Although the taxes level is set for whole country, it is possible to exclude some provinces from paying. Excluding a province from paying taxes reduces the corruption and immigrants to zero, gives none profit and excludes a province from nation feeding system. A province stops producing food for the rest of the country, no longer exports or imports it.
Taxes
As one could guess, excluding province from paying taxes improves public order. Specifically, it removes the negative impact of taxes on order, but not increases it. There is no no taxes condition that gives bonus to the order. If a province had too little food, its negative impact will worn off a turn after excluding it from taxes.
Excluding a province from tax system is the right option in three situations. First - when you're unable to give it enough food, from import or local production. When shortage is a level 50 and more it is a good moment for that, if shortage is at level 100 and more it means the province is in catastrophic state.
Secondly - when the income from a province is small, and you're not in a desperate need of money. If a province gives you five thousand coins each turn, and you're profit equals eight thousand, then excluding it from taxes will take away most of your profits and thus will slower growth of other provinces. Additionally, one large war or crisis will be enough to change profits into loses. But if profits from a province are 500 per turn and the whole country earns ten thousand, then the treasury won't feel drastic change after excluding province.
Thirdly - when taxes are at level four or five, and order in a province is at brink of collapsing. With taxes at level third public order depletes by four points per turn which isn't much. Such reduction might be caused by events, religion or game difficulty level, so excluding province from taxes won't make much difference. Taxes at level four causes order to depletes by ten points, and on level five by twenty five points. Those are enough amounts to completely destabilize situation in province in few turns.
On other hand, large taxes cause order to drop in the whole country. In most cases, it is more profitable to lower them than exclude a single province from paying them. Especially since taxes level has an impact on growth, and excluding a province does not.
Immigrants
Immigrants are people running away from provinces consumed by war or crisis, traveling to the neighbor, much calmer places. Immigration level depends on what happens in your country and surrounding countries. Your country might enjoy peace for years and immigrants from surrounding countries that are in the middle of war will show in your provinces. Similarly, if a war wages in one of your province, people will move deeper in the country, where there is more peace. In other words, where is crisis, there migration occurs. Both migration types - inside a country and between few of them - by the game is considered as the same type. So it doesn't matter from where immigrants are coming and to which faction or culture they belong. It is important that they are immigrants.
Every 1% of immigration increases province income by 1%. It might seem it is much, but it isn't. In case of large country that wages lots of wars a lots of immigrants might give you profit of slightly more than one thousand coins per turn. It's an amount equal to the one that can be gained by looting two not wealthy cities. More money can be gained from tributary states, and those aren't impressive amounts as well. When thinking about nation finances, don't bother with them since they are not important in big picture.
Immigrants lower your public order as well. The loss of order depends on amount of immigrants in a province. Up to 24% loss equals one point, up to 34 2 points, more than 34 means loss of three point and so on. It isn't much so you don't need to worry too much about it. Especially since you don't have much influence on immigration - even if you're not waging wars, you are susceptible to it. You can limit it to zero only by excluding a province from taxes, but because of small penalties to order and tax bonuses it isn't the best move. It is better to assume that every province has a constant, small penalty to order and find other ways of increasing that variable.
Corruption
Corruption size is constant for whole country and it increases as the empire grows. The larger the country, the greater corruption and thus the lower tax income. Every 1% of corruption lowers tax income by 1%.
Problem with corruption can be resolved in three ways. First, by excluding a province from paying taxes, which is completely pointless in long term. Excluding a province doesn't lower the corruption, just limits it to zero, which with the lack of profits doesn't matter anyway.
Second, by buying the right abilities for the governor. The trouble is, an ability works only for a province, not the whole country and will never completely remove corruption. In case of large countries corruption can have tremendous size. Even the best governor can't completely eliminate it, only limit it a bit. Some technologies works in similar manner, reducing the corruption in country by few percents. Sadly, not every faction has access to them, and bonuses offered by them are, similarly to governor case, not large.
Third, thanks to income from trading and tributary states. Income from that source is smaller than from taxes, but corruption doesn't affect it.
Corruption is a trouble which every nation must face and all that you can do is limit its size. It is one of reasons why it is a good idea to start playing with a small country. Large, like both empires, will be affected by large corruption since the very beginning. For example, Western Roman Empire starts the game with corruption at level 80%, which greatly reduces tax income in all provinces and makes it much harder to protect the nation from barbarians. In such extreme situations every technology and governor ability that reduces corruption become very valuable. Reducing corruption by 1% isn't much, but if it is a t level 80%, then even 1% can be crucial for the survival of the country.
Growth
This indicator is responsible for creating population surplus. Population surplus is needed to remove ruins and taking over empty territories for new buildings. This factor refers to whole province, not single settlements, so a large growth in capitol of the province will have influence on both cities that are part of it as well.
Population surplus gained from growth is one of rare limited resources in the game. Each province has fourteen spots for placing buildings - six in the capitol and four in small cities. After using them growth stops working. It means that buildings and edicts that increase it stops working. Luckily, there are no buildings in the game that works only on growth, so there is no need to sell them after filling a province.
You shouldn't focus on increasing growth, that is placing building and giving edicts for increasing it. The exception are newly settled and rebuild settlements, which without growth bonus, and thus population surplus, will remain empty for a long time. But the choice of edicts and buildings that gives you population surplus should end when all settlements have at least three spots for buildings. Five remaining ones will require so much growth that you might be unable to gather it before the end of the game. Especially if a settlement has been rebuild around year 410 or 420. But if a province has been resettled or you want to improve it rather early, then you should invest into raising the growth.
Public order
Public order affects three things - growth, taxes and the risk of rebellion. High order increase growth and tax income. Medium level order doesn't do anything. Order on low level gives you some financial losses and reduces growth. But you should learn the difference between two things - current order level, that influence taxes and growth, and the estimated change. Low order gives you losses even if its overall level increases. A province can have order on level -100, but as long as it grows for at least one point per turn, there won't be a rebellion in the province. If the order drops, then the risk of rebellion depends on its current level. If you have on hundred or more, it takes dozens of turns for a rebellion to start. If the level is minus 80 or lower, rebellion is a matter of few turns.
As one can guess, order is a variable that should be increased and kept on high level. But be ready that you will never be able to sustain increasing order in all provinces. Too many factors influence it, some of them random, and most negative, to do it. It is much easier to limit those factors, so that each turn a province will lose a few, not more than a dozen of public order points. Complete elimination of those is simply impossible.
First and most effective way to increase order is a large garrison. A general with twenty formations is capable of giving even twenty and more points, especially if he have the right abilities. Two armies stationed in one province will almost for sure increase order level, and maybe even make it at plus. The trouble is with costs, since forty even cheapest formations require constant supporting, which with six or more armies is a great burden for the budget. Additionally, army can go to war at any moment, which will greatly lower the order. Army must stay in the settlement to influence order level. Its presence in the province isn't enough, even if an army is stationed outside the walls of the settlement.
The second way, which too requires large financial costs, is placing the right buildings. Their greatest weakness, except for costs, is often great increase of food consumption in province. It affects mostly buildings from the settlement category, but religion is expensive as well. Usual effect is that with the expansion of a settlement you must buy new premises as well. Otherwise the order will drop once again, this time because of lack of food. But if you're capable of delivering enough money and food, then buildings can have great positive impact on order level. When combined with armies, they can raise it to a very high value. Additionally, food surplus automatically increase order.
Third way is about manipulating taxes, internal politics and religion. Low power indicator increases order, just as the advantage of ruling religion in the province and taxes on level three or lower. All those indicator have in common that are constantly changing and can cause both raise and drop of order. High taxes lower order, low raises it, just as power indicator. It is important, since the change of order from -2 to +2 in fact means a +4 change. After combining few such indicator you can get as much bonus as from a large army.
Fertility
Each province has a basic fertility level. Cold and desert provinces has it low, other accordingly higher. The greater the Western Roman Empire fertility, the more food can a province produce. The bonus mostly affects agriculture, but breeding will profit from it as well. It is important in case of countries in which not every province can feed itself. In those cases the more fertile ones work as a granary for the rest. Losing them might cause food crisis in the country.
Fertility can be temporary lowered by burning a city or random events. After a specific number of turns it will return to regular state.
Sanitation, squalor and disease
Sewers, wells and other sanitation buildings increase sanitation level. Expansion of cities and workshops increase squalor level. As long as both indicators are on same level, you don't have to worry. If squalor starts to be higher than sanitation, then there is a chance for disease to occur in the settlement. Usually the chance is from 1 to 3 %, in extreme situations 5%.
Province in which disease starts gives you few percents less income from buildings and receives penalty to public order. The penalty is small, but might increase as in each province up to three diseases might start, one per city, and the penalties for them are summed.
Disease doesn't affect armies stationed in a province until an information about its spreading is shown. In such case infected army will lose many people each turn until the disease is stopped. It will be impossible to replenish the numbers of army as well. Because of that, it is safe to move armies to settlements which have large, stable level of sanitation. Especially during war, when loosing half of the army because of disease might decide about winning or losing. But if an army is already infected, don't move it elsewhere, especially not to settlements without disease. There is a great probability that you move the disease with you. Let the infected army wait in the settlement that has disease for the disease to end. You can wait outside the walls as well, but by staying inside you will increase order of the settlement.
Religion
Religion affects public order of the province. The less citizens believe in the official religion, the greater loss of order. But high religion level doesn't increase order. If 100% citizens of province believe in the official religion, influence on the order is none. In other words, only thing that affects order is the difference between followers of the official religion and others and it is either negative or neutral. For a religion to increase order, there must be an active priest or a building from the religion category in the province.
Increase or drop of amount of followers depends on few factors, from which the most important is religious osmosis, which is mostly affected by buildings, presence of priest and local traditions. Additionally, some religions, like Catholicism, have increased spreading radius.
Edicts
You can give one of four edicts in a province that has a governor. They are cost free and become active one turn after giving. Edicts type depends on culture, but all of them offer useful bonuses to things like research rate, growth or religion influence. Edicts work on whole province and became inactive only after a province loses its governor.
The choice of edicts should depend on situation. For example, Barbarian kingdoms can choose resettlement, which will be very useful when expanding a province, but during war it is better to select Might of Tiw, which increase the amount of formations possible to create in a province during one turn. Judgment of Wodan is good for uneasy provinces, as it offers bonus to public order.
Edicts are the weapon of governors, which forces you to manage them with caution. If you have a province, in which effects of one of edicts would be greatly needed, move one of governors you have there or appoint a new one. If none of edicts is needed in a province, it might be a sign that you should move its governor someplace else. Remember that you can have a limited amount of governors, which increase the value of edicts given by them.
Complete the prologue. In Attilaprologue serves as a tutorial, which consists of information about game basics, controls, managing the country or fighting. There are many valuable information in it, completing it will be good even for veteran players of Total War series. While playing the prologue keep attention to hints that show under your advisor image. There you will find many advices and explanations about each aspect of the game.
Use the encyclopedia. In-game encyclopedia requires internet connection to work, but consists of many useful information, such as buildings available for each culture, abilities of commanders and units statistics. There you will find instruction with explanation of game mechanics and control description as well.
Utilize hints. After moving your cursor on a name, icon or number wait a moment for a window with hint to appear. If you see a plus next to the text, wait another while and further information will show. Not always are they comprehensive, but in most cases they're enough to understand what specific name or icon means.
Plan carefully. Attila is a complex game, full of nuances and random situations. Sometimes a campaign planned for next ten turns can end after two of them because of lost battle, disease or political crisis. For that reason, avoid playing hastily and try to always have a backup plan in case of trouble.
Plan only slightly ahead. There are dozens of factions fighting each other in the game. New can be born during the game, as conquered provinces free themselves, rebellions outbreak or civil wars. Your influence on their decisions and actions is limited. Because of that, it might happen that a province that you wanted to conquer after the end of current war will be destroyed in the meantime by barbarians traveling through Europe. It is another reason not to plan too much ahead. It might happen that your plans become out of date one turn after you created them. It is better to give yourself one major objective - like conquest of whole Gaul - and then realize it with small steps, while always being prepared for change of situation. Be ready both for conquest and colonization of a province and you will be able to get control of it no matter of situation.
Don't search for a winning strategy. There is no strategy in Attila that works in every situation. Sometimes it is better to conquer your neighbor, other time you should trade with him or harass him with agents. It is different to play with stationary barbarian kingdoms, and different with Huns Horde that is always on move. In general, if what you do gives positive effects, then it is a good strategy and in most cases you shouldn't change it. Only modify and improve it, if in some cases it doesn't work. When playing, look for solutions to specific problem, not method for easy victory. With the level of complication found in the game, such strategy doesn't exist.
Slowly learn the game.Attila consist of many complex mechanics. Just households and bonuses they offer are few dozens, and it is only a small fragment of characters mechanic, that has impact on battles, province management and political situation. Because of that, don't try to learn whole game at once, instead do it gradually. It is best to sacrifice one or two whole games for calm learning and experimenting. Otherwise, you will easily get lost in the amount of options, dependences, complex menus and modifiers. Even after many hours of playing you might learn something new, so really, there is no reason to rush.
Listen to your advisor. How often he appears can be changed in the options, but the presence of advisor can be very helpful. He will be the first to inform you about possible bankruptcy, show you a possibility to use a terrain in battle or suggest you to lower the taxes to fix public order. His advices can be hard to utilize and not always correspond to your plans, but it is always a good idea to keep attention to them.
Keep attention to the color of icons. Green usually means positive stuff, red negative and yellow both positive and negative. It works similar with green arrows faced up and red arrows down near armies, division icons or public order. It is not always clear what they show, but the color is an obvious signal that something good or bad is happening. No matter of color, skull means bad news.
To get more comprehensive information read description of attributes or bonuses represented by icons. Especially since developers have made mistake in some cases of colors, as with the 'A Byword of Cruelty' attribute. Its icon is yellow, but all three modifiers offered by it are negative.
Don't focus on bonuses. At the beginning of the game check general details, best on the ruler or other member of ruling house. You will see, that he have lots of bonuses coming from his basic statistics, traits, skills, household, wife or province in which he currently resides. The amount of bonuses will increase with your progress in the game and will be influencing even those aspects of gameplay that you never know of. For that reason, it is futile to search for optimal skills and items set. All bonuses will be useful at some point and the number of sources where you can gain them is to wide to control them. It is wise to change the companion of the general to one that instead of more trading profits or ship speed bonus gives boost to stats of cavalry that he commands. But you shouldn't think too long whether a bonus for defense, attack or speed will be better - they will all come in handy.
Situation when you create character for specific task is exception, like a general to lead army of horse archers. In such case you should pick special bonuses so that your units will be more effective in combat. But in large, diversified armies it won't matter. If you lead all sort of units, there won't be many bonuses useless for you.
Play in window If there are 40 or more factions in the game, calculating turns can take very long. It especially affects large nations, worse computers and situations in which you see enemy armies on campaign map. Army hidden under fog of war is still being moved, but it happens far faster that in case of revealed army which every move you can see. When playing in window, you can use ALT+TAB shortcut and for a while do something else instead of watching for few minutes as faction icons change. However, you will need to check from time to time if you received diplomatic massage or have been attacked, it is the only serious inconvenience. Anyway, in both those cases the game will patiently wait for your reaction so you don't need to rush yourself.
Explore differences in controls on various maps. Moving the diplomatic map can be done with the left mouse button. Meanwhile, moving the campaign map is done with the middle button. It's a small, but troublesome difference. At first it might give you trouble, but you will quickly get used to it.
Check which game elements open the encyclopedia. You can get to game encyclopedia in two ways - by the icon on upper left corner of the screen, or with the right mouse button. The button will work if after moving cursor to a question mark will show next to him, but not always. For example, you can press the right mouse button after moving your cursor on the public order and nothing will happen. Do the same with the formation and you will immediately see its section in the encyclopedia. Because of that, experiment a lot, check earlier which categories can be found in encyclopedia. They should be a suggestion for you which icons and names will open it, and which won't.
Viking Units Total War
Increase units movement speed on campaign screen. Press space during your turn. Thanks to that, all armies on Europe map will move faster. This option works during enemy turn as well, but sometimes need a few presses before it recognize the instruction.
Hold space during battle. It will show next to unit icons information about their state, such as morale level and tiredness. However, in case of large amounts of units it can be hard to read and force you to zoom o rotate the camera.
NEED TO KNOW
What is it Total War: Atilla expansion that edges the series into the Medieval period.
Play it on Windows 7, Intel i5, 4GB RAM, 2GB Nvidia GTX 560 Ti or Radeon HD 5870. Price £10 / $15 Release out now Publisher Sega Developer Creative Assembly Multiplayer 2 player, versus or co-op. LinkOfficial site
Age of Charlemagne expands Total War: Attila with a new campaign setting that takes it into the Medieval era. The first big Attila expansion—The Last Roman—laid the groundwork for this. That was set a hundred years after the fall of the Western Empire, and focused on the fascinating human story of Belisarius, the overly-loyal Roman general—probably the only man who could have revived it. It featured a really interesting mobile Roman faction, The Expedition, and four less interesting rejigs of barbarian factions that had survived to that era.
Age of Charlemagne takes that structure and runs forward to the start of the medieval era, with a much more limited map that barely encompasses the Mediterranean. What Age of Charlemagne does offer that The Last Roman didn’t is a better range of factions.
The worst of the factions are the Lombards—German invaders who’ve displaced the Romans from the north of Italy. They’ve got a buffed version of the tributary-state mechanics of the Sassanids from the main game, and little else to recommend them. Similarly, the The Emirate of Cordoba in Southern Spain, has a different (worse) take on the tributary state mechanism, fast research and reduced religious unrest. Then there’s the pagan Saxons from Westphalia, who get bonuses to raiding, focused on the Frankish kingdoms, but are a bit surrounded and doomed. All of these factions have standard dull units, with few advanced troops—this is doubly sad for Cordoba because the history of the Umayyad Caliphate is fascinating.
Attila Total War Danes Unique Units
The Avars are a so-so traditional hunnish horse army long settled in Pannonia, a peaceful region backed up against the edge of the shrunken map. Their task is to survive the short term onslaught of the Slavs, and build their power up to defeat the inevitable Frankish crusade—the Avars follow a lightning-worshipping pagan religion called Tengriism, which the Christian factions find intensely irritating. Over in the British Isles, Mercia is dominant in England, but starts surrounded by enemies—capturing the country is a pleasant challenge, even if they (again) have uninspired troops.
The Kingdom of the Danes have a raiding playstyle familiar to older gamers who played the much-praised Viking Invasion expansion. Jutland, their home province, is on the edge of the map and surrounded by allies, so it’s fairly secure. Their faction quirk is twofold: a set of missions that screw the entire nation, army and economy, unless you get busy sacking England; and a bunch of bonuses that make them really good at sailing, sacking, looting and raiding. Your first ten turns or so are spent slowly sailing across the Baltic to England’s fair shores and declaring war on anyone you meet, before sacking every coastal town and eating all their crops. This tedious start is ameliorated by their awesome troops—I mean, who doesn’t like a unit types like Berserkers or called simply “Big Axes”?
In the Northern corner of Spain, behind a line of razed provinces, sits the kingdom of Asturias—the easiest of the campaigns. Though their troops are merely yawnworthy, it’s easy to rebuild the burned provinces and suddenly have huge amounts of money and food rolling in, allowing you to pick off the isolated factions to your East and then take on the Emirate of Cordoba. The faction’s two quirks allow the razing and abandonment of their own settlements, in the face of an advancing enemy, and a hugely-increased ambush chance. Essentially, these guys do guerrilla warfare really well.
The big faction though, is the Kingdom of Charlemagne. The huge kingdom of the Franks has been split between you and your brother Carloman after the death of your father, and along quite stupid lines, really. You’ve been given a huge, long thin strip of provinces wrapped around your brother’s territory, and you start with armies in exactly the wrong places to defend against the Saxons in Northern Germany and Gascons in Southern France. Should Carloman die before you (which you can help with) you can choose to claim his lands, and conquer his (horribly well-defended) capital. Once you’ve unified the Empire, you get to go and stamp on heretics all over Europe.
A new mechanic has been introduced as well, called war weariness. Clear windows explorer search history windows 7. Essentially, the longer you’re at war and the worse you do, the more the population gets pissy, eventually starting a rebellion to stop the war. This finally reintroduces a bit of zest into factional politics; sometimes you just need to give up on a campaign, lick your wounds, and return later. It’s still no Crusader Kings II, but then not every game needs to be that complex, and god knows Total War is feature-heavy anyway.
Age of Charlemagne is another slow step forward for Total War: Rome II. Many of the rules are still obscure (what exactly is army integrity?), the UI is still complex and unhelpful (Why does the game show you global food levels when only provincial food matters) and the troops for most factions are deadly dull. Despite that the game-breaking bugs are almost all gone, and most of these factions have interesting missions sets with early and mid-game challenges—especially Charlemagne himself. It’s a good tidbit to tide you over until the Orcs arrive in Total War: Warhammer next year.
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