The Wargamer

Introduction

The original Rome: Total War was released to critical acclaim. This resulted in the growth of an endearing community, bustling with new strategies, incredible replays of military brilliance, and most important, plenty of mods and third party tweaks to keep the game play fresh. But even stars can start to become stale, so in a few days it will be SEGA’s turn to be the agent behind breathing fresh air into the Rome: Total War series. 

As an expansion pack in the Total War series, Barbarian Invasion follows a familiar format.  Like Shogun's Mongolian Invasion and Medieval's Viking Invasion, this new sequel takes place after the original game, playing out the fall of the original game's civilization.  Set during the fourth and fifth centuries, Barbarian Invasion features a comprehensive list of history's miscreants: the Celts, Huns, Goths, Germans, Franks, Saxons, Vandals, Sassanids, Alemanni, Romano-Britains, and Sarmatians.  With the game's release just days away, I played through a near-complete build of this expansion pack.  So let's take a look at the next step, both in historical and game play terms, with Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion.

Assemble the Hordes

Upon firing up a campaign in Barbarian Invasion, I almost immediately noticed a whole score of changes from the original Rome: Total War. Most notably, all of the factions I’ve grown to love had gone: the historical progression of time had mixed peoples, politics and cultures to create entirely new tribes and factions. Rome is no longer the ambitious amalgamation of several affluent families on the Italian peninsula, but instead it has been split into the Eastern and Western Empires. Additionally, the mighty Germanic tribe has split off into a number of different tribes, each with their own ideas about who should be calling the shots in modern-day Germany. Another interesting twist is the addition of so-called “Hordes” who are charged with sweeping across the European mainland, taking whatever they please and leaving the rest to burn. 

Although there are a number of factions that can enter into “Horde Mode” having been driven from all their settlements, only two factions begin their journey to world domination as genuine hordes: the Huns and the Vandals. At the game’s outset, these two factions are militarily immense, and understandably so. With no home settlement, the Huns and Vandals must steal and pillage everything they need and have no way of replenishing their ranks without settling into a city of their choosing. Until claiming a settlement as their home, however, the horde factions have the option to “Pillage” a settlement rather than occupying it. Pillaging a settlement is a purely extraction-based action: the player does not leave any of his armies behind and the city’s treasury (not to mention its population) is emptied. 

When finally deciding on a settlement to make the faction’s capital, the hordes’ entire society completely transforms. Units that are marked as “Hordic” dissolve into the quotidian like of a citizen and the faction’s army is literally decimated. This is where Barbarian Invasion can get a little tricky. With most of the horde’s enemies lying in ruin, there are few peoples left to trade with. Besides, it’s not easy for a hordesman to shed the fur clothing and life on horseback for a business suit and a desk. Hopefully the horde was able to accumulate enough wealth from destroying other civilizations to be able to buffer the immense amount of money that will be lost trying to keep their new settlement from falling to pieces. In this regard, the difficulties nomads must have faced when forced to settle in one place are most certainly felt by the player, an interesting new angle.