My Favorite Campaign: Aksum

First off, the 'Empires of Sand' factions all have interesting features. They represent 3 of the 4 Desert Kingdoms (the Free-LC Desert Kingdom is the least interesting, naturally, as it begins as a puppet state to the Sassanids and thus has less ability to choose its own path). At the risk of sounding like a shill, I'd highly recommend the 'Empires of Sand' DLC if you are enjoying Attila. Each of the 3 DLC factions has at least some ability to pick which direction it wants to head in for conquest, as well as a bunch of more interesting features and units. Of all the DLC faction packs (which is to say, not including the campaign packs), this is probably the best.

Now, why is it Aksum in particular that I enjoy the most?

Aksum is perhaps the only faction in the game, outside of a few migratory factions who tend to want to settle between the WRE and ERE, that is truly between two empires and can choose which it would rather face right away.

Aksum sits at the very bottom of the map, with the campaign map's southern boundary protecting its flank, the Red Sea protecting its eastern flank, and impassable desert protecting its western flank, thus being in a rather secure starting area that is just below the border of the ERE and the Sassanids. Truly, from this position, Aksum can elect to fight either empire; moreover, Aksum is one of the few factions in the game that won't have to deal with the scripted Huns that appear in the area of Dacia once Attila ascends the throne. Hence, it's possible to have an experience that almost no other faction in the game can have, given that you can pick to fight either the ERE or Sassanids and won't have to face the scripted Huns. Of all other factions, the Celts can avoid the Huns a bit but only realistically will face the WRE when it comes to major empires, and the Ostrogoths and Visigoths can end up settling between the WRE or ERE but will invariably have the Huns in their area.

Aksum, then, is in a unique spot.

Aksum has a great number of interesting decisions at its feet, whether the player is always aware of this or not:

• First of all, which empire do you contend with right away?

  This is a decision that is multi-faceted. Right away, a quick look at victory objectives will show that at some point, you do need to push into the area of the Sassanids and take a province that will put you on bad terms with them, and usually will mean bringing you into war with (though the inclusion of the White Huns now means there's an outside chance you can simply resettle this area, for the most part). Further, a unique scripted mission asks that you gain one more settlement that provides the spice resource, with the unique reward of unlocking powerful units to use and being able to upgrade your spice buildings.

  All of that said, the unique mission has 100 turn duration to complete it in, and you have all the time in the world to eventually take the last province you need for the victory conditions. Even if you absolutely want to complete the unique mission, you have at least ~100 turns to do it in, which is plenty of time to make a forray against the ERE. And such a forray might be wise: the ERE is far more likely to be at war with enough other factions that they won't be able to send more than a stack against you at any time, allowing you to pick off their settlements in Egypt one-by-one without being at much risk. And those settlements will help your economy for whenever you do decide on a showdown with the Sassanids.

  Lastly, which one you decide to attack right away might guide your early teching choices: some unique techs to the Empires of Sand factions allow you to gain bonuses against factions based off of what religion they have. Meaning: if you want to take on the Sassanids and their empire, you will want the ones that buff combat stats against Zoroastrians.

  Because of this, the early decision on which empire to face is one that needs more thought than usual.
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• Secondly, how do you want to shape your early settlements?

  Companionship Tents and their related upgrades are a powerful economic boost at the cost of religious unity, and religious unity is more important since one of Aksum's traits increases unhappiness due to religion.

  Libraries and their upgrades are a potent tech boost that will make it easier to get to the unique, money-costing techs that buff combat skills and provide other special bonuses.

  Religious buildings will help to keep your happiness up while your armies are away.

  And, lastly, there is the unique dam in the Himyar-controlled province that can be used to create an agricultural power-house, should you take it quickly and build agricultural buildings in the province.

  Many ways to go right away.
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• Thirdly, what religion do you want?

  Between Eastern Christianity and Semitic Paganism, you have two different sets of religions buildings. And, notably, the minor religious chain of Semetic Paganism provides both religious affects as well as food, making it a powerful building type.

  Personally, I find that Semitic Paganism is probably an easy choice: the religion itself adds a +5% boost to replenishment of all armies, and the minor building chain can be synergized with the pleasure building chain (Companionship Tents, etc.) to give food, happiness, and income.

  But Eastern Christianity does begin to pay off once you grow your empire, as it provides a decrease to corruption.

  Again, this is probably the easiest choice, insofar as Semitic Paganism has an excellent minor building chain and can buff replenishment, but Eastern Christianity does become a bit more attractive once you own many settlements.
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• Lastly: do you want to complete the unique mission, and if so, how quickly?

  I always find that this is a bit more complicated than it first seems. Obviously, you always benefit from unlocking additional unit types, especially powerful ones like Aksum is rewarded, in this case; but completing this mission practically guarentees fighting the Sassanids within 100 turns.

  And while I already mentioned you could take one of their spice settlements on turn 99, this does delay how quickly you unlock those powerful units.

  Thus, there's a bit of a risk-reward to weigh in this decision: what is the risk of taking that spice settlement early, and what is the reward? And what is the risk of taking it late (last ~10 turns of the duration) and what is the diminishment to the reward in terms of the unit unlock occurring this much later?

Aksum's strategic play has already been covered in some details, but the over-all strategic situation is still worth covering in a more general sense.

The desert is your playground as Aksum: you receive buffs for fighting in it if you choose certain techs, you take no attrition from off-roading in it, and your camels will out-perfom many horse units in it since camels both scare horses and tolerate the heat better. Thus, you have a good incentive to use the desert to your advantage, since the advantage tends to be a significant one against everyone but a few factions (again, the White Huns are one of those few, now that they were added in during the AoC release).

Strategically, keeping to the desert makes sense, and this means that fighting into the north is not the greatest strategy outside of finishing off the northern-most Sassanid puppets. This, combined with the fact that you can't begin a migration as Aksum, means that a min-max approach to the game basically excludes entering Europe or the Eurasian Steppe in Scythia (that said, you could do so for giggles anyways, as Aksum, or play as the Tanukhids and even eventually resettle in those places).

But there's also the sea: the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf are important to Aksum, since your starting position puts you in an area (the Arabian Pennisula and Aethiopia) that can be quickly invaded from the sea. Combined with the likelihood that you will eventually be at war with the Sassanids, Aksum becomes one of a few factions in the game that actually want to prioritize a navy at some point (and for reasons outside of the army cap and/or using them to garrison settlements for happiness). Yet the Mediterranean Sea is also important should you decide to take on the ERE early enough. And since it will be almost a millenium and a half before the Suez Canal is open for business, you might find yourself in the unique position of operating two naval stacks on two disconnected bodies of water (something virtually no faction outside the Sassanids themselves would even consider).

Aksum's strategic position is by no means a bad one, but has room for more thought than usual.

Aksum's roster allows for a nice amount of tactical flexibility, even prior to unlocking their special units related to the spice missions.

Your warhounds are perhaps the ultimate support unit: unlike almost any other warhounds, yours are archers. Meaning that they can release the hounds, then join the ranks of your ranged units and add to the support while the fire-and-forget dogs are elsewhere. The unit itself is small, so even a good deal of them combined can't replace proper archers, but it allows you to do something with the dog-handlers other than keep them away from combat (only the Alani/Sarmatian dog-handlers tend to be that capable in general combat aside from spearing enemy cavalry).

Your camels give you the opportunity to fend off enemy cavalry, obviously. But they also include guerilla placement units, as well as the armored camel unit which is a good all-rounder in terms of cavalry.

Likewise, your Tor spear units are more capable in general combat that the average spear, and can hold their own a bit more against melee-type units.

Your deficiencies are really in the area of melee infantry, though this comes with a few caveats, one of which is the decent medium melee infantry Aksum and a few other Desert Kingdoms get. The other caveat is the unlockable units, which include the Spice Warriors and Spice Guards. Spice Warriors are a rather good melee unit that is potentially available quite early, pending when/if you complete the spice mission.

Spice Guards are a very unique hybrid unit, sporting both an axe and a bow with reasonable ammunition. Expensive but powerful, they appear a bit later on than the Spice Warriors. For anyone who played the Rise of the Samurai DLC for Shogun 2, the best analogy is to say that Spice Guards are 5th century Eastern Foot Samurai, with axes instead of swords. They are an excellent front-line unit when the enemy force is composed largely of non-ranged infantry, since they can skirmish with them and then tear them apart in melee. However, against massed dedicated ranged units, they are too expensive to simply trade volleys and will either need to charge them, or rely on allied cavalry to drive off the enemy archers. Further, like all axes, their ability to fight cavalry is not superb. Thus, Spice Guards are best used against enemy spears and melee infantry, or against enemy ranged units when it's possible to charge them without getting kited.

As a whole, Aksum's roster is solid, and includes a few curve-balls you can throw at enemy forces. Their navy is decent and fleshed-out enough to contend with the rosters of larger powers, but their units are decent but nothing all that unique when compared to Aksum's land units.

Some decisions arise, or become more interesting, only later on:

Already mentioned earlier, one is whether to convert back to Eastern Christianity if possible. Reducing corruption can be important, especially if your end-game goal is to go beyond the minor victory condition.

On the same topic, you have two different victory condition sets once you pass the minor victory, with the set based around Christianity requiring more settlements. Which you pick will probably not boil down to how many settlements you need, though, as included in these sets are percentage thresholds for religious unity (if I recall, something like > 40% of your people must follow the corrosponding religion of the victory condition set). Nonetheless, it's still something that may matter, especially since you can intentionally reduce your current state religion with the pleasure building chain in order to try and quickly shift you religious unity.

And somewhat on the same topic, religious buildings may become more important in the mid game and later, since you may lack the armies to garrison trouble-areas and may take places that increasingly have neither of your primary religions (Eastern Christianity and Semitic Paganism). Along with this, pleasure buildings may become less important since you have a larger economy and a bit harder time with happiness.

Another mid-game decision is your force composition. Should you decide early on to contend with the ERE, your focus may lean a bit more to a handful of camels with a bigger emphasis on infantry (since the ERE has fairly good melee infantry), whereas if you decide early on to go up against the Sassanids, your force might be heavily invested in spears, camels, and just a few melee units. In either case, if you suddenly end up at war with whoever you didn't originally pick a fight with, your force composition might need to shift, at least in a stack or two. And in most cases, if you picked to fight the ERE early, you will have to shift a bit to fight the Sassanids anyways since you usually need to fight them to get the last settlement or two in the province needed for just a minor victory (allying them is not impossible, but even with the diplo boost from fighting their rivalm the ERE, the cultural differences are usually great enough that allying them is not likely).

So, some decisions tend to shift in the mid to late game for Aksum, which is not entirely a unique experience to Aksum, but is probably more pronounced than usual (though many factions to have to shift gears once the scripted Huns are an issue).

It's a minor thing, but I really enjoy the aesthetics of Aksum (and the other Empires of Sand factions, too).

Their unit cards and character portraits stand out in terms of quality, likely because these were done on their own, with fewer others to do, when compared to those done for the base game. That, and they clearly couldn't re-use assets as much since no other non-Sassanid desert factions had been implemented prior to the DLC.

Further, I think the unique religious buildings have among the best building cards in the game. They are much more interesting, visually, than all but the Zoroastrian building cards (of which, the Tower of Silence might be my favorite unit/building card in the whole game).

And the unit models themselves are also well done, again standing out from many others thanks to the Desert Kingdoms being unlike any of the other factions already in the game.

Aksum differs from the other Desert Kingdoms in a few important ways.

First off, the Himyar are bordering the Sassanid world, meaning that they typically end up at war with the Sassanids fairly early no matter how they are played. They do still get some ability to choose, but with them it's a virtual certainty that they will be at war with the Sassanids earlier than any other Desert Kingdom. On the opposite tack, Aksum sometimes gains a diplo boost with the Sassanids, since both may end up at war with the Himyar prior to having much else of any other interactions. So Aksum has more flexibility in this regard.

Secondly, the Tanukhids begin at war with the ERE. While this doesn't prohibit them from immediately going into Sassanid territoy, it does add an incentive to simply plunge into the ERE, especially since Tanukhid hordes need to attack settlements for food and the easiest settlements to attack are those in Egyptian ERE territory (which means heading away from the ERE forces guarding Asia Minor and Constantinople). The Sassanids are less of an option to fight, since you need food and the Sassanid settlements will likely be counter-attacked rapidly if you linger near them after sacking, razing, or resettling one.

Thirdly, the free-LC Desert Kingdom (the Lakimids, or something spelled vaguely like that) are a vassal of the Sassanids at campaign start, and have factional traits that add incentives to keep the Sassanids friendly. Again, this means having less choice of who to fight, and in this case, it virtually guarentees that the easiest route is to fight the ERE and gain diplo boosts with the Sassanids throughout the early game.

Ultimately, only Aksum is really all that flexible on who to pick a fight with immediately. Which makes for a rather interesting campaign, and, in my opinion, in fact the most interesting one of all, especially strategically.

There are reasons to pick either the ERE or Sassanids to fight fairly early on: victory conditions, the unique mission objectives, the likelihood of either turning on you after you pick a fight with the other, force composition, and so forth. But the decision is not so much a case of 'right-or-wrong' as it is a case of trade-offs. Regardless, I've almost always had to fight the Sassanids eventually anyways, but that early decision is pretty close to 50-50, at least until the unique mission is about to expire.

And lastly, of course, the rosters do vary between the Desert Kingdoms, with the free-LC faction having the roster that is the most uninspired (though it does make sense that their roster is similar to their Sassanid overlord's).

I wasn't a fan of the Viking DLC, nor of the Longbeard DLC. Of the remaining faction/culture packs, the Celts are fun but mostly because of tactical elements (guerilla deployment, rosters) and are only strategically different from the Barbarian Kingdoms on the continent in that their starting area is easier to secure and guard while also being off the beaten path from the usual routes of the Huns (I've never actually seen the Huns in the Britannic Isles in TW:Attila).

The Empires of Sand, though, really stands out. It's as close as faction/culture packs can come to providing a whole new campaign, and adds factions that can all viably be at war with the Sassanids without having to be the ERE, the Huns, or the White Huns.

And in Empires of Sand, as is obvious at this point, Aksum stands out the most for me.

What I'd say in closing, is that every faction, in terms of uniqueness of mechanics, should be like those in the Empires of Sand. The Longbeards unique mechanic of a choose-your-own-adventure missions resulting in an early and powerful general... well, it's pretty shallow. And the Vikings are not really all that special mechanics-wise while fielding mediocre rosters (and this includes their naval rosters, which are bad even when including the one of them with a slightly expanded naval roster).

If you enjoy Attila and want a breath of fresh air, get the Empires of Sand. The other faction packs are not as good, though the Celts are tactically fun and the Longbeards have a couple of interesting unique units (notably the Horse Hewers and Scattershot Slingers).

All just in my opinion, of course.

Thanks for reading, and if I'm not lazy, this may eventually include screenshots and pictures!