Civ 5 Hunnic Civilization

Civ Bonuses, AI Info, Strategies, Unique Units and Buildings

Updated for Gods and Kings and Brave New World DLCs

Civilization's Leader: Attila

Civ Bonus: Scourge of God

Attila the Hun can raze Cities at double speed and steals the names of other Civs' Cities when founding his own. More importantly, the Huns start with Animal Husbandry, which lets them see Horses on the map right away, build pastures, and lets you choose great places to settle and take advantage of his Civ's bonus. They will also get +1 Production per Pasture, so you will do well to select areas with many Sheep/Cattle/Horses.

Unique Unit: Horse Archer

Requires The Wheel

This great unit replaces the Chariot Archer and ditches the terrain penalties. They have 4 move, 10 ranged strength, 7 defense, and start with Accuracy I, which raises damage against units in open terrain - with a Barracks, you can go straight for Accuracy II. Most importantly, you do not require Horses to build the Horse Archer and it is a powerful, early ranged unit. A weakness presents itself later, in that the Horse Archer upgrades to the Knight. This makes Accuracy I-III useless, along with Logistics. If you can get March, it will carry over, else any ranged upgrades will be useless to your Knights.

Unique Unit: Battering Ram

Requires Bronze Working

The Battering Ram replaces the Spearman, yet is a Siege unit. Their triple attack against Cities gives them an effective 30 strength when attacking a City, but that is all they are able to do. It may not melee attack units and is singularly focused on bringing down Cities. Escort them with Horse Archers to kill any nearby units and they are able to steamroll Cities one by one. They upgrade to and are replaced by the Trebuchet. This unit will make Catapults useless to you for that reason. Because it would be upgrading to get melee promotions then move on to become a ranged unit, focus on upgrades that will work for both - like Cover.

Playing Against The Attila AI - Their Tendencies (XML Info and Flavors) Warmonger

Hatred Wonder

Compete Offense

Build Defense

Build City

Defense DoF Friendly

to Civs Denounce

Civs War w/Civs Deception

Likelihood CS

Comp CS War 3 3 8 4 3 3 3 6 8 8 7 3 Other Info Attila is one of the most aggressive leaders in Civilization 5, and also one most likely to be deceptive toward you. Do not trust him if he appears friendly yet has reasons to hate you. Having this Civ on your borders can be dangerous, for they are not a friendly neighbor and have a tendency to build many military units. His Unique Units are useless by the mid-game. I suggest you counter what is likely to be an army largely comprised of horsemen with Pikemen and Spearmen of your own, along with ranged. Block Battering Rams from getting next to your City with any unit - they cannot melee attack. Start Bias: Avoid Jungle & Forest

A Battering Ram brings down Siam's Capital while Horse Archers provide cover fire

Strategies/Ideas for playing Attila:

Players using Attila should go for either a Liberty or Honor start. Honor is what I chose, but Liberty could help in a few ways - you will be able to ignore building a Settler for your first expansion and instead focus on Military. Going Liberty, you may want to adopt Honor after getting the free settler to get culture from Barbarian kills and easily make up the difference. Horse Archers are very mobile and capable of going large distances to clear encampments for City-State quests and the extra Culture from Honor. Regardless of how you start, you will absolutely want to finish Honor when playing Attila. You should have a large military early in the game and the benefits of these Policies are huge, giving you reduced upgrade costs, faster military building construction and happiness/culture to help a wide empire stave off unhappiness. Have a look at the page on Honor to learn more about its Policies.

If you start Honor, I suggest you take the left side first. This will give you a free Great General and boost production of Melee Units - since Battering Rams are melee and somewhat expensive, so this will help you produce them faster. The Great General will give that extra +15% attack bonus and help you take your first City. More importantly, you want the +50% XP from kills as early as possible. This will let your Horse Archers upgrade quite fast, along with the Battering Rams. You don't need the Happiness/Culture from Garrisons until you've got several Cities, and that should come at about the time you'll need it. Building a Barracks and having the left side of Honor, you'll have Horse Archers that can start with Accuracy II and be closer to the great upgrades, such as Logistics and March. The latter will help the unit when it upgrades to the Knight, but do not worry about what upgrades will do later and focus on using their strength while they are available and viable in combat.

The +1 Production from Pastures should give you a good idea on the type of area you should be settling with any Cities you found yourself (most Cities will come from other Civs). This bonus is pretty huge early in the game and you will be free to trade Horses to Civs for gold or luxuries, as you do not need them for a very long time. You will still need trade routes to improve income, but I completely ignored Religion until I had a Holy City with some good beliefs that suited my play. You don't need to found a Religion with Attila; instead, elect to take another's and possibly even enhance it later with a Great Prophet (put him in the Holy City).

Attila is meant to rush other Civs on his continent very early and does so incredibly well with his two ancient-era Unique Units, particularly the Battering Ram. Rams in pairs can easily bring down poorly defended Cities with only a couple units (Horse Archers) to help fight off any defenders, as the rams themselves cannot melee attack other units. Depending how close your next rival Civ is, you may even rush tech to build a battering ram and crush them using only one or two of those with disregard for building your own first Settler. Some players have used them to conquer Capitals within 30 turns - they are that powerful! Coming out of a City with a Barracks, you can take the second +33% defense against ranged (Cover II) to protect it against City attacks and ensure it gets back to full health to let you move on to the next City.

Maintaining this early momentum is important for Attila. The Horse Archer is excellent at picking off units, while your Rams slowly plod through the map and chew up Cities. Attila's unique Bonus granting double Raze speed will come into play a lot. In the early game, you may want to take one or both Cities a Civ has settled, but if the second is in a poor spot, you'll want to Raze it and later put your own Settler in a better location nearby. Raze any City that will not either make up for itself with a new Luxury or will not grow due to poor resources/terrain nearby. Keep those Cities that have a combination of many places to put pastures and food resources nearby, regardless of luxuries. The AI can settle Cities in really dumb spots, but you can burn them down and choose a better location later. Keeping bad Cities will only hinder your ability to continue to attack all of your continent. On a small Pangaea map, Attila would destroy everyone and be an easy play even on high difficulty (Emperor or higher). I kept about half the Cities I conquered in my first game with the Huns. Once you have control of a good chunk of your Continent, you will be free to make choices on where to Settle and choose much better locations.

Puppet all Cities you Conquer until you can put in a Courthouse during a time of peace. Some, you should just leave as Puppets to keep culture policy costs down. For a while, this will be hard on your gold income and happiness. It's OK to let your Civ grow unhappy so long as it doesn't reach -10 or lower. If you stop to fix these problems, the enemy will quickly outpace you in tech and your Unique Units will stop being so powerful. This is why Razing is so important for The Huns. Warmongering so early, you don't have the happiness to keep all those Cities and must be picky in what Cities you puppet. If you rapidly conquer your continent, or a massive chunk of it, you can take a break to build up a bit and catch up technologically during or after the Medieval era when Cities start to have 30-40 defense. Garrison ranged units in all your Cities to get the Culture/Happiness from Honor and possibly spread the Religion of another Civ (whose Holy City you should control). Get Happiness and gold income stable then immediately jump back into War once you've got some new Military techs. On Continents, this means getting to Astronomy to let you cross Ocean. Honor's policies will go a long way toward upgrading your existing units, and you'll have lots of Knights to keep that mobile army. The Gold from kills from Honor's finisher will help in upgrading them as well. Use your rams to upgrade to Trebuchet and maintain the momentum of Conquest before all Civs are discovered so that you do not have the entire world declaring war on you. You will have trebuchets with great ranged defense and mobile knights to help you cap cities and clear defending units. Bring some Crossbowmen, and you've got a powerful Medieval-era military.

Thanks to Attila's bonus to Production from Pastures, they are not pushovers in the late game and are quite capable of building Wonders if you so choose. Try to focus on those that are suited for Military offense, like the Brandenburg Gate. You should put that production bonus into a strong Military and use City-States to let you have all trade routes active and improve your income. This Civ COULD be played peacefully, and you'd likely find it an interesting game, but the Huns are built around early conquest that should carry on throughout the game. Take brief breaks to stabilize the happiness of your people and your economy. Later on, choose Autocracy and finish off the world with a Domination Victory. In some games, you can conquer so fast with Attila that you do not make it to choosing an Ideology, but this is far less likely when playing on Continents. Your early conquests must be enough to help you play catch-up in technology.

There are many ways to play the Huns, and I've highlighted some of their strengths here. Share your openings and suggestions for other players who've chosen to rule as Attila using the comments form below!

Tweet