Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia from Creative Assembly, SEGA and ported to Linux by Feral Interactive received a big update to the Linux version today.
We're a little late on getting this update, with Feral announcing it today after it being released for the Windows version back on December 18th last year.
This rather large patch overhauls several features of the game including Estates, Traits, Recruitment and more. It also includes new major settlement maps, a number of new Viking and Anglo-Saxon Buildings, battle AI improvements, performance improvements, lots of UI updates to make it clearer and there's a number of bug fixes too of course. The Linux update also solves "a number of minor issues", although Feral didn't note any specifics on that.
The updates to the recruitment system sounds interesting, as the chance behind it has been removed in favour of a cool-down. Instead of relying on random generation, you now have to deal with a set number of turns before another of the same type becomes available so it's less punishing when you don't get to pick the units you want, while still requiring planning due to the cool-down.
One change I am particularly happy to see, is the ability to adjust the political difficulty of the game separate to the Campaign and Battle difficulty. Being able to tailor the experience more is ideal!
You can see the full patch notes here. Will you be diving back in with this update? If you do, let us know your experiences with it in the comments.
If you want to pick up a copy, you can do so from Humble Store, Feral Store or Steam.
The Saxons in particular and a whole lot of older civilizations in general didn't actually have that. They had a small permanent "warband" of upper class more-or-less-professional warriors, and then they had a whole lot of temporary troops, the "fyrd", a mass of fairly prosperous well-armed farmers and their farmhands, who could be called on for a certain amount of military service every year and don't even think about calling them up during harvest. A major key to effective Saxon warfare was to be really careful when you called up the fyrd--too early and they'd go home before the main event, too late and they wouldn't get to the battle in time. But they were plenty tough when they showed up. And they were pretty much free--the king didn't pay them or arm them and they supported themselves all the time except maybe when they were actually fighting.
Medieval warfare had something similar in that the backbone of the army tended to be knights and their entourages, but a lot of the bulk was peasant levies who were grabbed for a particular campaign and would go home afterward (and would probably scarper off home the moment they got the chance even before the campaign was over). And then there's the whole decentralization problem, where the king mounts an effective war effort by persuading and bullying various nobles into bringing their gangs to his war.
I wonder if it would ever be workable for a game to reflect some of that stuff.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 7 February 2019 at 6:26 pm UTC
I wonder if it would ever be workable for a game to reflect some of that stuff.It's called Crusader Kings 2.
Yay! Total War news...!!! Unfortunately Britannia is still too expensive ...
Honestly? It is actually 27€ at Steam. Do you really think, that is to expensive for a game like this?
I live in Brazil, maybe the regional prices are not proportional. As of today, it is the second more expensive total war game on steam here, with the first one being Warhammer II. There are other reasons for me not buying now, too, but the price matters.Yay! Total War news...!!! Unfortunately Britannia is still too expensive ...
Honestly? It is actually 27€ at Steam. Do you really think, that is to expensive for a game like this?
Ahh, I was thinking too much in our region. Of course outside Europe things are different.
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