Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia is right around the bend, and SEGA is kicking the marketing gear into overdrive. After yesterday’s announcement of a limited edition, today’s light sees the release of a new trailer titled “Five New Things Coming to Thrones”.
The trailer, which can be watched above, outlines five features of the spin-off game, While not all of them are truly new, all are interesting – and perhaps more importantly, clearly affected by Total Warhammer.
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The biggest change by far, unit recruitment now no longer requires a specific building. As long as you have money and food, you can recruit units from a faction wide manpower pool from anywhere in Britain. However, units start small, with only a few men, and grow into a full contingent over a few turns, placing more value on unit retention than previous Total War titles.
The second biggest change in the list is the War Fervour mechanic, which was only present on the Charlemagne DLC for Attila (thanks, Alex). Your people always want the opposite of what you have -- be at peace for too long, and they will want some warfare to stiffen the sinnews and summon up the blood; be at war too often, and they will clamour for quiet and peace. The mechanic forces you to balance your actions and generates penalties based on which status of War Fervour your populace is currently at.
The third biggest change is less of a new thing, and more of a deeper expansion of something that already existed embryonically in Rome II, averagely in Attila, and fully fledged in Warhammer I and II. The character system has been greatly expanded and given an infinitely better interface, allowing you to spec out your generals and governors (don't get excited, TW marketing always mentions governors and they never appear in the final game) with traits, followers, and skills -- which were all already present in previous entries. The extent to which you can customise them may be technically new, but the system itself is not new at all.
Lastly, provinces and tech trees have seen very little actual change, which the former operating on a unique resource production and the latter being unlocked by prerequisites such as characters, buildings, and settlements -- both of which started in Warhammer I and II (unique building chains and building-locked technology, respectively).
Overall, the video is worth a watch thanks to a glimpse of the game's interface, which does look gorgeous. Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia will be out on the 19th of April. Keep your eye on GameWatcher for continued coverage of the whole series.
