

Only the capital of each province allows for constructing new buildings, with smaller towns and villages serving as farms or other resource locations that can be upgraded repeatedly. This extends into how you manage your provinces and your faction. The lack of requirement to build barracks and archery grounds is a bold choice, but a welcome one, as it adds both flexibility and greater strategic depth to how you move your armies around.

No matter where I am, I can recruit the same javelin throwers as I could in my capital, which means that the podunk village of Cluain Iraird in my central province has just become the recruiting capital-and last stand-for Mide. In addition, recruiting is now done via a global pool instead of local provinces. Thrones of Britannia keeps the battles local, but that doesn’t mean that you’ll run out of things to do. I would regularly receive updates on the affairs of the English on the other side of the sea, and it honestly feels like I was receiving updates from a country on the other side of the globe. The British Isles are relatively small in comparison to the continent-spanning world of Rome II, but it is considerably dense, and movements that would normally take a single turn to accomplish instead take several seasons.

My faction of choice is Mide, a province in Ireland that I love both for its central location and its wonderful javelin units, upon whom I would greatly rely during the battle ahead. The game contains much of the hallmarks that make up the Total War series, but Thrones of Britannia is easily the most experimental title in years, changing up the formula in ways both big and small to great effect. While the leaders of various English, Welsh, Irish, and Viking factions are trying to fulfill their own specific goals, they all boil down to either becoming king or solidifying their rule no conquering the world this time around. Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia is the first game under the Saga banner, set in 878 CE in the British Isles shortly after the Viking king Guthrum was defeated by the Anglo-Saxon king Alfred the Great at the Battle of Edington. Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia – Creative Assembly
