TROY goes fully historical with free update alongside MYTHOS

Welcome back to TotalWar.com, we’re taking a detour from our adventures into the world of gods and monsters to present what else is coming with the MYTHOS update for A TOTAL WAR SAGA: TROY. Historical mode will be available to everyone that owns the base game and provides an alternative to mythological mode. Here the impact of the Gods of Olympus is minimised to inspiration for the people, the heroic efforts of generals are supported by their bodyguards, and everything’s just a little more down to Earth.

We’ve got a brief rundown of the changes in this dedicated video:

The two biggest changes are one major addition – bodyguards – and one major removal – mythic units and abilities. In the latter’s case, this was the pursuit of historical authenticity and represented a way we could differentiate the game modes. Naturally, compared to a Truth Behind the Myth campaign and even more-so a new Mythological campaign, it will provide a different roster than what you may have relied on in the past. It’s a little more of a classic ancient Total War feel, having to use similar, though not identical, forces to your opponent to outsmart, outwit, and outmaneuver them.

For bodyguards, it’s a more complicated series of changes and additions. All heroes, be they unique faction leaders or generic hired ones, will now come with a bodyguard of units that define their fighting style and provide unique bonuses and abilities. A default bodyguard is a unit of their nation’s basic troops. However, as your hero levels up and your faction gains access to new decrees, they can unlock a mounted unit, or one specially equipped for a variety of scenarios. You can also change between unlocked bodyguard types in the same way as changing equipment.

On the abilities front, it’s been a process of defining which are reasonable to have as an ability of a larger unit like this, which need alterations, and which are simply too fantastical to be historically authentic. This has impacted every hero across every faction, and basically means a complete rebalance of all our most powerful units for use in historical mode, be it campaign or custom battles.

The broadest implementation is the removal of all skills that provide a large heal to a unit. Curing wounds and bringing the dead back to life is quite fantastical on its own, but it also feels more realistic to not be able to return injured units to battle so immediately. A key to war at this time was about forcing just enough casualties that the enemy line fell apart, as much due to structure as morale.

Other areas include abilities that do masses of damage, or mean a unit behaves in an unbelievable way – for example, becoming invisible. As with any historically authentic TOTAL WAR game, we believe generals have a big impact on how their troops perform on the field, and many were powerful combatants and elite soldiers. They should be able to rally their men and fight through what an ordinary line troop could not, but perhaps not loose three omnipotent arrows or cleave through an entire unit of foes in one motion.

This overall suite of changes should provide a new experience, whether you’ve been jonesing for a more historical TOTAL WAR or simply want to experience a different kind of TROY. That is, after all, still the game underneath. Conquering or defending Troy is still your goal, with Bronze Age archers, warriors, slingers, and chariots at your command.

In addition, there are several other free updates coming with the launch of MYTHOS and TROY on Steam. A more minor one is the addition of achievements on all storefronts. Be you a full-on completionist who simply wants proof of your ascendence or someone who prefers hunting for oddities and weird playthroughs, we’ve got a little bit of everything. If you’re familiar with the achievements in our other TOTAL WAR games, you’ll know what to expect.

The other major introduction for free is the Administration system. This is a replacement for Supply Lines, intended to broaden possible playstyles and remove spikes in hiring prices and upkeep costs. While we don’t anticipate this change being monumental from the word go, it should make every TROY campaign you play feel smoother and allow you to focus on the fun – finding your strategy and executing it – over worrying about supplies. There are even benefits to playing with high administration in the late game, decreasing your edict times and increasing your influence gain. There are more details on this, and much more, in our FAQ.

Hopefully that makes you equally excited for the free update arriving alongside MYTHOS as you are for the paid expansion itself. Naturally, there will also be a host of balance changes, bug fixes, and other minor improvements – we’ll see you for the patch notes on launch week to focus on those.