A Total War Saga: Troy

A Total War Saga: TROY (2020) stands as one of the most experimental, visually striking, and structurally transitional turning points in the history of the legendary grand strategy and real-time tactics franchise. Following the massive success of character-centric titles like Three Kingdoms and the historical fatigue of traditional sandboxes, the series needed a bold mechanical sandbox to explore the earliest era of human conflict it had ever recorded.

Bulgarian developer Creative Assembly Sofia took the reins, leveraging a highly unique distribution strategy by launching the game as a one-year exclusive on the Epic Games Store on August 13, 2020—where it was famously claimed for free by over 7.5 million players in its first 24 hours. Faced with the immense challenge of adapting Homer’s epic Iliad for a historically minded fanbase, the studio delivered a stellar chapter that completely revolutionized the franchise’s economic and theological rules.

The Trifurcated Reality: Choosing Your Legend

Unlike previous entries tied to a single reality, TROY eventually evolved to offer three completely distinct campaign modes, a design philosophy finalized with the massive MYTHOS expansion on September 2, 2021:

Truth Behind the Myth (Launch Default): The historical-romantic middle ground. Mythological creatures are interpreted through a realistic Bronze Age lens. The Minotaur is a hulking, terrifying bandit king wearing a bull skull helmet, and Centaurs are swift, nomadic human cavalrymen fighting on horseback.
Mythological Mode (MYTHOS DLC): Total fantasy integration. The gods actively manipulate the skies, heroes cast supercharged combat spells, and literal monsters roam the earth. Players can hunt, tame, and recruit genuine beasts of legend, including the nine-headed Lernean Hydra, Cerberus, and the Griffin Patriarch.
Historical Mode (2021 Free Update): A hardcore purist simulation. It strips away the single-entity demigods and supernatural anomalies. Warlords fight flanked by traditional, heavy bodyguard retinues, shifting the gameplay entirely back to classic weight, exhaustion mapping, and positioning.

The Core Evolution: Pre-Monetary Barter & Divine Will

Creative Assembly Sofia completely re-engineered the underlying Total War engine, tossing out uniform gold-backed treasuries and automated faction happiness loops:

The Five-Resource Barter Economy: In a franchise first, TROY introduced a complex, multi-resource economic matrix reflecting the pre-monetary Bronze Age. Players must explicitly trade and secure raw materials distributed across regional map sectors:

Resource Type	Primary Strategic Use	Scarcity & Trade Value
Food	Recruits and maintains basic infantry lines; fuels religious sacrifices.	Plentiful early-game asset; decays rapidly as armies expand.
Wood	Used for basic village construction and early missile-tier buildings.	Common; essential for scaling up initial outposts.
Stone	Required to construct advanced walled capitals and military keeps.	Uncommon; becomes a primary target for mid-game siege planning.
Bronze	Gates the recruitment of elite, heavy shock armor and high-tier weaponry.	Rare; dictates your ability to field late-game elite doomstacks.
Gold	Unlocks game-breaking Royal Decrees and handles premium diplomatic trade.	Hyper-rare; finite deposits force aggressive raiding and trading.

The Divine Will Theological Loop: Factions do not manage populations with generic taxes alone. Rulers must actively bribe and court the favor of the Olympian Pantheon (Zeus, Ares, Hephaestus, Aphrodite, etc.). Spending food on grand Hecatomb sacrifices elevates a cult’s tier from Neglected up to Worshipped, unlocking powerful faction buffs, unique elite agent recruitment, and devastating real-time battlefield abilities like Zeus’s thunderbolts.
Hero Circle Duels: To replicate Homeric duels, characters feature a “Divine Challenge” taunt ability. Actively triggering a duel forces nearby infantry units to physically back away, creating a clear circular arena where the two heroes clash in cinematic, uninterrupted combat to permanently break the opposing army’s morale.

The Deep Meta: Mythic Expeditions & The Epic Heroes

To maximize end-game macro tension in Mythological mode, players do not simply build structures to unlock monsters. High-tier beasts require launching a Mythic Expedition. Commanders must dispatch an elite general and a dedicated retinue away from the frontline for multiple turns, tracking rumors across a choose-your-own-adventure style text quest before fighting a massive boss battle to capture the creature.

Divided Superpower Lineups

The grand campaign features two massive, opposing coalitions locked in a struggle for total cultural dominance:

The Danaans (Achaeans): The Greek invaders driven by Kleos (immortal fame). Anchored by Achilles (Phthia)—a hyper-lethal duelist whose tactical performance shifts wildly based on his erratic emotional moods—alongside Agamemnon’s administrative vassals, Odysseus’s coastal ambushers, and Menelaus’s regional troop call-ins.
The Trojans & Allies: The defenders of the grand walls. Led by Hector (Troy)—who focuses on heavy defensive infrastructure and defensive shield walls—alongside Paris’s elite archer formations, Aeneas’s omens, and Sarpedon’s rare commodity monopolies.

Release History

Original PC Retail Launch: August 13, 2020 (Epic Games Store Exclusivity Windows)
The Amazons DLC: September 24, 2020 (Introduced playable horde factions led by Penthesilea and Hippolyta)
Ajax & Diomedes DLC: January 28, 2021 (Added Paragon elite units and regional epics)
Steam Relaunch & MYTHOS Expansion: September 2, 2021 (The definitive engine transition bringing true mythological and historical modes)
Rhesus & Memnon DLC: December 14, 2021 (Finalized the faction roster with Thracian and Aethiopian factions)