Modding’s been a bit of a sore spot for Total War fans in recent times, but Creative Assembly – to its credit – has spent the past few months fixing up that rather glaring crack in its series’ armor. And certainly, Total War: Shogun 2‘s dedicated (and not-entirely-uninituitive) map editor was a nice start, but people demanded more. More breadth, more tools, more tiny virtual ant men throwing away their tiny virtual ant lives in the name of history. So Creative Assembly listened. Specifically, Shogun 2’s now packing full Steam Workshop support, some seriously upgraded map-making tools, and a brand new “Assembly Kit.” Find out about all the new ways you can make sweet, sweet war to your friends after the break.
Creative Assembly debuted the new modding suite in a blog post, noting that there are now tools for editing databases, altering unit appearances, exporting scripts, and building mod packs, among many other things. On top of that, the old mapmaker’s back and more robust than ever:
“TEd, the previously released battlefield editor for Shogun 2, has had an update allowing the creation of historical battles, and integration with the Steam Workshop to allow users to share their creations more easily.”
“In addition to these tools, we are also announcing full Steam Workshop integration, including a mod manager, active as of today – allowing the creation and uploading of user-made Shogun 2 mods. If you’re not a modder yourself, you’ll be able to browse the library of modifications uploaded by other users as they’re uploaded.”
Thankfully, Creative Assembly’s also built a new Total War Wiki to serve as both a resource and community center for players and modders alike. And finally, to celebrate all of this, Steam’s having a gigantic series-wide Total War sale. So have at it.
It’s an impressive assortment of content-generating knobs, levers, and doodle-whatsits, to be sure. And now, it’s time for a sudden flood of totally insane Total War total conversions, because modders are the best kinds of crazy people. So then, where/when would you like to wage absurdly large-scale warfare?
28/09/2012 at 10:01 frightlever says:
Nice. Despite the efforts of modders, CA were never very supportive. Definitely moving in the right direction with the last couple of games.
28/09/2012 at 10:12 Hunchback says:
Indeed, quite nice.
I just wonder how this will play out with the avatar campaign, considering that things must be on the same level on all sides for the fights to be fair. Will it have mods disabled? Or maybe it will allow only visual mods, but no unit modifications?
28/09/2012 at 10:19 kikito says:
Pasta: Total War – Revenge of the Spicy Noodle.
29/09/2012 at 01:02 MacTheGeek says:
I hear this mod is a real kick at first, but then it burns you in the end.
28/09/2012 at 10:55 caddyB says:
Now this is good news.
28/09/2012 at 11:25 NathaI3 says:
Is it worth picking up Fall of the Samurai in the sale? I enjoyed Shogun 2 enough to play through 2 campaigns, but prefer the scale of the Medieval/Rome games.
28/09/2012 at 12:12 RogerMellie says:
Probably not in that case as the scale is the same. It’s cheap but the time is probably better spent playing another game.
28/09/2012 at 14:41 dongsweep says:
While I agree it does not change the scale much at all (the map is slightly larger), I do think the expansion is worth it on sale. The new units and the old vs new fighting is so unique and fun that I think it warrants the cost for a short campaign or for some Last Samurai skirmishes.
28/09/2012 at 17:15 Fox89 says:
Absolutely! The game differs much more than you’d expect from the initial campaign. The way you manage your cities changes, the units and tech you can research changes, there’s line infantry and cannons you can get hold of.
You can bombard enemy strongholds from offshore with your navy and call in artillery support for land battles where you have ships in range. As expansions go, it is superb, and CERTAINLY worth it in a sale.
29/09/2012 at 03:51 Soulless says:
If you haven’t picked it up already, go to greenman gaming they’ve got it on sale for $14 dollar – it’s a bargain.
28/09/2012 at 12:36 TechnicalBen says:
Although an interesting concept, the game never drew my attention. The right mod may though.
I just cannot wait to see the most outlandish one too. Such as My Little Pony, or Star Wars or something. :P
28/09/2012 at 12:48 Loyal_Viggo says:
Medieval 2 is still the best Total War game ever, because of these mods:
The Third Age – love to retake Moria with a Dwarven host! (Not fond of the Balrog though)
Call of Warhammer – death on a massive scale in the Games Workshop world
About time CA listened to what actually drives the success of these games, the fans.
28/09/2012 at 12:55 Bhazor says:
Ahh at last.
More Mod-ern Warfare.
28/09/2012 at 14:07 DarkLiberator says:
Total conversions are possible with the new campaign tools, really awesome move CA!
28/09/2012 at 14:43 Jomini says:
They probably could have released such tools years ago but of course they needed to milk the DLC market dry first, can’t have competition with mods that provide more content for free there.
I very much expect the same to happen with Rome 2 again.
28/09/2012 at 23:30 Grygus says:
I think that’s needlessly cynical. They released mod tools before expansions released for Rome and Medieval II, Steam Workshop did not exist years ago, and CA didn’t provide these tools for Empire or Napoleon, even after they were done with DLC. Available evidence suggests that they provided it approximately as soon as they could.
28/09/2012 at 16:30 Heliocentric says:
If AI can be meaningfully modified (made less crap) I’m buying.
28/09/2012 at 18:11 Plasmamate says:
What are the best mods to instal for Rome, Medieval 2 and Empire ?
28/09/2012 at 19:00 Cuddlefish says:
Rome: Europa Barbarorum, absolutely no contest.
Med 2: I preferred Stainless Steel with PointBlank’s RR/RC modmod compilation, but it’s been awhile.
Can’t speak as to Empire, I never really got into it.
28/09/2012 at 20:51 Slinkyboy says:
Sucks.. No more Darth Mods…. CA didn’t invite Darth Vader to some modder’s convention and he feels so disrespected that he decided to put his modding career to a full stop. I don’t know exact details, but he has retired.
Long live the King.
RPS do something!!