Video Game / A Total War Saga: TROY

"What are the children of men, but as leaves that drop at the wind's breath?"

In this age of myths, heroes walk the earth. Yet it takes only a single impulsive act to spark a conflict that will shake the world. Audacious Paris, prince of Troy, takes beautiful Helen from her palace in Sparta. As they sail away, Helen’s husband, king Menelaus, curses her name. He will bring his errant wife home – whatever the cost! King Agamemnon, wide-ruling lord of finely-walled Mycenae, hears his brother’s call. He summons Achaean heroes from far and wide, among them swift-footed Achilles and Odysseus of the silver tongue. The Greeks set course for Troy, towards inevitable war and slaughter. For there, on the battlefield before the great city, legends will be born…

Total War Saga: TROY is a Real-Time Strategy game developed by Creative Assembly and published by Sega. Part of the Saga sub-series, it is the third Saga entry in the backdrop of the greater Total War franchise. ^note However, it was the second Saga title to be developed as such since its conception; Fall of the Samurai was originally released as a stand-alone expansion for Total War: Shogun 2.

A Total War Saga: TROY is the first entry in the award-winning series to focus on the legendary 10-year conflict between the kingdoms of Troy and Mycenaean Greece, now known as the Trojan War, set against the striking backdrop of the Bronze Age Mediterranean. Combining Total War’s unique blend of grand, turn-based empire management and spectacular real-time battles, TROY explores this epic conflict from both the Greek and Trojan perspectives — peeling back the layers of myth and legend to reveal the realities that may have inspired them. Play as one of eight famed Heroes, and fight to conquer or protect the legendary kingdom of Troy.

Being made with the same engine used by Total War: Warhammer, TROY is closer to the grand fantasy title than its other more historical cousins. It features the robust Legendary Lords system (now called "Heroes"), tweaked and tailored for the setting, with Quest Battles, Legendary Equipment, and the ability to take armies on their lonesome, and extensively different campaigns for each faction. These differences include faction specific mechanics, mythological units that function very similarly to Warhammer's Monsters and Monstrous Infantry, and a quasi-fantastical setting. It offers its own refinements and experimental features to the series, including an entirely new resource system based on how bartering was done in the Bronze Age, with several district resources being required for unit recruitment, religious activities, and building infrastructure, rather on relying on coinage, and a religion system that has the player beseeching the Gods of the Greek Pantheon to assist them.

Compare and contrast with The Iliad, which the game is based on.

The game was released on August 13 2020, and was exclusive to the EPIC storefront for a year (until September 2, 2021).

Expansions and Downloadable Content:

1. The Amazons — The first DLC was released on September 25 2020, and makes the Amazon factions playable. The faction led by Hippolyta is able to control settlements like the other factions, but the one led by Penthesilea plays like a horde faction from other Total War games.
2. Ajax & Diomedes — Released of January of 2021 making the Greek heroes Diomedes and Ajax the Greater (Telamonian Ajax) playable.
3. Mythos — Announced on July 27, 2021 and released on September 2nd as part of an update introducing a new Mythological Mode, similar to the Romance mode of Total War: Three Kingdoms. It, as the name suggests, recreates the monsters of Classical Mythology in their full splendor. A new Historical Mode was also released that seeks to be a more realistic recreation of the Late Bronze Age than the vanilla Behind the Myth campaign.
4. Rhesus — Released on December 14, 2021 and made Rhesus (king of Thrace) and Memnon (half-cousin of Paris and Hector) playable.

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Total War Saga: TROY contains examples of the following:

• Abduction Is Love: Paris and Helen. Paris kidnapped her, but Helen is seen declaring "Troy is my home now", and Paris gains bonuses based on their proximity.
• Achilles in His Tent: Averted, seeing as Achilles is one of the playable Heroes, and it would be no fun to lose access to him for fifty turns over a petty squabble.
• Action Politician: Many of the Heroes in the game, who are both soldiers and statesmen. Hector and Paris of Troy, for instance, are deeply involved in local politics, while slaughtering anything standing in their way of protecting their home.
• Adaptational Heroism: While the myth is actually fairly balanced on the morality of the Greeks and Trojans, interpretations have always been split on whether Helen loved Paris, or whether her abduction was against her will. In this game, she is clearly shown to love Paris, and thus the entire Trojan faction is less villainous for fighting to stop the Greeks reclaiming her.
• Adaptational Species Change: In Greek myth, the Corybantes were human worshippers of Cybele. In the game, they're giant lion people.
• Adaptational Villainy: As a result of this, the Greeks are (knowingly, given Melenaus's reaction) fighting to return a woman to a marriage she clearly was not happy with.
• Adaptational Wimp: In The Iliad, Achilles, once he left his tent and was blessed by Athena, was able to march his way, unarmed and unarmoured, through the Trojan lines, catch a spear thrown at him, and use it to stab Hector through the throat. He's still a badass in this game, but he's not quite capable of that feat. Earlier preview builds even happened to have it so that Achilles would pretty much always lose to Hector handily (when the actual fight in the Iliad was the opposite showing), but that was changed by the game's release.
• All Myths Are True: The Mythos mode, of course. Within it, a variety of Greek myths and mystical attacks are directly available as units or god powers. This isn't the case in the other modes, where the gods are just Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane and myth units instead are people who have motifs that the actual myths are theorized to have inspired by.
• The Alliance: Hector's gameplay focus, as well as jockeying for Priam's favour. He is tasked with building up an alliance of Trojans and allies to resist the inevitable Achaean invasion.
• Apathetic Citizens: If you have too low influence on a region you have captured, your citizens don't work very hard. This is represented by various buildings giving increased output when influence is high.
• Arch-Enemy: A game mechanic. Once the Trojan War begins proper, the player will be issued an 'Antagonist'. This is strong faction on the opposing side that will focus their efforts on the player, and that must be defeated for a Homeric Victory.
• Artistic License – History:
  • The mythical Amazons are portrayed as an Indo-Iranian matriarchal tribe with a culture of horseback riding. Since we know very little of what their historical equivalents were like, the game depicts them with clothing and jewelry based on the Scythian culture, which began centuries after the end of the Bronze Age.
  • The Trojans themselves are identified as Pelasgians in keeping with Herodotus^* Homer only named Pelasgians as being among Troy's allies rather than the Trojans themselves, yet modern scholarship identifies them as Luwians, an Anatolian culture more closely related to the Hittites than the Greeks.
  • The game's depiction of sieges include siege engines such as battering rams and end-of-game siege towers, neither of which would appear in Greek warfare until well into the Classical era. The Trojan War cycle itself shows no depiction of siege engines other than the infamous Trojan Horse, the only surviving reference to which is a brief mention in The Odyssey. Indeed, the very capacity for sieging in-game on its own would be contrary to the Iliad, as the Trojan War probably would have went much simpler and faster if the Achaeans just encircled Troy and starved it out.
  • Justified with the in-game artwork — despite the game's unit models clearly portraying a time period before classical Greece, the game's artwork for events or cinematic uses the artstyle of black or red figure pottery which would come into vogue multiple centuries after the Trojan War... and Creative Assembly were hardly the first ones to do something like this. With historical depictions of scenes from the Iliad on red or black figure pottery being replete with anachronistic equipment that was current to the time period they were made rather than the actual Trojan War, it's practically fitting for Creative Assembly to depict the same.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Because the original poem contained far more Greeks of note than Trojans (which isn't that weird, considering it was written from their point of view), both tropes are employed to balance the roster. This leads to Aeneas (a minor character from this epic, but the star of his own) being upgraded to a full-on commander alongside Hector, Paris and Sarpedon, while Diomedes and Telamonian Ajax are reduced to leaders of non-playable factions (although they were eventually made playable via DLC). The Amazons also appear as playable factions under Hippolyta and Penthesilea, when in the original legends only 13 Amazons fought in the war, and Hippolyta wasn't involved due to being dead^note In fact, some versions say she had accidentally been killed by Penthesilea, who was fighting at Troy to find an honourable death to atone for this. Granted, there are about five or so different myths about who exactly killed Hippolyta and when, the entire reason the 13 Amazons were present was because. The Trojan DLC heroes are the best example of this. Rhesus never got to fight as he was killed in his sleep during a night raid be Diomedes and Odysseus. Memnon on the other hand does fight and starts to turn the tide until he fights Achilles the day he arrives at Troy.
  • On the non-playable side, there's Athens. In the epic, Athens was an extremely minor participant, while here they are an early foe of Ajax. Additionally, they are the target of Penthesilea's wrath, with her campaign basically being a retelling of the Attic War, which happened well before the Trojan War, as Athens was led by either Theseus or Heracles during that war, while both of them are long dead by the time the game begins.
• Attack of the Political Ad: Both Hector and Paris can attempt to drag each other through the mud in their efforts to impress King Priam in this way.
• The Atoner: In the Mythos mode campaign, it's possible to recruit centaurs from the tribe that Nessos, the centaur who violated Herakles' wife and ultimately led to his death, came from. The centaurs themselves are deeply ashamed of this, and seek to fight for worthy causes to clean themselves of this shame.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Confederating Troy as Hector or Paris immediately grants a tier 5 city with unique buildings and an incredibly powerful end-game army with maximum veterancy level... Whose upkeep approaches 10,000 food a turn. Unless your economy is severely upgunned or you can embed a high-level Envoy into the army immediately, expect having to disband half your regular army to support it.
• Bait-and-Switch: Sharp eyed players noted that in Myth mode, images of the Egyptian deities could be observed if you were looking in the right direction and assumed that this was Foreshadowing for an Egyptian-themed Total War game. It turned out this was actually a hint for the arrival of Rhesus and Memnon.
• Bloodier and Gorier: The "Blood and Glory" DLC adds blood and gore effects on battles, and on campaign maps if the battles have high casualties.
• Cat Folk: In Mythos mode, the Corybantes are depicted as hulking humanoid lions, with long, muscular arms and hunched backs; they're mostly intended to be powerful melee damage-dealers. Notably, they bear very little resemblance to their original inspiration — the mythological Corybantes were human worshippers of the goddess Cybele.
• Classical Cyclops: In Truth Behind the Myth mode, cyclopes are pirates who use dwarf elephant skulls as helms and wield maces tipped with ram skulls, implied to be the distant source of myths about a monstrous, cyclopean son of the sea god who lived on a distant island and reared sheep. In Mythos Mode, they are instead the classical one-eyed giants, clad in rags adorned with human bones.
• Contractual Boss Immunity:
  • Troy, being the big endgame city, is immune to agent actions, quickly replenished, and cannot be auto-resolved, so you are going to have to fight it and take it in a full battle. Attacking an enemy army nearby it, however, can make the subsequent actual assault on Troy on the same turn far easier as fighting outside of its walls is probably going to go far better for you than at the walls.
  • Characters with the "Homeric Hero" tag cannot be permanently killed, only wounded, for as long as their faction still exists.
• Cosmetically Different Sides: Averted, as the playstyle of each leader is different, even within the same faction. The most radically different leaders are Odysseus and Penthesilea, as he cannot have any other building in non-coastal provinces except for the main settlement structure and she is incapable of having settlements at all (structures thus are made in and travel with its army) and every one of her armies are incapable of reinforcing any other armies.
• Coup de Grâce Cutscene: After a battle, a short scene will be shown of the generals fighting. If one side wiped out the other, this will end in a brutal, showy death.
• Critical Existence Failure: Averted for your troops, played straight with Heroes. Troops will die as their unit takes damage, and thus the unit becomes less effective. Your Hero, however, can hit as hard at 1 hit point as they do at 10,000.
• Demythification: The Truth Behind the Myth mode — the only mode present before the Mythos Dl C, which also introduced fully realistic and fully mythological options — lives and breathes this trope and provides the trope's page image. It includes numerous references to The Iliad and The Odyssey conveyed through more realistic and plausible explanations that could have inspired them in the context of the Mycenaean conquests throughout Ancient Greece:
  • The game depicts various mythical creatures in more mundane forms that could possibly be distorted by future audiences into their more recognizable fantastical forms. The Minotaur is a Cretan outlaw with a bull skull headdress and labrys harkening back to the old Minoan culture, the Cyclops is a muscular feral shepherd or pirate (the latter referencing how some Cyclopes, including Polyphemus, were sons of Poseidon) wearing a dwarf elephant skull (it is believed that said skulls were misinterpreted by the Greeks as belonging to one-eyed giants), the Centaurs are equestrian tribesmen who would have among the first instances of horsemen encountered in the Greek world, the Harpies are marauding bands of bandit women wearing feathered cloaks, and the Amazons are Scythian warrior women (excavations of Scythian kurgans have uncovered skeletons of warrior women).
  • Several of the heroes in the game have subtle design influences that call back to their mythological inspirations. Achilles (and his Myrmidons) wears a helmet with cheek-guards resembling ant mandibles, a reference to the mythical origin of the Myrmidons being transformed from ants. Aeneas has several costume elements that harken toward his supposed Roman descendants, such as his cheek guards resembling a legionary's galea, his sash and cingulum, and his sword and shield resembling the iconic gladius and scutum.
  • The iconic Trojan Horse is given three possible interpretations in game. The first are mundane siege towers with sail crests that resemble a horse's mane. The second is a horse-prowed covered boat that can be used to sneak troops into the city, which requires the services of Odysseus much like how he devised the plan for the original Trojan Horse. The third is earthquakes, which reference how Poseidon was the god of both horses and earthquakes; a symbolic horse rather than a physical construct.
• Duel to the Death: Severely downplayed compared to Total War: Three Kingdoms, but still a step up compared to the Total War: Warhammer games. If two Generals (or a General and a Hero) target each other, other units will continue to fight but form a circle around them unless explicitly ordered to interfere, and the duel can end with one of the participants running away.
• Elite Army: Whichever of the Trojan princes confederates Troy gets one, but it's likely to tank their economy unless they balance around it.
• Evil Debt Collector: The taxation building has the flavor text of "When not working, the King's tax collectors enjoy the simple pleasures of life, like eating infants and kicking stray dogs."
• The Faceless: The Minotaur's face is always hidden behind his bull mask, and is never actually seen.
• Fauns and Satyrs: Satyrs are a type of agent available to players who court Aphrodite's favor. They're bearded human men who wear goat furs and horned headdresses, and can play a number of songs to boost a region's production or lower enemy morale.
• Final Battle: While it doesn't need to be the final battle in a campaign, the Battle of Troy is likely to resemble this for an Achaean campaign.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Paris and Hector, one being the cause of Troy's downfall and the other its (ultimately doomed) defender.
• Forbidden Love: Downplayed. While many people thought that Paris abducting Helen was a really bad idea, the Trojans were otherwise willing to stand by him.
• Fragile Speedster: The purview of light infantry. They're fast, loosely packed so ranged attacks hurt them less, and excel at flanking. But they're poorly armoured, and will melt if they're expected to hold the line.
• Friendly Ghost: Several of them help Aeneas in his campaign, although talking to them angers the gods and your people.
• Frontline General: All of your generals will typically be combat monsters, and one of the few units capable of fighting the opposing general. They can also destroy gates all by themselves.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The gods do not take active sides in the conflict like in the poem. Both sides are equally able to invoke the gods' favour on their side, in contrast to The Iliad where several of the gods favoured one side over the other (Hera, Poseidon and Athena supported the Achaeans; Zeus, Aphrodite and Ares supported the Trojans).
• Geo Effects: Terrain has a much greater effect on a battle than other entries of the series — in addition to providing cover from ranged attacks, forests also heavily penalize large units in combat effectiveness and speed to the point that a number of infantry units can outrun chariots going through a forest. Scrub allows certain infantry units to conceal themselves within it also like forests.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Much like in The Iliad, neither the Pelasgians nor the Achaeans are presented as 'good' or 'bad' in the conflict. Paris kidnapped Helen, Priam refuses to force him to return her, and Agamemnon sees it as a casus belli he can use as a pretext to burn Troy to the ground. In-game, both sides are equally able to engage in razing cities to the ground, enslaving captives or betraying alliances.
• Groin Attack: In one of the post-battle scenes, the winning general may kick his opponent in the crotch in order to create an opening for a killing blow.
• Harping on About Harpies:
  • In Truth Behind the Myth mode, harpies are female wreckers and pirates armed with javelins, usually available from coastal regions, who wear feathers and bird skulls in their hair and clothing — their elite version, the harpy fiends, outright wear winged headdresses. They can hide in any terrain, deal extra damage when flanking units, and have very good melee stats for skirmish units.
  • In Mythos mode, harpies are creatures with bodies of women and the wings and legs of birds; they have six limbs, with bird talons for hands. They lack their Truth Behind the Myth counterparts' ranged attacks, and instead act as mobile melee skirmishers.
• Horns of Barbarism:
  • Present but in a deliciously ironic (but likely accurate) example of who has them — the Mycenaean Greeks, whose successors in classical antiquity were the ones who invented the term "barbarian" to refer to non-Greeks, to whom the Greek successors in the Romans ascribed horned helmets, creating the trope. Notably, Agamemnon has a very impressive set, while Achilles gains them with an upgrade that calls to mind his new armor in the legend.
  • More straightforwardly, a number of the game's quasi-mythical monstrous units wear these. The giants sport face-covering bronze helmets adorned with large horns (either two in the usual manner, one in a unicorn-like position, or both at once for their champions), centaurs wear either furry hats or helmets adorned with horns, and the Minotaur wears an entire bovine skull as a helmet/mask combo.
• The High Queen: Helen of Troy, to the point where her presence in cities increases happiness, and unlocks a variety of events for a number of purposes.
• Heroic Second Wind: The Aristeia mechanic, named after the segments of The Iliad where a character is given their finest hour. A hero can enter Aristeia only once per battle, after building up a meter through extended combat and use of skills, and will immediately be given a short-term major power boost that allows a dramatic comeback.
• Invulnerable Horses: Inverted. A hero on a chariot will lose their chariot once they've taken enough damage and continue on foot unharmed.
• Leave No Survivors: If you choose not to conscript or ransom captives, you can instead butcher them all for a leadership bonus for your troops.
• Legend Fades to Myth: A major theme of the game is the "Truth behind the Myth". Much of the "Myth units" are represented by what could have inspired them in real life. Some of the explanations offered by Creative Assembly are well-researched, and are in fact those that have been put forward by actual historians, such as the Centaurs being barbarian tribesmen that rode horses (barebacked) to war, which terrified the Greeks when they encountered them — this, by and large, is a fairly widespread real-life theory for the origin of that particular myth. This is also the entire concept behind the game's interpretation of the Homeric epics. While the Trojan War itself was in all likelihood fictional, it essentially portrays what such a conflict would've looked like if the nations and heroes depicted in the stories had existed in the world of the Late Bronze Age Aegean.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Gives an excellent bonus against frontal ranged attacks, forcing you to flank with your ranged units, or tie up shielded enemies in melee first.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Much of the magic of the original mythology has been left slightly more ambiguous in the Truth Behind the Myth mode, as can be seen from the myth units. The gods do not directly intercede in person, but instead things that might occur naturally are attributed to their favour or wrath.
• Magikarp Power: The Amazon factions' primary shared gimmick, Initiation Rights. They are, at first, only able to directly recruit their lowest tier units. However, ranking those units up, either through battle or buildings, allow them to be upgraded into more powerful and specialized forms.
• Medusa: Gorgons are a type of agents available to players who court Athena's favor. In Truth Behind the Myth Mode, they're fully human, but cultivate deliberately horrific appearances and focus on sabotaging enemy units and morale, the implication being that tales of these women eventually morphed into the later myth of Medusa through centuries of retellings. In Mythos Mode, they're instead monsters with birdlike wings, a crown of snakes for hair, and reptilian faces with snakelike eyes, a leer full of tusk-like fangs and a long pointed tongue, and a "beard" of spikes. Among other things, they can pretty render a place's garrison to being nearly non-existent.
• Monstrous Scenery: In Myth mode, the skies of the battle maps are visually dominated by the faces of the Greek gods as they look down on the battles of the armies and heroes of the Achaeans and Trojans.
• Mood-Swinger: An actual gameplay mechanic for Achilles, whose faction gains or loses bonuses depending upon Achilles' current mood.
• Morale Mechanic: A Total War staple. It's very rare to completely destroy a unit in fighting. Instead, it's more likely to break them and make them flee, and kill them as they run. Flanking in particular destroys morale in Troy.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Hector clearly doesn't approve of Paris's choice to abduct Helen from Menelaus, or Priam's choice to allow her to stay. However, he wastes no time in preparing for the defence of his home. This may be more due to Undying Loyalty to his family, however.
• One-Man Army: Being built on the Warhammer engine, heroes take on this role, typically being able to carve through scores of lesser troops — especially once levelled up. Averted in Historic mode where heroes are just part of full-sized units.
• Our Centaurs Are Different:
  • In Truth Behind the Myth mode, Centaurs are present as bronze-armored, bareback horse riders hailing from barbarian tribes found north of Greece — the only cavalry units in the game. As part of the mode's focus on portraying the truth behind the classical Greek myths, these centaurs represent the first horse-riders whom the Myceneans interpreted as a horse-bodied people.
  • In Mythos mode, centaurs are patterned directly on the mythical beings, and while not cavalry in the literal sense fulfill broadly the same purpose on the battlefield.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: They're typically dead philosophers or other notables from the period, and they only want to talk to one faction. Also, in keeping with the game's "the truth behind the myth" motif, the panel that allows Aeneas to "talk to ghosts" suggests that he might not be actually raising the dead insomuch as a very good investigator who digs up information about them with such skill others assume he's spoken to their spirits.
• Our Giants Are Different:
  • In Truth Behind the Myth mode, giant tribes are one of several mythological creatures presented in a mundane manner. They're certainly bigger than normal troops, but look more like people with gigantism than something outright supernatural. The tooltip explains the mythology of giants might be because of the Greeks encountering populations of on-average taller people than themselves.
  • In Mythos mode, giants are largely similar to their Truth Behind the Myth counterparts, being still oversized humans wielding colossal weapons, but have scaled legs (a reference to the mythical Gigantes, who had serpent tails instead of legs).
• Our Gryphons Are Different: Griffins are creatures present in the Mythical mode, where they can be recruited if the Griffin Patriarch is brought over to the player's side. They all have the bodies and ears of lions and heads and wings of vultures, with feathers as strong as bronze; the Patriarch resembles a griffon vulture, while his lesser progeny have the features of lammergeiers. They're also quite big — lesser griffins are the size of elephants, and the Patriarch is around twice their size. They jealously hoard gold and live in a complex, conflict-filled balance with the one-eyed Arimaspoi that share their lands, with whom they constantly compete for treasure. As such, partnering with the Patriarch also allows the recruitment of Arimaspoi units. In battle, griffins serve as extremely fast and mobile flyers capable of dealing devastating damage to most common units.
• Our Minotaurs Are Different:
  • In Truth Behind the Myth mode, the Minotaur is a bandit lord who uses a bull mask made of a bull skull, wears what appears to be a bull hide and some sort of material to hide his face and wields a double-headed axe, using the symbols of the bygone Minoan civilization to solidify his own power. The implication here is that he ended up inspiring later legends through centuries of retellings.
  • In Mythos mode, the Minotaur is a golden-furred bull-headed man with human feet (like the mythical being, but unlike the hooved versions more common in modern fantasy) and with a labyrinth design tattooed over his chest and right arm.
• Our Sirens Are Different:
  • In Truth Behind the Myth mode, the sirens are an all-female unit of scantily clad soldiers who "charm" enemies to approach them before opening fire. Combined with their high foot speed, this also allows them to do things like lure key units out of formation or into ambushes.
  • In Mythos mode, sirens are white-feathered women with bird wings and talons for hands and feet — unlike mythical sirens, but like the game's harpies, they have humanoid instead of wholly avian bodies.
• Outside-the-Box Tactic: Another Total War staple. If you're trying to fight two armies, a viable tactic is to plant your troops between them — incredibly unintuitive. It makes one of them easy to attack piecemeal and rout.
• Plot Armor: As in Total War: Warhammer, legendary characters (here labelled "Homeric Heroes") cannot be killed in battle, only wounded, until their faction is wiped out.
• Pretext for War: One of the most famous in history. Paris abducts Helen of Troy, raising the ire of all of Achaea. The "pretext" part especially can turn out to be flimsy given that Helen can go to other regions entirely and then have the region she was in be taken by other, completely unconnected factions...but the Achaeans' Homeric victory conditions will remain as taking or razing Troy (aside from Menelaus, who does need to capture Helen), completing all of their epic mission objectives, and having the factions of Troy, Hector and Paris not exist anymore — Helen herself does not matter to any of these.
• Production Foreshadowing: Memnon's forces include Egyptians and Sea Peoples, both of which are featured more prominently in Total War: Pharaoh.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Known as a Cadmean Victory in this game^note Pyrrhus of Epirus wouldn't be around for a few more centuries; the 'Cadmean' likely refers to Cadmus the founder of Thebes, who lost all his men slaying a dragon at the future site of his city., but it means the same thing. You won, but your army has been gutted.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Also sometimes the other way around, but all of your Heroes (and generals) can throw down with the best of them.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: As always in Total War games, once you take a settlement you can sack it and leave, with the implication being that your troops engage in this. Or you can Loot and Occupy, where your troops do this and then refuse to leave. It makes the settlement's happiness plummet. Event artwork for your provinces being looted or sacking, as well as the cinematic that plays upon Homeric Victory, explicitly show helmeted warriors carrying women off over their shoulder.
• Real-Time with Pause: As usual in Total War, on most difficulties you can pause battles to issue orders to your troops.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: A lot of the leaders are Kings or other royals of their faction, and are all actively involved with the Trojan War.
• Sadly Mythtaken: While the mythological units in Mythos mode are for the most carefully researched and accurately depicted, a number of goofs — some mostly cosmetic, and some quite noticeable — turn up.
  • The portrayal of the giants draws traits from two types of beings that were very distinct in Greek myth. For the most part, they're based on the various types of giant barbarians that crop up in numerous Greek myths, epic cycles and geographies, which were mostly just very big and savage people. However, some of their traits, such as their scaled legs and their Children of Gaia trait, are based on the Gigantes, a group of very powerful and inhuman beings who were spawned by Gaia and were able to fight the gods one-on-one. Outside of sharing their modern names, these types of giants had nothing to do with one another in the source material (indeed, the Gigantes only started to be depicted as large-sized fairly late in history).
  • The Corybantes are depicted as a unit of hulking humanoid lions. In Greek myth, the Corybantes were simply human worshippers of Cybele, and while the Greeks did strongly associate Cybele with lions, nothing resembling the in-game unit actually exists in the mythology.
  • The Spartoi are depicted as mouthless, cracked constructs of living stone. In mythology, the only explicitly unusual things were their origin (they were spawned from dragon teeth) and combat prowess — they were otherwise regular, flesh-and-blood human warriors, to the point of being capable of fathering children with regular people, and were believed to be the ancestors of the Theban nobility.
• Seers: Seers are a type of agents available to players who court Apollo's favor, and focus on boosting your favor with a deity's cult while balancing their duties with a divinely-mandated errand to visit a sacred site on the campaign map.
• Short Range Guy, Long Range Guy: In amongst their other dichotomies, Hector and Paris fit this. Paris is one of the best archer heroes in the game who will lose to most other Heroes in a melee duel, whereas Hector wields a spear and can typically hold his own with the best.
• Shown Their Work: The boar's tusk helmet which Meriones gifts to Odysseus in book 10 of the Iliad is shown on Odysseus' model in-game. The other armors used by the Mycenaeans also seem to be based off speculation derived from both the Iliad and archaeology — Achilles’s early game armor matches his first armor in the poem, while his late-game armor matches the new set forged by the gods.
• Shout-Out: An icon for hero personalities◊ is based on the supposed death mask of Agamemnon.
  • The flavor text◊ for the Amazon Chargers unit has a take on Leeroy Jenkins' initial sentences in his video.
• Sibling Rivalry: Downplayed; Hector and Paris are in open competition to be named Priam's heir, gaining his favour by doing quests and defeating the Achean invasion. At the highest level, the winning brother will automatically confederate the other brother and Troy itself. Both are in a permanent Non-Aggression Pact with the other, however, preventing the rivalry from spilling into open war.
• The Siege: A Total War staple. Only provincial capitals may be besieged, but when you attack them, you encircle them. From there, you can either build siege engines and charge straight in, wait for longer to starve them and inflict attrition to make storming the castle easier, or forgo an attack completely to starve them to surrender.
• Straight for the Commander: A possible tactic. Your opponent's commander is often one of their most dangerous units, and losing him inflicts a morale penalty on the entire army, making them easier to break. However, he's often well-defended, making it hard to get your own commander in to duel him.
• Token Evil Teammate: Paris and Agamemnon are presented as this to their respective sides. Paris' impulsiveness and arrogance caused the Trojan War in the first place, while Agamemnon is motivated by Troy's destruction. Their allies on both sides are more motivated by duty and keeping their oaths, or in Menelaus' case getting his wife back.
• Underworld River: The battle against Cerberus is fought on the shores of the river Styx. In battle, the hound of Hades can also summon the fires of Phlegethon to create bursts of flame among enemy soldiers.
• Voodoo Shark: Some of the game's implementations for explanations on mythical events or creatures rather raise further questions. Perhaps the Sirens were indeed just an allegory for prostitutes, but why can players hire them as slingers that can cause other units to recklessly chase after them?
• The War Sequence: The Siege of Troy itself. Un-autoresolvable, and incredibly, incredibly violent (though getting the Trojan garrison to reinforce an allied army outside of the city makes the subsequent fight a lot easier than assaulting Troy's fully-manned walls directly).
• Warrior Prince: Hector is more militant than his brother Paris, being actively involved in raising a defensive league to protect Troy.
• We ARE Struggling Together: The Danaans might all be supposed to be sailing to take Troy and are pretty likely to defend each other, but they're hardly sure to head straight over together and not immune to conflicts against one another.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Both Paris and Hector, who compete for their father's favour — up to and including going to war because he says so. It helps that getting that favour lets you confederate the best city in the game, and the other brother's faction.
• Won the War, Lost the Peace: A possibility here, as with many Total War games. You may smash your opponents in battle, but if you take all of their territory too quickly, you may stretch your budget too thin trying to upgrade all their former settlements at once, and widespread public order problems from conquest may cause rebellions.
• You Call That a Wound?: Homeric Heroes, the leaders of each faction, cannot be killed as long as their faction still stands. Even when they are seen being shot and stabbed in the battle, and having their throat cut in the post-battle scene, they will only be 'wounded', returning in a few turns.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: In a departure from the average Total War game (which traditionally only use 'money'), TROY uses the five resources from Age of Empires for construction and recruitment — Food, Wood, Stone, Bronze (standing in for Iron) and Gold. Much like in Age of Empires, Food and Wood are used for early-game units and buildings, Stone and Bronze are added to the cost of higher-tier units and buildings, and Gold is used to produce faction-unique units, high-tier buildings and to unlock certain high-level technologies. Each non-city settlement in the game produces one of the five resources, making obtaining new sources of resources you are low on a priority for expansion or trade. Food is also produced in ports, simulating the nascent fishing industry of the era.

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