Lucium total war is a mod that takes place in the year 1700, and goes all the way to 1850, with technologies and warfare progressing as you play. There are 2 main campaigns to play, both being completely unique, taking place in an expanded Europe that goes from Swedish-Finland to Persia, and an original and totally unique South America. The Europe campaign beginning in 1700 (around the Spanish Succession Crisis and the Great Northern War), and the South American campaign beginning in 1819 (around the revolutions of Simon Bolivar). The 1.0 version of the Europe campaign of Lucium Total War, was released officially on April 20th 2020, with the 2.0 version being released shortly afterwards on the 14th of June 2020, and then also a 2.5 version on the 4th of July 2020. This began a short break for the team as we worked on the 2.6 version, as well as the South Americas campaign: Bolivars Revolution, having those release on the 12th of November 2020. We adore 3.0, and hope you do also!
Awesome concept for a mod.
Aight, so. I know it's not the most objectve review out there since I'm one of the mod developers. But still - as a player and nothing else - I really enjoyed playing the base version of Lucium... To a point. And that point was the release of Boliar's Revolution. Let me explain.
Lucium Total War was always intended to be a better, different version of Empire Total War, in an engine whose mechanics suit our tastes better and that is overall WAY more refined than Warscape was at the time of ETW's release. In my opinion - and that applies to Lucium 2.6 ONLY - it fails at that. It doesn't feel very unique other than being a mod set in a time frame that to my knowledge, no other mod had attempted portraying before.
There are a few mechanics introduced with AMAZING potential, like the cities' development policies and the army modernisation script, but as they are now, they end up feeling a bit shallow. As in: there's basically no point in making your cities anything but Economic Policy and your forts Military Policy, so Cultural is almost useless until you start conquering vastly different cities religiously than your own.
The Army Modernisation script is a nice touch, it's always good to reflect how warfare changed within a time period, but armies don't feel comparatiively modernised at all when it fires. In fact, they don't feel very 18th century at all, at any stage. It's as if you'd taken some early gunpowder era units and bloody Gothic Knights from vanilla, and put them in a 1700s setting. And that's practically what we did! x"D
Now, Bolivar's Revolution on the other hand is where it all changes (even my objectivity, since I hardly worked on it anyway). Sure, the Direct Control/Self-Governing and Slavery Allowed/Forbidden buildings are even more hollow in my opinion than what the Policies were in base game (there's literally NO reason to pick the former of both choices). But the campaign, oh bloody hell the campaign! It's fresh, it's unique, it does everything Medieval II Kingdoms: The Americas did well with its exploration and makes it better, and the gameplay is MORE ENJOYABLE THAN EMPIRE's! That's exactly what I could ever want Lucium base game to be!
As far as I'm aware, there hasn't been a SINGLE M2TW mod set entirely in South America. This is great. Then comes the exploration of the Amazon which is already really fun and still has tonnes of potential for future updates. And my oh my, the battles in this are SICK! I loved every. Single. Minute of that dev battle we had.
Bolivar's is all that Lucium SHOULD be. And I'm so glad that this is the direction we're taking for the next big update, I'll be happy to join ranks with you for that. This still has SO much potential, and I believe we can achieve that potential and more. That's why, on base game's release, Lucium only got a 7/10 from me, and why right now, it's a solid 9. Cheers!
I can't wait
Brilliantly done mod, maybe too ambitious as you focused on a big time period but otherwise highly enjoyable. Game developers take note!
poorly balanced, yet another mod where cavalry simply devastates everything on the battlefield. Campaign map a bit too big for my taste, and the distances between the towns are huge
Good mod, try it
Awesome
10\10
Excellent Mod, come a long way
Very original, really fun campaign & battles, and so many little nice details. The tremendous work & effort put into this truly shows!