Total War Battles: Kingdom
Total War Battles: Kingdom is a free-to-play, cross-platform 3D strategy title that borrows familiar ideas from Medieval II: Total War, but repackages them into shorter, more approachable sessions built around building timers and bite-sized battles.
 | Publisher: Creative Assembly Type: MMO Strategy Release Date: April 09, 2015 Shut Down: April 28, 2022 PvP: Instanced Duels Pros: +Strong visuals for a lightweight strategy game. +Excellent sound and music. +Persistent world with real-time seasonal changes. +Tactical, unit-counter focused battles. Cons: -Aggressive microtransaction pressure. -Very long construction timers and cooldown loops. -Combat balance can feel uneven. -Gameplay can blur together over time. |
Total War Battles: Kingdom Shut Down on April 28, 2022
Total War Battles: Kingdom Overview
Total War Battles: Kingdom offers a smaller-scale spin on Creative Assembly’s long-running formula, aiming to deliver a recognizable Total War flavor in a format that fits quick play sessions. Inspired by Medieval II: Total War, it mixes kingdom management with streamlined tactical encounters, letting you expand from a modest starting territory into a larger realm through construction, diplomacy-by-bribery, and frequent combat.
You begin as a newly raised English noble with a patch of land to develop. From there, progression is tied to shaping the landscape and infrastructure as much as it is to fighting. You can found settlements, connect them with roads, place bridges, and even alter terrain and waterways to better support growth. On the military side, you tackle a steady flow of conflicts, from internal unrest and deserters to external threats and rival nobles, then eventually test your army against other players in duels. Unit matchups matter, and success typically comes from building a roster that can answer different battlefield problems rather than leaning on a single favorite troop type.
Total War Battles: Kingdom Key Features:
- Cross-Platform Gaming – access the experience on PC, Mac, and mobile devices (the PC version remained in Open Beta during its early life).
- Bite-sized Total War – designed around shorter sessions compared to mainline Total War entries, making it better suited to tablets and smartphones.
- Build Your Kingdom – expand and customize your territory through conquest and development, including cities, roads, bridges, and land shaping.
- Dynamic Environments – a persistent world where seasons shift in real time, changing the look of the land and influencing resources like crops and wildlife.
- Strategic Battles – recruit varied units and leverage strengths and counters to win fights efficiently.
Total War Battles: Kingdom Screenshots
Total War Battles: Kingdom Featured Video
Total War Battles: Kingdom Review
Total War Battles: Kingdom is set in 10th-century England, framed around fractured rule, local power struggles, and the pressure of outside forces. The player steps into the role of a newly established noble with ambitions of unifying the land, starting from a battered inheritance and working upward through rebuilding, expansion, and conflict. The premise is straightforward, but it provides enough motivation to keep pushing into new regions and taking on tougher encounters.
From a presentation standpoint, the game generally punches above its weight. The 3D visuals are clean and appealing for a free-to-play strategy title, and the sound design is one of its strongest elements. Music and battle audio do a lot of heavy lifting in selling the “Total War” identity, even when the underlying systems are simplified.
A new lord, a small holding
Early on, the game asks you to create an avatar, and the customization options are noticeably uneven, with far more variety for male characters than for female ones. After that, you are led into a tutorial that covers the core loops, construction, terrain changes, recruiting, upgrading, and the basics of combat control. It explains the systems clearly enough, but the lack of an option to skip can make the opening feel longer than it needs to be, especially if you are returning to the game after time away.
Once you are free from the tutorial track, guidance comes in the form of side objectives and missions. These tasks serve as a structured path through early progression and reward Honor Points (experience) and sometimes gold, the premium currency that sits at the center of the game’s monetization.
More builder-strategy than grand campaign
In practice, Kingdom feels less like a traditional Total War campaign and more like a mobile base-builder with a Total War coat of paint. City development and army growth are tied to long timers, and many actions are designed around waiting or paying to accelerate progress. Buildings can take hours to finish, resources can be gated by cooldowns, and a lot of the friction points have a convenient solution in the form of gold.
Microtransactions are not limited to speeding up construction. Gold can also be used to hasten gathering, recover wounded troops, purchase upgrades, and even fund battle support abilities. Cosmetic personalization, including elements of your coat of arms, also leans into premium spending. The overall effect is a game that frequently reminds you there is a faster lane available, provided you are willing to pay for it.
Streamlined combat with familiar counters
Outside of building and upgrading, much of your time is spent in mission battles against AI-controlled opponents, such as unruly peasants, deserters, and invading forces. Combat is a simplified take on the series, fought in a confined formation space rather than a wide open battlefield. Armies are arranged into a grid that supports up to nine unit positions, three across and three deep, though you begin with fewer slots and unlock more as you level.
Even with the reduced scale, the classic rock-paper-scissors logic remains. Certain troop types naturally punish others, and composing an army that can answer cavalry, ranged units, and infantry threats is a big part of consistent success. Battles also retain a meaningful degree of micromanagement. Units advance and engage automatically, but the player is responsible for selecting targets, triggering abilities, and placing troops to avoid bad matchups.
When the system is working, fights are engaging and can be surprisingly tense against stronger opposition. Over time, however, repetition becomes a real issue because many encounters share similar layouts and rhythms. Balance is another weak point, with some unit interactions feeling overly swingy, such as ranged units deleting large chunks of a melee line if timing and positioning line up too well.
Duels as the PvP outlet
Player-versus-player content is limited to instanced duels. Matchmaking attempts to find similarly leveled opponents, but uneven pairings can still happen. Paying players can gain an advantage through faster progression and stronger upgrades, although duels are not purely decided by spending. Correctly reading the opponent’s lineup, setting counters, and making the right in-fight decisions can still swing outcomes, particularly between players who are close in overall power.
The Final Verdict – Fair
Total War Battles: Kingdom ultimately lands in an awkward middle ground. The combat is often enjoyable, the audiovisual presentation is strong, and the persistent world touches, like shifting seasons, add atmosphere. At the same time, the game’s pacing is heavily shaped by long timers and a premium currency economy that continually nudges players toward paying to keep momentum.
As a lighter, mobile-style strategy game, it can be entertaining in short bursts, especially if you treat it like other timer-driven kingdom builders. As a Total War experience, it lacks the depth and freedom many series fans expect, and the monetization and repetition make it difficult to recommend as a long-term investment.
Total War Battles: Kingdom Links
Total War Battles: Kingdom Official Site
Total War Battles: Kingdom Steam Page
Total War Battles: Kingdom Wikia
Total War Battles: Kingdom System Requirements
Minimum Requirements:
Operating System: Windows Vista 32-bit Service Pack 2
CPU: Core 2 Duo / Athlon X2 / 1.8 GHz
RAM: 2 GB RAM
Video Card: 512 MB Intel HD4000 / ATI Radeon HD4650 / NVidia Geforce 430
Direct X: DirectX 9.0
Hard Disk Space: 2 GB available space
Recommended Requirements:
Operating System: Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1
CPU: Core 2 Duo / Athlon X2 / 2.4 GHz
RAM: 2 GB RAM or more
Video Card: 1 GB ATI Radeon HD5850 / Nvidia Geforce GTX 480
Direct X: DirectX
Hard Disk Space: 2 GB available space
Total War Battles: Kingdom Music & Soundtrack
Coming Soon!
Total War Battles: Kingdom Additional Information
Developer: Creative Assembly
Publisher: Creative Assembly
Open Beta: March 09, 2015
Official Release Date: April 09, 2015
Steam Release Date: April 09, 2015
Shut Down: April 28, 2022
Development History / Background:
Total War Battles: Kingdom is a free-to-play 3D MMO strategy game developed and published by Creative Assembly, the studio best known for the Total War franchise. Drawing from Medieval II: Total War, it adapts the series into a cross-platform format with a stronger emphasis on settlement growth and shorter, structured battles. The game entered Open Beta on March 9, 2015 and launched on April 9, 2015. While intended for multiple platforms, it was available on PC via Steam during its run, and it was shut down on April 28, 2022.