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That left me trying to calm him down with the keys to a country estate.

Thrones of Britannia offers ways to keep dissenting statesmen happy with cash - I could’ve arranged a marriage, raised my own influence, or just tried to buy him off - but I was too low on coin to spring for a bribe. He’d ridden up north at the head of an army I’d sent up to claim the Orkney Isles, but came down south as a turncoat, his time away apparently convincing him that he was a better ruler than my King Aed. But more important is loyalty: if a statesman starts to lose faith in the king - your player character - then they’ve got an increasingly good chance to rebel, spawning a stack of angry army men who will happily take all your towns while your back is turned. Selecting a good governor can drastically improve yields of both crops and cash in their assigned territory, while a good general, and the boosts they bring to morale, can make the difference between two evenly matched armies. That's even more the case after a major update, released in August, added new systems to complicate a game that at launch was surprisingly easy to win. But Thrones of Britannia, in attempting to present a tighter, more focused Total War campaign under the Saga banner, elevates the importance of the loyalties, capabilities, and predilections of these generals and governors, making their appointment and appeasement theoretically as important as good old fashioned conquest. In another Total War game I might ignore the names altogether, worried much less about individuals and much more about the armies they commanded or the provinces they governed. I know it’s the Dark Ages, guys, but can we come up with a few new names? It’s not just Fothads that I rack up on my playthrough of A Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia, either: I also pick up two Amlaibs - one a general, one a governor - a surplus of Ailins, and I’m on my third Dubgall by the time I unite all of Scotland under my rule. I’ve actually got another two Fothads, just sat around in my kingdom’s court, the apparent result of some spectacularly uncreative naming conventions in 9th Century Scotland.

It’s fine though, I’ve got another Fothad.

Sound the horns, call in the bannermen, and prepare for the funeral rites. Update Night is a fortnightly column in which Rich McCormick revisits games to find out whether they've been changed for better or worse.

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