What Is The Best Total War Game For Mac
When I was younger, I used to believe that a game was complete when it came out of the box. The vanilla experience, lovingly crafted by the developers, was a sacred cow — inviolable, a complete product made in some auteur creative director’s vision. And then one day I stumbled onto the mod scene for Total War: Medieval II and ever since then what was once sacred has become profane. Now, I shout the praises of great mods from a megaphone and expect that mods will undoubtedly extend the life of many of my favorite strategy titles well past that of the vanilla version.
- Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion (official expansion pack to Rome: Total War) Witness the decline of Rome as Barbarian hordes attack, forcing a bitter internal struggle between rival factions. Voted 2004 Best Strategy game by IGN, GameSpy and GameSpot.
- Total war refers to a military conflict of unlimited scope. Total War may also refer to: Total War (video game series), a video game series developed by The Creative Assembly and now published by Sega; Total War: 2006, a 1999 book by Simon Pearson; M.A.R.S. Patrol Total War, a comic book series initially published as Total War.
- Sep 17, 2012 This game is liiiiiit. It is super big, fun, and a great step up from the last total war game I played, Rome Total War. I really like the graphics, battles, and overall gameplay. But, I cannot dominate the world with the United States! Everytime I capture enough settlements in the Road to Independence mode, it says congratsand then crashes.
- The highest rated Total War game ever, Rome: Total War has to be on anyone’s best Mac strategy games list. With the classic Total War combination of empire building strategy and battle tactics, Rome: Total War allows you to lead one of Rome’s famous families all the way to the top.
- The world's best games for Mac OS X. Come and enjoy games for mac presented FREE and available for all macOS computers. Total War: THREE KINGDOMS Mac OS X Do you want a real time turn-based strategy game for macOS? If so, Total War: THREE KINGDOMS.
A game’s mod scene is like a fine wine: it becomes ever more refined with age. As such, it makes sense to step back from the hustle-and-bustle of Creative Assembly’s newest release and take a look instead at what's available for the studio’s last mainline historical strategy title, one of my personal favorites in the series — Total War: Attila, and see how its mod scene has fermented now that it is a comfortable few years after release.
What are the best Total War: Attila Mods?
Aug 11, 2016 It’s so common to hear Macs suck for gaming. “There’re no games to play!”they say all the time! But the real problem isn’t trolls saying this. What bothers me is that most people (and even some Mac users) believe Mac gaming is non-existent too! Mar 10, 2020 Total War: Three Kingdoms. The Total War franchise has long been a leader in turn-based strategy, and the series headed to ancient China for an epic tale of struggle and warfare in Total War.
- Fall of the Eagles (Overhaul)
- Radious Total War Mod (Overhaul)
- Olympian Campaign Camera (Quality of Life)
- Olympian Battle Camera (Quality of Life)
- More Bold Campaign Borders V2 (Quality of Life)
- Romani Unit Pack (Quality of Life)
- Natural Water Mod (Quality of Life)
- Terminus Total War - Imperium (Total Conversion)
Total War: Attila Overhaul Mods
For many players, a game’s experience is not complete, or even bearable, until the modders have put out a total overhaul of the vanilla version. Overhaul mods are the meat and potatoes of the modding world. They seek to take the platform the developers have given them and use it to create a complete update that draws out the latent potential in the original. If the quality of life section of this list sought to find one glaring problem and fix it, then overhaul mods seek to remake and rebalance the entire game, usually to correct balance issues or add and modify existing mechanics.
Fall of the Eagles
Fall of the Eagles is one of the most comprehensive and popular overhaul mods for Attila. It adds new unit reskins and models for several factions, and adds some significant changes to the garrison, climate, and battle systems. Like the previous entry, battles are tweaked to be a bit longer, though there is a compatible sub-mod that allows for faster combat while maintaining the balance system, for all of those, like me, who are more concerned with the strategic than the tactical. Changes to the political system, climate change, and army integrity make for a slightly more challenging experience. So if that, coupled with some more realistic and historical-feeling battles and unit models, sounds good to you than Fall of the Eagles is worth a try.
Radious Total War Mod
If you are familiar with recent titles in the Total War series you have likely heard of Radious overhaul mods, and for good reason. Radius and his team have made a name for themselves in the Total War mod scene with some extremely popular overhaul mods for both Shogun II and Rome II. The reason for this success: an ability to tap into the communities grievances, rectify them, and package it all together as a single comprehensive experience — an absolutely enormous labor of love.
For Attila, this takes the form of a complete economic overhaul that changes everything from unit upkeep to public order to religion, as well as a top to bottom redesign of every unit’s stats in order to tweak the battle system to adjust the balance of combat. This results in longer and more tactical battles, which have always been the real meat of the Total War series. If you decide to pick this mod up, you will also need to install the Radious Total Units Mod as well in order to get the full unit roster. There is a reason these two mods are the top two most subscribed items on the Total War: Attila Steam Workshop. You owe it to yourself to not settle for vanilla.
Quality of Life
The real strength of mods is radically democratizing a game’s community. Through modding, all those little gripes and bugbears that cause constant irritation while playing, the ones that the devs keep ignoring, those can be resolved once the community gets its hands on the problem. While overhaul and total conversion mods seek to fundamentally redefine the player’s experience, these little UI, graphical, historical, and miscellaneous improvements, simply help to soothe overlooked issues that just get under your skin or fix problems you didn’t even know were there. Plus, because most of these focus on a single particular issue, many are compatible with each other, as well as other, more comprehensive, mods.
Olympian Campaign Camera
One of my recurring pet peeves with the Total War series is with the consistent rigidness of the campaign’s camera. Creative Assembly never seems to let it go as far back as I’d like and it constantly seems stuck at an awkward angle that doesn’t give me the strategic perspective I’m looking for. The Olympian Campaign Camera seeks to resolve this by adding some much-needed flexibility to the strategic view, allowing the camera to pull a bit farther back and a bit closer to ground level.
This doesn’t solve all my camera issues, but it does allow for a much more top-down view of the map, which gives a better grasp of the geopolitical and strategic views than the narrower camera angle allows. While it may seem like a minor thing, the change in camera perspective can often give a change in strategic perspective, allowing the player a more traditional war game-esque view, allowing for a more nuanced appreciation of the distance between armies, cities, and enemies. There is also an “extreme” version of this mod that is a bit more unstable but allows for a much farther drawback distance, but seeing as how cities and armies disappear or get obscured by clouds if you go too far up, the regular version works perfectly fine.
Olympian Battle Camera
Much in the same way as the previous entry, this is a must-have quality of life improvement. This mod does the same thing as the Olympian Campaign Camera, but for tactical battles, rather than the campaign map. Freeing the camera from its unnecessarily narrow axis just feels liberating. Again, this doesn't unshackle the camera completely, but does give the option to go back farther and get closer to the ground. This allows you to really get into the dirt and see the fighting happening at ground level, or, alternatively, pan far out to get a more holistic view of the fighting below. Don’t settle for the camera-on-a-dolly-like limitations that Creative Assembly has given you. Once you try it, you won’t want to go back.
More Bold Campaign Borders V2
One of my biggest grievances with the Total War series in general is that the lines between provinces aren't always clear at a glance. This mod gives some clarity by making the barriers between each province just a little bit bolder. This makes it easier to see where each province begins and ends and makes visualizing the political boundaries of your territory much easier to recognize while also maintaining the maps well-crafted geographic features.
I find this works especially well paired with the Olympian Campaign Camera, allowing for a bird’s-eye view that also makes the individual provinces more clearly delineated. I strongly believe that the visualization of a strategic problem heavily contributes to how we perceive and solve them. In this respect, Campaign Borders is another must-have quality of life improvement, that while only altering the games visuals in a subtle way, makes a huge difference in how, at a glance, a player understands a situation politically, geographically, and strategically.
Romani Unit Pack
This unit pack greatly expands upon the number and variety of Roman units, adding a total of 104(!) units for the Western, Eastern, and Expeditionary (from The Last Roman DLC) Roman factions. If you’re going to be playing a run of any Roman faction, it makes sense to go all in and use the much more fleshed out unit rosters available from this mod. Especially when playing as the Western Empire, this mod adds a degree of flavor that makes the struggle to hold out even more worthwhile, as you can admire the craftsmanship and research that went into making and detailing the unit models for this pack. Watch out if you’re using another unit pack or overhaul mod, however, as they might not be compatible with Romani.
Natural Water Mod
Look, bland looking water graphics aren’t going to make or break your experience, but ask yourself: why shouldn’t I have nice things? So treat yourself, toss out that plain, old, regular water and get some fancy new Natural Water from this mod. I’ve always believed that style, rather than mere quality should determine how to feel about visuals, and this mod actually delivers in that respect, replacing the perfectly adequate water of the base game with a variety of subtly different colors for each region — from the dark blue hues of the North Sea to the crystalline aquamarine of the Mediterranean. It’s a minor thing, but it makes the experience just a bit more visually appealing and immersive.
Alternate History and Total Conversion
Total conversion mods demonstrate the maximum extent of what a modding community can do, altering a base game from one thing into something altogether new. While this vast potential holds the possibility of unfulfilled promises or half-hearted attempts, there is little more appealing that a well-executed total conversion or a thoughtfully constructed alternate history. Of all the varieties of mods, these offer the greatest lifespan extension for any game.
Terminus Total War - Imperium
This alternate history total conversion mod posits a world in which the assassination of the Eastern Emperor and his heir just before the start date results in both halves of the Empire fracturing and splintering. Because of this, instead of two roman factions, East and West, Rome is divided into two loose hegemonic spheres based out of Ravenna and Constantinople with virtually autonomous warlords ruling the provinces.
In game terms, this means that while in the west Honorius may still sit in Ravenna and claim the title of Augustus, the provinces of Gaul, Hispania, Britannia, Illyria, and Germania are client states, outside the direct control of the Emperor, while Africa and its ever precious grain supply is being run as an independent kingdom under a Roman general. In the East, former Praetorian Prefect and true-power-behind-the-throne Flavius Rufinus has taken the purple, but his realm is as rife with rebellion and warlords as the west. Constantinople, the new Rome, once the rich and geographically defensible bulwark of the Roman world, now faces a similarly dire position as the old Rome.
As such, Terminus Total War - Imperium adds a wealth of new Roman factions, with all of the accompanying internal struggle, while also having the same apocalyptic threat of Germanic and Hunnic invasions. In some ways, this alternate timeline interestingly mirrors the political circumstances that faced Rome during the Crisis of the Third Century when, surrounded by the dual threats of the Goths and the Sassanids, the Empire effectively splintered and a Gallic Empire in the west and a Palmyrene Empire in the east emerged which could more robustly defend their own territories, while the central empire schemed to regain supremacy over the wayward provinces.
While the situation is still very dire for the Romans in Imperium, the more fragmented political authority does at least offer the intriguing possibility of embracing a more effective defensive strategy through delegating out the defence of the Empire. This, alongside a series of kingdom formation missions and a new war weariness system, make for a very enjoyable romp through a thoroughly enjoyable alternate historical timeline.
What are your favourite Total War: Attila mods? Let us know in the comments!
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17 Mar 20208Total War games are famous for the scale of their battles. Hundreds of soldiers on a single battlefield is certainly impressive.
Add to that a deep gameplay that requires smart tactics and strategies and you get some of the best Strategy games for Mac. Warhammer is all that plus orcs, heroes, and other fantasy creatures.
Plus, Total War: Warhammer’s Mac version is the newest Total War game available on MacOS.
In this review:
But all those units and great graphics must require a powerful Mac to run right? No need to jump to conclusions, we are here to figure it out together.
Ready? Let’s see if your Mac has what it takes.
On top of introducing a fantasy setting that makes it more appealing to casual gamers, Total War: Warhammer remains an excellent strategy game. Our score: ★★★★☆ |
First things first, is the game any good?
Released for Mac almost a year ago, there are more than enough reviews to give us an idea of the quality of this game.
With an impressive 86 Metascore (weighted average of scores given by critics), Warhammer can be considered a great game:
Reading what the big guns had to say, it certainly seems like this is a fun, satisfying and well-made game.
IGN, for example, gave it an 8.6/10 score and said:
Game advance emulator mac. 12 rows Download Gameboy Advance (GBA) emulators and play Gameboy Advance video games on.
Total War: Warhammer brims with exciting ideas, awesome characters, and delightful units and faction mechanics.
Gamespot gave it a 9/10 entirely and praised the way the Warhammer Universe meshes naturally with Total War’s gameplay, it’s massive AI improvements and stellar audio design.
On the other hand (like it’s often the case) gamers were far more challenging than professional critics. The game has 75% positive reviews from over 21,000 total users. By Steam reviews standards, that’s a good score too.
My take?
Total War games are usually not for everyone. They feature campaigns full of accurate historical elements and battles that require a lot of thinking and strategy.
But with the introduction of a fantasy universe and monsters and griffons, Warhammer is a better Total War with more appeal to casual gamers.
Until Thrones of Britannia comes to MacOS, this is the Total War to have.
Total War: Warhammer Mac requirements
Remember, if you don’t pay attention to the system requirements, you risk buying a game you won’t be able to play!
These are Warhammer’s minimum system requirements:
- OS: Mac OS X 10.12.4
- Processor: Intel 2.0 GHz
- RAM: 8GB
- Hard Disk: 37GB
- Graphics: 1.5GB
The game is supported on the following graphics cards:
- All AMD graphics cards released from 2014 onwards
- All Nvidia cards with 2GB+ VRAM released from 2012 onwards
- Intel Iris Graphics 540 & 550 cards released from 2016 onwards
The following graphics cards are capable of running the game, but do not consistently meet the standards required for official support:
- All Nvidia cards with 1 GB VRAM released from 2012 onwards
- All Intel Iris and Iris Pro cards released from 2013 onwards
If you don’t have one of these, I’m afraid this game isn’t for you…
The Test: Can you play Total War: Warhammer on Mac?
I can confidently tell you this is a good game. But can your Mac run it? We went ahead and tested the game on the following Mac models:
- MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017): 3.1 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB RAM, Intel Radeon Pro 560 (4GB)
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2016): 2.0 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, Intel Iris Graphics 540 (1.5GB)
- iMac (5K, 27-inch, Late 2014): 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, AMD Radeon R9 M290X (2GB)
- Mac Mini (Late 2014): 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 4 GB RAM, Intel Iris 5100 (1.5GB)
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012): 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 4 GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000 (1.5GB)
As you can see, the purpose is to go wide and cover Macs that are as different from each other as possible. In this case, we have the:
- New high-end Macs (the 2017 MacBook Pro).
- Older high-end Macs (the 2014 iMac).
- New, but basic Macs (the 2016 MacBook Pro).
- Older and basic Macs (the Mac Mini and 2012 MacBook Pro).
Hopefully, your setup will closely match one of these.
Notice neither the 2012 MacBook Pro nor the 2014 Mac Mini are officially supported.
These are the settings we used to run the game’s internal benchmark :
- 1280×800 (or equivalent 1344×756) resolution
- Medium Preset
- Anti Aliasing: OFF
Why 1280×800 and not more? Because most Mac users have slightly old MacBook Pros. 1280×800 is a little better than basic High Definition (720p), but still low enough to give MacBook Pros a chance…
The Results: A pretty but demanding game
It goes without saying that this great looking game requires power to render those beautiful and chaotic battles.
We expected this game would be demanding. And we were not wrong:
Keeping in mind that we aim for 30 frames per second (FPS) or more, these results are discouraging for anyone but those with very powerful Macs.
Unlike turn-based games such as Civilization 6, Total War: Warhammer on Mac really shines during its huge real-time battles. Are 10-15 FPS enough to enjoy them?
We’ll have to take our tests a little further to answer that question. And the answer will obviously depend on your setup.
As a reminder, this is how we describe the different levels of performance:
- Below 20 FPS: Unplayable: Laggy gameplay, full of stutters and slowdowns.
- 20-30 FPS: Borderline: Can be OK in slow-paced games. Still, not optimal.
- 30-45 FPS: Playable: Acceptable for most (most gaming consoles do this).
- 45-60 FPS: Smooth: Fluid gameplay, with no perceivable stutters.
- 60+ FPS: Very Smooth: For hardcore and professional players, a luxury for most.
Can my Mac run Total War: Warhammer?
This one’s easy. If you have a high-end Mac (or a Mac with a dedicated graphics card and 2GB of Video RAM or more), TW: Warhammer will run beautifully on your machine.
In fact, you can confidently play the game at higher settings and resolutions and still have over 30FPS of smooth gameplay.
Can you play Total War: Warhammer on a MacBook Pro?
This is where it gets tricky. Looking only at the results, I’d be inclined to say you should not get this game. 15 FPS is much too low to enjoy a game.
But what if you’re prepared to compromise and play the game at lower settings?
Testing the game at the same resolution as before (1280×800), but using the Minimum settings, we got 23.0 FPS running the in-game benchmark.
Still low, but barely enough to enjoy it.
But before you run out to purchase a copy, keep in mind that compromises are needed. If you need to play your games at 60 FPS and 4K, don’t bother.
If you want to enjoy the game at lower settings but decent performance, you can go ahead and buy it.
Do you have an older and basic Mac?
If you have anything older than our 2016 MacBook Pro with integrated graphics, I advise you pass on this game. Unfortunately, performance will be too low.
Bottom line: If you get anything lower than 12 FPS (like the 2016 MacBook Pro we tested), I wouldn’t recommend it
PS: These are our favorite accessories for playing/testing games on Mac!
Game | ★ Best Mouse | Best Controller | Best eGPU |
Why we love it? | The G502 is Logitech's most accurate gaming mouse yet. Plus, it has a plethora of buttons and a killer design. | The official PS4 controller just works on Mac. It's wireless, it's precise, it has an excellent grip and it's durable. | The Razer Core X turns your MacBook or Mac Mini into a killer gaming machine by adding external graphics support. |
Mac compatible? | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
User Reviews | ★★★★☆ 326 Amazon reviews | ★★★★☆ 9,678 Amazon reviews | ★★★★☆ 74 Amazon reviews |
Price | From $56 | From $39.99 | From $299.99 |
Buy from |
Download Total War: Warhammer for Mac
Total War: Warhammer is available from most digital stores and prices are stable across the board. You can really get it from your store of choice:
On top of introducing a fantasy setting that makes it more appealing to casual gamers, Total War: Warhammer remains an excellent strategy game. Our score: ★★★★☆ |
What Is The Best Total War Game For Pc
Total War: Warhammer Mac Review
Total War Game Mac
With the introduction of a fantasy universe filled with monsters and griffons, Warhammer is the Total War for casual gamers who are usually intimidated by the series. And on top of the fantasy setting, this remains an excellent strategy game. That said, you will need a powerful Mac to run it.
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What Is The Best Total War Game For Mac Pc
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