Steam Workshop and How to Make Mods
Steam Workshop
A subreddit for the Total War strategy game series, made by Creative Assembly. Discussions, strategies, stories, crude cave-drawings, and more for Medieval 2, Empire, Shogun 2, Rome 2, Attila, Thrones of Britannia, Warhammer, Three Kingdoms and others. Total War: SHOGUN 2 A thousand battles, a thousand victories, but are they yours? Create, discover and download historical battle scenarios, multiplayer maps and the most popular and accomplished mods. Or try out Total War TEd editor to create and upload your own. Click here to learn more.
The Rome II Steam Workshop is a directory of user created modifications for the game that can alter many different areas of the game, from simple balance mods to adding new units to changing the graphics in the game.
You can browse the Workshop for mods you would like to have in your game and subscribe to them. The tags can be used to filter for mods of different types, so if you just want to find mods that add new units, the Units tag is the one for you.
Mod Manager
Once you have subscribed to items in the Workshop, when you next load up the game you can see these mods by clicking on the Mod Manager button in the launcher.
This will show all the Workshop items you are subscribed to and the download progress of them. You can also choose which mods you want active via the checkboxes for each one. So you can subscribe to more mods than you want active at any one time and you can have them downloaded on your computer and ready to go whenever you want them to have an effect in-game.
You can also upload mods to Steam Workshop from the Mod Manager, but that will be covered later. First there is information on how to make a mod.
Creating a Mod
For now community made tools are required to create mods. There are already many great tools and tutorials out there, below is a list of them that will get you started.
- Warscape Modding Primer– A good beginners guide to modding Rome II.
- Pack File Manager – The main community tool, this can open pack files, create new ones and edit database tables
- Rome 2 Editor – A tool designed for dealing with large amounts of data in the database.
- How to create a mod pack in 5 easy steps with Pack File Manager – A great guide on how to create a mod pack, the crucial element of any Workshop mod.
- How to make a custom unit with Pack File Manager – Another useful tutorial this time focused on adding units.
- Tools, Tutorials and Resources – A list of all tools and tutorials for Rome II modding.
Uploading a Mod to Steam Workshop
Total War Shogun 2 Mods Steam
Now you have made a mod, uploading it to Steam Workshop is a simple process.
Make sure your mod pack has a unique name so it will not conflict with other mods, and that it is located in your Rome II data folder along with an image for your mod. This should be a 256x256 png image with the same name as your mod pack. If you do not have this image you will get an error message on trying to upload.
Run the game and go to the Mod Manager. You should see a new entry there with the name of your mod pack along with an upload button. Clicking it will prompt you to select which tag you want for your mod. The tags are:
- Graphical
- UI
- Overhaul
- Battle
- Campaign
- Units
- Compliation
- Maps
Pick the one that is most relevant.
Once your mod has been uploaded you will be taken to the Steam Workshop page for it where you can edit its title, description and upload additional images/videos to help promote it. Save the details and it will be available for everyone who owns Rome II to subscribe to and use themselves in their games.