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Five years after its initial release, Creative Assembly is releasing new downloadable content for “Total War: Rome II” called the “Desert Kingdoms Culture Pack” March 8. According to its Steam Store page, “Total War: Rome II,” originally released in 2013 for PC and Mac, is a strategy game where the player must “(d)ominate … enemies by military, economic and political means” in order to take control of Rome.

The “Desert Kingdoms Culture Pack” brings with it three new factions and different units to choose from.

The different factions in this culture pack are the Kingdoms of Kush, Saba and Nabatea, which fall under African/Arabian culture.

All the units for these different factions will have an advantage in deserts due to them already living in the harsh environments they will be fighting in.

Even though each faction is culturally similar, all three vaunt unique unit rosters that will grant different tactical capabilities.

From what I can see of the “Desert Kingdoms Culture Pack,” these units include new spearmen, some form of swordsmen and, to my delight, a few new cavalry units including elephants.

Like all factions in “Total War: Rome II,” there are cultural traits that help and hinder the many different factions. The two culture traits for the Desert Kingdoms are “Desert Warriors,” which gives a bonus to morale and agriculture in desert environments and “Deep-rooted Traditions,” which gives a penalty to the research rate of each faction.

I love the Total War series and it is great that they released this DLC, but why did they? Aren’t they working on other games? Is there a specific group of programmers and artists over at Creative Assembly tasked with creating DLC for older titles? Especially a title whose initial release was an affront to Rome herself?