Empire: Total War is getting a downloadable Native American campaign with five completely new factions slugging it out on a detailed map of North America. These factions seems to include a bit of a, uh, non-historical bent. Among the new units are shamans and among the new technologies are spirit medicine, call of the wild, and dreamwalking.

Personally, I love this sort of approach to historical-ish games. Age of Empires III got really wild once it started folding in Native American and Asian cultures. And I feel the game was better for it. But there are a lot of Total War fans who prefer their history straight. I expect some moderate gnashing of teeth.

The Warpath Campaign will be available as a download via Steam for ten bucks some time next month.