If you’ve been thinking the land of Skyrim needs to be a bit more civilised, you’re in luck: a classic mod that turns Skyrim into a city-building game has finally been updated to work with the Skyrim: Special Edition.
Modder Ripvanwinkle111 first published their ‘RTS for Skyrim‘ mod in 2012, and while it falls short of turning Skyrim into a full-on strategy game, it does let you create functional towns from scratch by constructing buildings and assigning villagers to work in them and defend the settlement. You can also assign villagers to the local militia and have them pull guard shifts and follow patrol routes you designate.
Now the mod has been updated, and there’s a version available for Skyrim: Special Edition. The mod lets you place houses, workshops, and stores, and then recruit villagers and merchants to manage them. Villagers will pay taxes and forage for food in the wilderness, and you can even recruit them as followers. The mod allows you to recruit up to 200 of them, so you can build up a truly bustling little city using this mod.
There are plenty of other features, too. Your town will start when you build a couple of houses, and you can build an unlimited number of them by paying a cost in firewood or gold. Houses can then be upgraded into workshops, and you can fill them with furniture and decorations.
There’s even a new spell included in the latest version, a conjuration that lets you highlight a building or object to create a blueprint you can use to make duplicate structures.
You can also place up to eight fast travel markers in your town.
Head to Nexus Mods to download RTS for Skyrim. Be sure to check out our list of the best Skyrim mods for more ideas on how to change up the landmark RPG.