Total War: General discussion.

Are those people in the room with us right now?

Joking aside, the TW community overall seems to basically flip between two moods: Hype and rage, with next to nothing inbetween.

Honestly, I think that community has just developed severe trust issues at this point because CA's not got a long-standing pattern of shitting the bed and completely dumpstering consumer trust and then having to painfully rebuild that trust over years.

Nobody wants CA to be bad, but you can't blame people for not being quick to trust something is good again - it's basically a case of "Am I allowed to enjoy this or are you gonna shank me in the kidney again?"

I've seen enough comments to know that a significant portion of the community resents the very existence of Pharaoh and wants it and CA to fail.

And the melodrama is, as ever, unwarranted. If you don't like a game or DLC, don't buy it. It's existence isn't a personal insult toward you.

Edited by Resileafs on May 3rd 2024 at 10:01:13 AM

That goes both ways, people have no obligation to like or tolerate a game they don't think is worth the price or whose scope is too limited. There's nothing contradictory about people not buying a game and expressing their criticism.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on May 3rd 2024 at 7:38:19 AM

I cannot take criticism about scope seriously when one of the most highly rated games in the series is Shogun 2.

Pharaoh problem is not so much the map size as that combat looks pretty boring as there is not much troop variety or tactics.

The only troop variety it lacks is siege weapons, which didn't exist at the time. Otherwise there are axes, swords, spears, kopesh, maces (all with shields), two handed axes, maces or spears, archers, slingers, javelins, spear chariots, javelin chariots, archer chariots... And all of those can be in light, medium or heavy armor.

As far as tactics go, Pharaoh is a lot more in-depth than people give it credit for. Unit stances, more impactful terrain, dynamic weather (which further affects the terrain), more realistic fire. Probably more I'm forgetting.

The problem is that difference in weapons and armor don't make enough difference. Missle troops do not have enough impact as they cannot deal enough dmage before running out of ammo. And chariots unless they are really heavy ones are not that impactfull and require tons of babysitting. And battles in general are a bit of a slog (I know, some historical fans actually wanted slower battles but eh). Also, synamic weather is a cool idea but the problem is that 90% of the time it just hinders both sides equally and you simply avoid some weather conditions. You barely can use it for your advantage.

Mind you, I like Pharaoh in general (stopped playing because I have hard time managing food and I am busy playing other ghamesd and with work now) but a lot of people are justfully unsatisfied with it.

I will also say it had the misfortune of being released right after A Total War Saga: TROY, which is the same problem that Total War: Attila had in the long run, and I say this as someone who is interested in Pharaoh.

Yep, while Pharaoh had a bunch of new campaign features, all of the combat and a lot of mechanics are the same as in Troy. People already tasted it and did not want more of the same (even if in a different location and with nore campaign features). And Troy at least got Mythos.

I would argue that Pharaoh has no more the same mechanics as Troy has as any Total War has the same mechanics as the game that came before. It's an itterative series, each game always building on the previous one.

The point was not about campaign mechanics but about the fact that a lot of things (mainly combat) felt the same for a lot of people. And a lot of them already disliked them in Troy. They made a lot of work on their mistakes but some key things (once again, mainly battles) were not changed.

Edited by Nachtwandler on May 5th 2024 at 4:41:37 AM

Yes and No.

While it's true that the Total War series is iterative and there are shared mechanics that stick around between games, there are also supposed to be enough differences that would merit a game being a standalone experience instead of being the expansion of a previous one.

Take Fall of the Samurai for instance, while it does share the same base as Shogun 2, there are substantial shifts in gameplay such as mid-19th century gunpowder units like revolver cavalry or Armstrong cannons, naval bombardments or the adoption of trains for army movement that make it different enough to merit the full game price.

Likewise, Attila at release had many mechanics that were sorely lacking in Rome 2 at the time such as the family tree along with new ones such as the hordes/expedition armies, to say nothing of the look and feel of the period, which was done much better than in the older Barbarian Invasion expansion.

On the flip side, Thrones of Britannia ran into the issue of being called an Attila expansion way before Troy or Pharaoh were in development due to how many assets were shared between those two games.

Edited by raziel365 on May 5th 2024 at 9:42:18 AM

You could argue that Fot S is iterative of Napoleon (itself a game I can't say I hear anyone complaining about being a clone of Empire).

As far as To B goes, it is itself a game that I think today was underrated and wasn't given the chance it deserved, much like Pharaoh today.

That's because people instead call Napoleon "Empire, but done right".

I still remember how Empire was back in the day, and calling it a diamond in the rough is being generous with how messy and unfocused the game was as a whole even if it did have interesting concepts to it, and unlike Rome 2, it didn't get the redemption arc that made it into a good game, it was left with one expansion (the Warpath campaign) and then efforts went into making Napoleon the classic that is today.

(Side note, I also want to try out Thrones of Britannia proper at one point, if only to see if the criticism hold water or not.)

And look, I'm not saying this to crucify Pharaoh, I say this because CA has lost a lot of good will with the fans ever since the Rome 2 launch fiasco. Yes, there are haters who just want to see this franchise fail, but there are also people who have been left jaded with some of the choices made by CA, and that is going to colour their opinion of newer entries, not helped with how day one patches have become standard instead of delivering a polished game upfront.

Ironic considering that Pharaoh was one of the most polished Total Wars at release and had only very few issues that really needed fixing. From memory, I can only really think of chariots blocking each others' paths too much.

I mean, try to do too much different and you get the reaction to Three Kingdoms.

Issue with three Kingdoms was super dumb DLC policy. And also the first attempt to pander both historical and fantasy audience (which failed both here and in Troy). When they actually started doing it right, it was already to late.

As the person above your post said, it is not that Pharaoh is a bad game (they did a lot of things right). The problem is that a lot of people were burned both with Troy and with recent CA blunders and the Pharaon was not good enough to redeem these things. Now with updates it will be worth it's price at least and I wish the best to CA Sophia. But I doubt enough people will play it even after the next update. I will try to at least but I am not sure if it will last long consuidering I can play Warhammer or Medieval II instead.

Edited by Nachtwandler on May 6th 2024 at 1:48:30 AM

I was under the impression that Three Kingdoms was pretty positively-received aside from the complaints that support was dropped too fast (which I'm pretty neutral about, I like what we have in the game right now but still think bug fixes should have at least been in the project).

Troy itself is also very nice and the Epic deal to get it for free made it pretty damn successful for CA.

And yeah, sure, you can play whatever game you want. I'm not playing Pharaoh either but that's because I'm still on my project to complete a campaign with every faction of every game. I'll still support Pharaoh though. If the map expansion was sold instead of free, I'd have bought it on launch as well. Calling the game "not worth the price", especially when it was reduced, feels rather reductive as well.

Anyway, not that anyone cares, but finally completed the divine victory with the White Huns. I got into some pretty hefty battles at the end, as the Geats and Langobards took over most of western Europe and their high tier nordic armies basically have the best infantry in the game. I probably should have fought them with more horse archers, I fought them with mostly balanced armies. Spet Xyon archers in particular are extremely powerful both at range and in melee combat.

With the full campaign under my belt though, I am of the opinion that the penalties for hordes sticking together are too strong. For factions that are supposed to be great hordes descending on Europe with uncountable numbers, not being able to keep stacks together is too detrimental, especially since other factions can easily stack up and force you to bring multiple stacks together.

My next campaign will be as the Jutes, a viking tribe. Their strength is, unsurprisingly, melee units, with powerful warriors of every type. Compared to the other Scandinavian factions, they specialize in axes, possessing perhaps one of the strongest shock infantry in the game in Royal Huscarls. This leaves them quite lacking in both ranged and cavalry however, lacking even basic shock cavalry.

Did Three Kingdoms really the "in between" of fantasy and realistic? It's obvious to anyone with a brain that Romance Mode is going to be the more popular one, and they set the tone pretty close to the novel (or at least closer to how Red Cliff handles the battles and generals).

3K panders to the book audience, with the Records mode being like a bone thrown at the "realistic" audience. Any overlap with the Warhammer audience is incidental.

In case Troy, however, none of the modes is close to The Iliad. The Gods are passive stat buffs instead of actively intervening in the battlefield, making the default mode closer to the Troy than The Iliad. The "historical" mode needs no explanation. The Mythos mode is also wrong because the Trojan War itself is relatively low on monsters.

Edited by RAlexa21th on May 5th 2024 at 9:07:40 AM

I mean, one complaint I heard about TW 3 K was the lack of a Three Kingdoms bookmark. Which is both technically a valid complaint but would also be a rather static start because of the limitations of Total War (which doesn't really have much room for the political scheming that created the Jin Dynasty and set up the Eight Princes).

Honestly, CA needs to decide which way they're going with a game and stick with it instead of trying to please everyone. If a game is going to be historical TW, make it historical TW; if it's going to be the fantasy version, make it that. It works for TW: Warhammer.

It worked for all games prior to 3K. If they return family trees and mortal rules in Pharaoh I will be actually happy.

The "Three Kingdom era" is kinda weird in that the rivaling warlord period before it is more famous than the much-longer Shu-Han/Wei/Dongwu period. Two of the "Three Famous Battles" happened before the Liu Bei and Sun Quan declared themselves Emperors (with the Battle of Yiling set between Liu Bei's coronation and Sun Quan's coronation).

By the time Sun Quan became Emperor, a lot of famous characters have bitten the dust. Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Guo Jia, Zhou Yu, Lü Bu, Dong Zhuo, Yuan brothers... Heck, even Cao Cao himself, the guy people think of when they talk about the Wei Kingdom, was already dead by that time. It was Cao Pi who was the first Emperor of Wei.

When it comes to Pharoah for me the biggest issue was the lack of scope, the map wasn't small in a gameplay sense but in terms of actually covering a decent part of the world (or rather the region) it was far too limited. It's the same reason I never loved Shogun, I like Total War when it can fit multiple cultures and geographies into a single game. This will move Pharoah closer to the Rome 1/2 side of the spectrum and for that I'm quite happy.

I can't help but think that if 3K had a start date at the time where all three kingdoms were formally established, the campaign would basically be halfway over.

Precisely. And yet, people complained about it.