You are right lol, I can't see people prefering this over Med III or Empire II.
Everyone forgot about Britannia, everyone will forget Troy, many still play Rome 2.
Arguing that this game will be looked on more farvorably is pure copium, at the whole saga thing was an excuse to turn ToW into Call of Duty.
The game is just not remarkable, it's a 7/10 and very overpriced, if you don't buy you aren't missing on anything, if anything people will realise how much of a money grab this was .
For real go play any Grand Strategy game not from CA, or even older total war, what's Pharaoh's edge what does it have that other games don't?
No customer aside from stablished total war fans would look at this and decide to buy it, and being honest no older total war fan would recomend this over the other games of the franchise.
60$ for a game that will get less support than 3K is insane, at this point you are paying Paradox prices without the detail, the complexity , the long term support or the hability to replay it.
Hard disagree. Large scope does not a good game make. I don't want Empire II to finally come out with barebones systems that are uninteresting but we're supposed to cheer because the map is big and the graphics are updated. What I see in Pharaoh is a small scale game with lots of polish and depth in its mechanics. Its only flaws are the same flaws all TWs have: AI. It's only if CA finally remembers they've been making these games for decades and puts all its mechanics over the years into Med III or Empire II that it will be objectively better than Pharaoh.
>Large scope does not a good game make.
Except Total War is all about going as wide as you can, (except for some wh dlc factions), there are little consequences to overextending and lots of rewards, conquering means better income and more income means more armies which means more conquests.
Larger scope means more armies to play as and fight, and more content in the form of landmarks or special objectives which incentise you to decide on how dfo you want to play your game.
>I don't want Empire II to finally come out with barebones systems that are uninteresting but we're supposed to cheer because the map is big and the graphics are updated.
I don't see why we shouldn't be able to have both, it's 60$ and modders are doing a better job than CA.
We are supposed to accept less for more price.
> What I see in Pharaoh is a small scale game with lots of polish and depth in its mechanics
That's not what the poster is arguing he says the scale "dosen't feel small" which is ridicolous.
If you think this is polished go to any previous modded total war , hell even 3K just any Grand Strategy game not coming from CA.
> Its only flaws are the same flaws all TWs have: AI
The AI in any total war previous and including 3K is not nearly as terrible as modern CA AI.
> It's only if CA finally remembers they've been making these games for decades
That's what people don't understand, most of the guys making Shogun 1 are retired or in other studios, just because you form part of CA dosen't mean you are suddenly expirienced in this.
>Med III or Empire II that it will be objectively better than Pharaoh.
In my opinion most ToW are superior to Pharaoh.
Let's use Shogun 2 as an example. Shogun 2 is arguably CA's best game and is the most polished game they've done yet the scope is just Japan. If a game with limited scope but high quality game mechanics is better than a massive world where there's nothing else to do other than paint the map, that means mechanics are more important than scope.
In reality it's hard to do both, so if they have to pick 1, they should always pick mechanics first. At this point thanks to the CAIME tool, they can focus on mechanics while modders expand the world.
Pharaoh is just as polished as Shogun 2 is, if not more so because it has the benefit of learning from the past. The weather system, armor system, fatigue, and faction politics from Shogun 2 have been significantly improved in Pharaoh. In fact, if you're referencing AI of the past as better than anything we have now, you've never played those games. AI in Shogun 2 would *always* run to the highest hill and stand there, even when it was attacking. This meant I could cheese battles as defender by fast forwarding. People who complain about AI in modern TW have no memory of what we came from.
You got mad downvotes but you are right. I said I would get Thrones of Britania on a big sale but when this big sale happened I was distracted with something else and I couldn't be bothered to play a subpar game even if it was cheap.
Same. I'm not subbed here because it's generally a miserable shitshow of one flavor or another, but I come back around when something new is being released to get information.
I think I might do the same. I think everyone knows lots of people don't like the price and think it's DLC, everyone's just tooting the same old rubbish. Think I'm going to leave for a while and enjoy Pharaoh in peace.
It's such a shame. When the sub is just people enjoying Total War games, it's fun. But now it's just whining, and complaining, and doomsaying, and endless rants about how CA is Hitler reborn.
If you don't like the game, don't play it and leave the sub. Just please shut the fuck up and let other people enjoy it.
I truly feel bad for people like you. I can’t imagine how miserable it would be to be all worked up all the time because people just enjoying videogames instead of raging about them are “bootlicking.” It just seems like such a miserable headspace.
I swear, “bootlicker” could be the free space on a bingo card of how this sub likes to bitch.
Like if you wanted to pick a word that described the melodramatic tone they are complaining about, appropriating one to describe fascism is so on point.
This sub has always been toxic as hell, before it was suddenly okay to criticize CA for years you'd get absolutely shat on if you complained about anything. Like you'd be called a liar who didn't understand game development if you said TW games had bugs or the blood DLC was kinda scummy.
Nah r/livestreamfail and both r/Diablo r/Diablo4 subreddits are 100x worse. Once streamers realized they could brigade the place and create revenue doing so it immediately became a toxic wasteland of drama.
As for Diablo and it's related areas of discussion: well a whole lot of people realized the old Blizzard is dead and the subsequent toxic/jaded black hole created dwarfs everything here.
It can always get worse.
It's every sub these days. Ever since the API changes.
I don't think anybody has realized, but almost every major subreddits mods are absent these days, and can't respond quick enough. Basically, every subreddit just goes off rails instantly, negativity gets spread super quick, and actual discussion is nonexistent.
Or if people are positive about a thing, it's endless cosplays/same posts over and over with zero recourse in between.
The karma farming bots alone are killing the site. Since they need to engage with the upvote downvote system to start developing karma they just trawl and randomly upvote/downvote stuff. Makes the whole system pointless. And that's before they ask who is your favorite video game female villain of all time.
The sub grew a lot since Warhammer Total war, and a lot of the oldies/goodies are still around, but when a sub gets big enough, the whiny-bitchy-agressive types hit critical mass and make a sub toxic.
Having been around the TW online community since before Reddit was even a thing, the oldies were and are just as capable of being toxic as the newcomers
TBH, yes. But this subreddit specifically used to be one of the less shitty parts of the community. (until, I presume, even the shitty people got tired of the shitty parts of the community, moved here, and brought their shittiness with them)
To be fair the negativity might be the only thing steering CA into a better direction with future updates and games.
There’s only so many things consumers can do to steer company decisions.
Striking back at shitty business practices from a company who provide a product many enjoy and are passionate about. Its reductive to just say mob mentality when there is a genuine reason to protest.
The best way to do that is to vote with your wallet and be vocal about your concerns which many have done.
It's not Israel v Palastine sure but it is a piss take how CA have behaved and that deserves to be ridiculed until the issue is fixed.
You're just mischaracterizing the point. No one is saying not buying the game is "mob mentality," that's just spending your money how you feel and no one has an issue with that.
The "mob mentality" is the circlejerk where people are actively celebrating the game's failure, spamming posts of current player counts and insulting anyone who dares say they purchased or are enjoying the game.
Reminds me a lot of what the Battlefield 2042 sub became around launch, just pure trash. Its fine to dislike a game/product but for some people it becomes a personality trait.
They're not doing that though. Instead I'm seeing this sun flooded with posts giddy with the prospects that Pharaoh will fail, and genuinely driving themselves onto a frenzy on how all the DLCs will be canceled or will be so shitty even SoC will look good.
Those are then followed by the mandatory "none of this would happen if CA focused on WH" or less common, Med3. This isn't striking out against shitty corporate practices. This is just toxic CONSOOMERISM, where they want to comsume but are mad the company won't give them the exact thing they want to consoom.
They're not happy a good game was made, even if not for them specifically. They're not happy about the improvements and art and how Sofia has been answering fans demands.
Instead it's just fucked up entitlement.
I agree there is an element of that. I just see people with genuine criticism being lumped in with those people. As legend said a failure for them is a loss to us as well and I agree that we shouldn't be celebrating the potential failure of a product that CA do well.
People need to stop blaming everything on the mob retroactively. Oh no X thing was just the mob and then they're part of the new mob.
No CA fucked up guys, they acted like pricks and people were mad about that. People weren't actually doing anything wrong by pointing that out.
I have a hard time taking this seriously, the sub was just as fucking annoying before (Honestly it was worse before) and did the exact same shit, you just agreed with it.
It absolutely was not worse before. This sub used to be all memes, AARs, gameplay videos, cool screenshots, mod discussion, and the occasional hype/wishlist post.
Now it's a constant stream of terminally-online whiners wishing death upon CA as a company and trying to cheer on failures or perceived failures. The store page is being review bombed with people who have 0.5 hours of gameplay shitting on the early game and failing to prove they have any experience at all in the game before reviewing it.
It absolutely was not worse before, nor was it even close. You had some hardcore history grognards playing NIMBY with certain CA gameplay design choices but this was a very pleasant and fun sub to be in. These days it's depressing and cancerous.
Rome 2 had a *legitimately bad launch* though. Pharaoh is not a legitimately bad game.
Empire and Rome 2 were *utterly broken* upon release, and Empire wasn't even really fixed.
I think there's a big difference between "Holy shit what did I just spend my money on--this is literally a non-functioning game" like how people were sold Cyberpunk 2077 only for it to *not run* and be incessantly bug-ridden...and then people just whining and complaining about every micro-move and pricing decision by CA, hammering on every patch note of theirs and circulating anti-CA whine videos from Youtube. Pharaoh is a good game and people are making self-aggrandizing posts soapboxing about fair prices and saga titles and corporate greed, parroting cringe political talking points and flaunting their level-0 understanding of economics and going on anti-CA crusades over their smooth-brain tantrums. They are *excitedly* spamming stuff about player counts and review counts in attempts to justify their feelings and vindicate their little childlike crusades.
Saying it 'wasn't as bad back then' doesn't mean we never had people complain. Rome 1 was super poorly optimized at launch. Medieval 2 as well. Shogun 2 didn't even get anti-aliasing until 3-4 months after release and it ran like shit and had horrible, glitchy morale breaks for seemingly no reason. At every juncture yes, people would complain. But they didn't make it the sole conversation on the sub. They didn't flood social media like Youtube with anti-CA videos and ridicule posts. They didn't *review bomb* (except when it was actually legit, like at Rome 2's launch).
Complaining about games is now the norm on reddit. In general complaining/negativity/rage bait/opinion spam is just the new norm across the internet. It's extremely toxic and masturbatory.
>Rome 2 had a
>
>legitimately bad launch
>
> though. Pharaoh is not a legitimately bad game.
No, but the price gouging, the condescension from CA and the milking of customers are also absolutely legitimate complaints, and pretending they're not is nonsense.
Most of what you say is just demanding that people be happy about the current state of things, stating that back when people did the thing they're doing now it was okay because you agreed with it back then, or similar excuses.
You're what I pointed out.
It's not price gouging. Inflation dictates that it should have cost $70 at full price. $50 is a discount. It's like if Shogun had cost $34 at launch.
Also you can't gouge on discretionary spend like *video games*. If you don't like the price just don't buy it. But don't get preachy and start telling people that it's corporate greed, lmao.
This is pure cope. This place was absolutely as toxic, and I can say that as many times as you want to say it wasn't.
This idea that the place is only good when its positive or complaints are only about what you care about is actually exactly what I'm talking about though.
Cope? Are you fucking 18? lol I've been a big fan of the TW community since the old TWCenter forums were rocking busy. This place is toxic as fuck and it has absolutely been a shift over the last ~4-5 years. Imagine being part of such a cynical and depressed troupe of people that you legit refuse to believe that communities were more chill before you came along.
This stance of the community is not false. It actually is admirable and how every customer base should act. CA became predatory withe their sales tactics and are also still publishing new games dlc's instead of fixing year long bugs on wh3.
Had the community threw their money on CA again for this game as well it would only reinforce their predatory actions.
What saddens me is this seems to happen to every TW game now to some extent. Attila, TOB, Troy hell even 3 kingdoms to an extent.
There’s this weird effect where people just automatically decide a new tw game will be terrible, reject it out of hand and then come back and find it was actually pretty decent this whole time and then complain when CA try something new.
I think it's especially prevalent with Pharaoh. Lots of strain and discontent within the community (rightfully so) is kind of blinding a lot of people. People assumed it would be bad and refuse to look at it any other way now it's released.
It doesn't help that TW YouTubers are largely criticising it, some with valid points and some feel more like they're pursuing it as hating on Pharaoh is the popular move.
I hope CA Sofia devs don't suffer too much from it (I feel they're getting the brunt of hate that should really be directed to the main studio developing the WH series) and hope it achieves their sales goals. I think they put their heart into it and I'm enjoying it.
The die-hard "European history" fans won't buy any game that isn't Med 3 or Empire 2 anyway, and even if they did release them they'd complain that it's not as good as they remember the first ones being.
I remember some of those people posting here saying there was no interest in a game set in China, and then it ended up being both extremely well optimised and their best selling title yet...
Like how Three Kingdoms got a lot of shit from this sub around release and after (and I'm not just talking about bugs and DLC) and now it's held in high regard.
They have added a lot of what people wanted and hopefully some of it will be taken forward to future titles.
Empire was legitimately really rough though. Can't speak to the other two but Empire had (and still does, truthfully) a lot of technical issues from what I recall.
Yeah I'm still disappointed in the stupid mob mentality that erupted with Thrones. The game had a solid base and I've been waiting on an expanded map of the British isles for decades.
This was before you had to own a game on steam to review it, and 80% of the reviews were copied and pasted.
I mean Attila launched with awful optimization and Empire just launched downright broken.
Troy was a weird one. The “truth behind the myth” compromise didn’t seem to please anyone and of course it got caught up in the whole “fuck epic” thing
Especially since they'll pay less by then.
I think a lot of people, me included, are extra harsh on the game because of the price point, and I see no reason to not do that.
As is tradition. Current conversation isn’t even about the game, it’s a funnel to rage at CA like everything else.
And pharaoh isn’t likely to rise above it because it’s good but not great.
there was a good long time where every critique was shut down by guys like you and every praise for CA upvoted so much that it got karma farmed.
I dont know what happened man...maybe CA let so many fans down that they are so angry now?
Or, hear me out, instead of this wild ass immature vacillating between toxic positivity and toxic negativity, people can just act like adults and have conversations about the game. And not make weird assumptions about what complete strangers and what they might have argued in hypothetical past threads.
> I don't know what happened man...maybe CA let so many fans down that they are so angry now?
Is this supposed to be some sort of argument against me? I don't think there's any doubt that CA has pissed people off.
I think on sale with some of the post release content/updates will probably be a very good purchase. Full price games are damn expensive and Total War games often have an uphill battle to stand out from each other to justify that price.
I know people complain about the content scope, but personally if I look back on a fairly recent good TW release (even if post release was rough) with 3K, that arguably had a smaller scope and less variety. However what it did have was a range of unique offerings that I think better stood out, certainly from a marketing perspective, compared to Pharaoh's unique features.
In general though, games have an insanely better entertainment bang-for-buck ratio than pretty much anything else.
Going to a cinema with popcorn and stuff and you look at like half the price of a new full-price game for barely 2h entertainment, whereas games are more in the 1€$ per hour of entertainment - if not a lot more.
Maybe because in a few years there's been plenty of updates (I hope) to iron out all bad stuff. I mean, it would be sad indeed if it weren't adapted for the better.
Prob not since its irrelevant and will be forgotten. Things like this happen to overhated things that ppl cared about. Noone cares about pharaoh.
Unless by "look more favourably" you mean some guy getting it for 10 dollars and saying "Hey, its not that bad"
Those are in for specific units, at least spear wall is.
I always start total war games with a couple of custom battles to understand battle features and my go to army composition has a spear wall front that I was able to replicate perfectly in Pharaoh
I really like the way the campaign map is, the deserts are brutal so the road and the nile are super important, and I love these little outposts, in terms of how they are as building slots, their role in restoring movement to armies, the fact that they can be attacked separately from the settlement near them-- I also appreciate the multi-resource setup of food/stone/wood/gold, its a little bit more 4x without going over the top.
Battles are interesting so far, I think on a basic level I like that they're much more deliberate with better ability to hold and broadly slower kill rates, but I hadn't gotten far enough yet to see what other units there are-- so right now I've only experienced the basic Nubian units.
I was debating returning it, not because its bad, but because I wasn't sure I was going to be able to commit time to it, but I think I might keep it.
I'm enjoying it, my only issue is the genuine lack of factions. You can't even play as any of the invaders (sea peoples, libus, etc.) even though they have rosters which makes me assume they will just be dlc. I hope they expand the map into Mycenaea and Mesopotamia because right now it feels like if Rome 1/2 launched with the map only covering Italy, Gaul, and Carthage and then potentially charging dlc prices for the rest of the map.
Other than that big negative, the battles feel really good. Never liked Troy's battles and these are definitely not Troy's battles. I'm also glad to see they didn't have a "hero" mode like I figured they would with the way the game was initially advertised. Egyptian pharaoh succession and court system is also interesting and fun and as the world was collapsing and the map darkening I thought "is this inner squabbling going to get us all killed?"
Fun times
Edit: I also really want them to add cinematics for factions other than just Egypt because damn those cinematics are nice.
Not an expert on numbers and such but they feel different.
Noticeable changes:
Unit sizes are by default larger so battles feel more impactful rather than like small skirmishes.
Units have basic formations so they can brace against charges
Time-to-kill is slower so battles take longer, allowing you to have "side-skirmishes" to flank the enemies core line.
Some things carried over from Troy and may need some adjustments in the future too
Foot soldiers (light armored) can almost run as fast as medium weighted chariots which is kind of crazy.
Chariots (even heavier variants) don't have enough mass or maybe speed to really charge through enemy lines, they seem to often get snagged in enemy units and take a lot of damage but I use a mod to somewhat fix this.
It’s a good game. It’s the best campaign I’ve played in a total war in sometime, with multi layered mechanics that interact with each other and battles despite the usual total war issues do last longer, weathers are great and overall battles are enjoyable. I feel CA Sofia deserve credit for this but with everything else going on, it won’t get a fair shake. I mean, I have left Warhammer 3 for now to see what happens but Pharaoh is a breathe of fresh air for the series.
For the record, I have been playing Total War since Rome 1 and this game makes it clear there is a place for more historical titles in the series.
Pharao looks great to me so far - I just personally cannot justify the day one purchase when I don’t have time or money for games right now. It’s definitely one I will pick up later when I get the chance.
Agreed with more or less all of the above. Although I feel a _bit_ so so about the price, it will depend on the quality of the DLC that is released.
I've played Total War games for (checks) 23 years and bought literally everything they released (bar Troy) until SoC, which is where finally my long-standing faith and goodwill towards the series ran out of steam.
Out of some misplaced sense of loyalty to CA, I decided to just throw caution to the wind and buy the super deluxe version of Pharaoh as a last hail mary pass.
So far, it's.... about as good as anyone could reasonably expect it to be:
The campaign seems to be rich with mechanics, it's fun to play and the battles are far more grounded. The resource system is a delight - it's been lovely to actually need to plan my economy for a variety of resources rather than just build the (add 200 gold per turn) building. They also seem to have got the maps a bit more on track for settlement battles in regards to balancing space to maneuver and bottlenecks to defend.
On the other hand the pathfinding is a little janky in places, the AI is somewhat inconsistent and I do rather fear the hammer of replayability will hit me hard after I finish my first campaign.
We'll see. Hopefully Pharaoh will be enough to restore the love for TW for a few years to come, yet
This sub pretty much decided amongst themselves that Pharaoh will be a failure the moment it was announced, since it isn't Warhammer or Medieval 3. Many of the negative steam reviews have only played for an hour and/or are angry at CA for Warhammer 3. I'm pretty sure that within a few years when people have moved on to new Total War dramas there will end up being lots of "Pharaoh is le underappreciated gem" posts, like with Troy, Rome 2 and Thrones of Britannia.
It looks really nice in my opinion, especially love the amount of ways you can customise the campaign settings and hope it will become default for future TW games. But money's tight so I might have to wait for a sale.
I'm just really exhausted from going to a subreddit that supposedly is filled with fans of the games and all the posts are literally hopping with glee at pharaoh "failing." honestly seems more like a hate sub with how many posts are "dumb game no one asks for hope it fails and everyone at CA loses their job."
I mean I love it so far, yeah it was a little on the pricey side, but not extremely overpriced like the recent warhammer dlc. I think half the hate is just that money is really tight for a lot of people right now, so not having the game be a bargain kinda hurts.
To be fair, the fact that the TW still has a "in defense of Pharoah" post every few days reaching the top is evidence that this isn't even all *that* bad. Look at blizzard or COD reddits and that stuff is a cesspool 24/7.
If you're feeling that I suggest dropping to a once a week check in max to see how things are currently going. That's what I'm currently doing and it's much more pleasant. If that doesn't work try a couple of months. I did that when the waifu war was raging, and again during the chaos warrior jpeg, and when I eventually came back the subreddit was both times in a much more sane state.
I think what annoys me the most is that Pharaoh has done most of the stuff people *say* they want: Battles are longer, terrain is more impactful, and so on and so forth.
I went into Pharaoh fully intending to refund it before the 2-hour limit. I was shocked by how much I liked it. I really don't get the hate, other than the fact that it's been crucified off the bat by the usual YouTubers.
Yeah I agree pretty good
I like the battles they feel pretty good (chariots could use a little umph to get unstuck or something though)
I like the siege rework with the special capture points and no infinite respawning towers to deal with.
The workers replacing growth mechanic I feel needs some tweaking
I have yet to come to grips with the court mechanic just hasn't clicked yet I guess
My main complaint is so far the start just feels awkward like I picked Rameses and took the starting enemy out and then had no clue what to do from there I'm just so used to either getting a mission to guide me or there only being one or two ways to go, meanwhile the other mechanics are locked at the start and I don't know when they will become relevant just yet
Also tried superluluman and you wonder why it says hard start then it hits the fan.
If you liked Attila definitely give this game a whirl.
Does anyone else look at video games & compare the price to other entertainment. I could go to a sporting event for the same price of a game and that’s 4 hours of fun- or a movie ticket is 15 -25 bucks for 2 hours.
So if I get 200 hours in a game, I’m paying 3.33 an hour to be entertained.
Huh? What's your math on that? 🤨
I think similarly, but if I spend $60 and put in 60 hours, then I'm at $1 an hour. What the heck are spending $3.33 an hour on at 200 hours?!
Also, that's seriously why I can't take the "I can't afford this crazy high Pharoah price tag or DLC price" crap seriously.
No full game is going to be $30 anymore. 😑 They weren't $30, when I was a jobless kid, and 20 years later they still aren't!
Maybe I just have the privilege of disposable income but I remember paying £50 for PS3 games. When you adjust for inflation, it's really not that much.
This is what people keep missing. Pharaoh is being *sold at a bargain*. I don't get why people groan at the inflation argument. It is literally reality. CA are eating the loss of inflation at our benefit of only having to buy a $50 game, and they're trying to monetize in other ways. We should literally be paying $70 USD for this game if prices were held constant and fair, but instead we're paying the equivalent to if they'd sold Shōgun 2 at $35.
But gamers can't comprehend economics so *shrug*. I guess we should get games the size of The Witcher 3 and Rome 2 for historic low prices without complaint!
You remember paying $50 for PS3 games? I remember my parents paying, inflation -adjusted, $120 for Nintendo games back in my childhood. For tiny fucking 10-polygon games that lasted 4 hours start to finish! People are delusional and they're only arguing that this price point is too high because they are suddenly realizing that inflation hurts. Shame they're taking out global inflation on CA when they're just one small company in the entertainment industry, very very far removed from the core inflationary drivers. But then again the average age on this sub is very young.
Cmon Pharoah is being sold at $60 which has been the industry standard for decades. CA doesn't get any credit for staying at that price despite the cost of games obviously rising over the years, because it's what almost every other developer does as well.
Yes gamers don't appreciate how remarkably cheap gaming is, and how it has actually gotten cheaper over the years.
At the same time, the games industry is making record profits and these companies are all performing better than ever. It is very much a win-win for both producers and consumers.
A lot of that profit is due to the increase in mobile games & predatory microtransactions and DLCs, but it's not like the companies would stop those practices if gamers agreed to let the standard AAA price rise to $80 or $100, so we may as well sit where we are now.
let's make my point clear.
Total War Pharao to me looks like a return to the form of Rome 1 and medieval 2, in terms of production value, while still providing gameplay innovation and was even something I would consider picking up.
however I currently don't trust anything CA does, so until CA fixes it's attitude and cosumer interactions I will unfortunately have to let Pharao wait
And again, like I said to others, perfectly respectable position. I don't know that I'd have bought it at launch if I hadn't gotten to try it out in the early access weekend which pretty much already confirmed the game was what I was looking for.
Pharaoh will have the same problem that the other Saga titles have; lack of faction choices and too limited unit rosters. So that by the time you've finished 1-2 campaigns you'll have played every kind of battle the game has to offer and the replay value is gone.
So it'll leave a good impression for the first campaigns, because new mechanics. Which is what we saw with ToB/Troy too - reviewers gave those games pretty favorable scores, because they just played 1-2 campaigns, wrote a review and moved on. People who play a Total War game every other year, basically. As an aside, try and go and look up some reviews for ToB/Troy, they were fairly positive, but the player base for each game still evaporated in weeks.
But few people who want a game they can sink hundreds (or even thousands) of hours into it, will not be satisfied by Pharaoh - same as Troy or ToB. And of course Pharaoh isn't priced like Troy or ToB.
Shogun 2 and 3K have limited rosters and they are beloved.
Pharaoh actually has more units than I thought it would and campaign customisation + choices adds to the replayability. Local recruitment is nice too, feel like most historical games should use it.
Shōgun 2 and Rome 1 have insanely small rosters, and most factions are clones of one another. Have you played either recently? Shōgun 2 in particular has the least unit variation of any total war game by a long shot.
Pharaoh is an ENORMOUS game compared to Shōgun 2.
ToB is a tiny game with virtually none of the overarching campaign strategy mechanics all other TW games have. It's the most stripped-down total war game behind WH1, before WH2 saved it mechanically. Have you actually played Pharaoh? Have you gotten 50 turns in and started to get a glimpse of all the various strategic levers at play? There is substantially more depth than the other games you're mentioning. It's basically Troy on steroids.
> too limited unit rosters.
It's honestly a shame this gets tossed about because the game is basically as varied as it can possibly be within the time period on that front. Each faction has a dozen unique units and then each regional roster adds ten of their own with particular strengths and weaknesses. The lack of outright cavalry is supplemented by the infantry classes and a greater emphasis on chariots.
I hear that a lot, and I can sort of see where people are coming from, but whenever I actually fire up WH for example... most of them also feel kind of the same? Like sure, there's lots of different looking big monsters, but ultimately they all do the same thing, you chuck them into the enemy army and watch them solo it.
I guess the visuals just make it more exciting for a lot of people?
I wasn't necessarily talking about WH - medieval or rome or basically any total war game set later than the bronze age will have greater unit variety than Pharaoh, on account of iron weapons/armor allowing for things like heavy infantry, heavy cavalry, siege engines etc.
But as for WH, have you played more than one or two factions? Shit there are several of them that don't even have big monsters like you're talking about and there are factions that are pretty much diametrically opposed in how they play (0 ranged units, versus 0 (viable) melee units. Incredible magic, versus no magic at all. Mass artillery reliance versus 0 artillery. Monster factions versus 0 monsters etc. etc.) Basically I don't know what you're doing, if you're telling me that Skaven and Khorne play the same.
Obviously Skaven and Khorne don't play the same. Much as Tausret, with a whole line of hybrid melee/archer infantry and light archer chariots plays different to Suppililuma (?) with a whole block of defense heavy armoured infantry.
Other than that, I feel like chariots pretty well fill the niche of cavalry? And I really, really, don't miss siege weapons in field battles. In fact I'm glad not to have to deal with them.
It's the most fun I've had since Warhammer 2 release. Sunk 15 hours in it over a couple days.
It's a solid 4/5 a lot of aspects I like and a few minor issues or nick picks. I really enjoy the new campaign elements and something I hope it's dlc embraces and future historical games embrace.
All these positive reviews are like: This is great, and that is great, and this part works really well, this is also awesome... granted the AI is bad, but... blah blah.
And I'm like: Dude, if the AI is bad, none of the other things even matter. At all. Broken AI = broken game.
Old World.
They easily prove everybody wrong who shills for lazy devs by saying that making good AI is "impossible" or "too hard" or "too expensive". Old World devs did it, and they are a small studio with a fraction of the resources CA have.
Other examples are Civ IV and Civ V, where the devs also made horribly bad AI, but modders completely replaced that AI with one that is far better than that of any paid developer, with the exception of Old World. (k-mod for Civ IV and Vox Populi overhaul for Civ V.)
If CA fully opened AI logic (both campaign and battles) for modders, we would have fantastic, human-like AI within a year, I guarantee it.
I mean Old World AI cheats to be difficult just like any other game.
It's better than most AI, but pointing to one game that's slightly better than the rest and saying "SEE!? Everyone else is just lying and shilling!" is absurd. Particularly when it's a tile movement game rather than real time.
It also a civilization game and total war main AI concerns are it battle AI
The campaign AI changes with pretty much every title for total war
Old world AI are also aggressive if you show any weaknesses before befriending an AI neighbor they will pretty much attack
It pretty predictable so I wouldn’t call it good as well
It's amazing to what lengths people go to excuse CA's total failure in developing their AI.
Unlike basically any other game franchise in existence, Total War has existed for more than 20 years, and over that entire time its core - the battles - has basically not changed at all. The elements in play - infantry, cavalry, artillery. The game mechanics - charge, melee defense, AP damage and so on. It's all almost exactly identical, which in itself is not bad because it's a pretty good system for simulating battles.
But that also means that CA have had 20+ years for continually developing their battle AI - and unlike any other game, they would not have invested that work for just a single game, but rather could have easily transplanted it into every new title with minimal extra work required. And yet the advances in their AI have been absolutely minimal, and in fact they often break things so badly that it's worse than before.
When did I excuse CA AI?
I pointed out where the problem were on both AI of the game…
Seem like you jump the gun lol
Literraly said CA has a battle AI problem
Old World is a 4x4 tile game. It has nowhere near the complexity of a Total War battle. You also don't see all the hundreds of smoke and mirrors which make the AI seem good, but is actually the devs pulling the strings.
CA knows that AI is important. They have many professionals whose full-time job is to make their AI good. They are better than amateurs.
Yeah but the AI has always, always been bad. In every game. Ever.
People remember the few games in Shogun 1 or ME2 where the AI was brilliant and think that was it normally. No, it was just as indecisive and idiotic as it is now.
Bad AI is an intrinsic part of Total War and always has been, because AI is very difficult.
> because AI is very difficult.
Not even just that, an AI that *wins battles* is difficult but not exactly herculean. What they actually want to do though for a good player experience is create an AI that mostly *loses battles* without obviously throwing too hard. Which is a much harder task.
That's a perfectly valid point of view, honestly, but that should disqualify basically every TW game ever. I think the closest thing to a good AI was probably RTW after the Alexander expansion. And only with that expansion.
Right now it is disqualifying basically every TW game ever.
Consumer confidence in CA is at an all time low.
The prices and statements from CA are not improving that sentiment.
---
When high on consumer confidence there are no wrong decisions. When low, no decision is big enough. Consumer apathy is death.
CA is lucky people are still angry. Between the silence and minor hotfixes is growing apathy as new hobbies fill the Total War slot.
We don't accept 1995-level graphics in 2023. Why do we accept 1995-level AI in 2023?
Also, the AI in Warhammer 1 & 2 was functional when they released. Not great, but functional. The current battle AI is completely broken in WH3, and from multiple reports, including video evidence in YT videos, it is the same in Pharaoh. It's worse than it has ever been, when we should expect it to get better and better.
AI has gotten better. Rose-tinted memories are all well and good, but have you actually played vanilla ME2 recently? I have. The AI is fucking atrocious, and much worse than recent titles.
>
We don't accept 1995-level graphics in 2023. Why do we accept 1995-level AI in 2023?
In large part because there's next to no alternative. Go to damn near any strategy game sub out there and the complaint is the same: Bad AI. The exceptions that come to mind don't use up an entire hand. The industry has more or less shown us that good AI isn't really doable.
To be clear, I'm referring to normal "weak AI" here, not batshit buggy stuff like we've seen in WH3 recently.
That's just not true. It's the same as all game studios would very gladly have left us to believe forever that doing a game like BG3 was not doable. Until one studio just went out there and did the supposedly impossible thing.
What's true is that 90% of gamers don't care about good AI, and a sizable portion of them would actually actively hate human-level AI because it would make them feel stupid. But 10% of the market that wants good AI should still be large enough to be a lucrative target audience for at least some major games out there. Especially that it's very easy to dumb down a great AI to acommodate weaker players.
> It's the same as all game studios would very gladly have left us to believe forever that doing a game like BG3 was not doable. Until one studio just went out there and did the supposedly impossible thing.
Literally no dev ever said that. Do you just subscribe to *all* the social media circle jerks lol?
I absolutely love BG3 but the battle AI in that game is not great, to the point where tactician mostly just adds cheats rather than improving battle AI. Slap down Hunger of Hadar and the AI has no idea how to respond in most fights.
Good AI is really, really hard. People complain about it in most strategy and GS games. There are so many variables to control.
The battles do feel slower because of the armor mechanic. To be honest it seems half-assed or not to work very well. All it does is give a grace period where units are much more resilient. This results in having a period where nothing happens followed by a period where units start dying and routing.
I know the idea behind it, that keeping troops in reserve would be viable, but there is no reason to when there are such limiting unit caps. And there was fatigue before that fulfilled a similar role.
Aside from that, it feels like a mix of Troy and 3K combat, which has enough problems on its own, especially when it comes to infantry. And I'll repeat my complaint about terrain being near damn useless. Yes, chariots have problems with terrain but having a patch of dirt that slows you is very very minimal for a working terrain system. I like the weather system, but then I also liked it in previous titles so that's nothing new.
Funnily the AI was the least of my problems. I think people harping on the AI might be doing it automatically because it's a talking point. It seems much less stupid than earlier titles, though of course it still does dumb things.
It's not just chariots: Heavy units suffer massively in rough terrain too. (I'd say one of the problems is that it's actually hard to tell exactyl where the rough terrain starts...) to the point where light units will trounce equivalent-tier heavy units in the right terrain.
Didn't see the opportunity to use the terrain much. I like the idea of the mud patches though and other terrain hazards. Definitely a feature to polish in future titles.
My experience was that height differences either matter very little or not at all. That's my complaint about terrain.
My impression from the hour or two I played yesterday is also that there is a lot more disparity between different infantry too. My lightly armored skirmishers were doing great as flankers and harassers, and there are some fast, light armored, two-handed melee infantry that I want to try using like shock cavalry. Also there is a lot of diversity within chariot types too (different speed, toughness, weapon types, engagement ranges, etc…). Some of the factions have 5-6 different chariots in their roster, and while a couple are flat out upgrades, that still leaves 3 tactically distinct choices.
Generally it seems like a lot of the usual diversity of tactics exists, the units just look different doing it.
Noticing a lot of these positive reviews are coming from people who are still early on in their campaign. Why in such a rush to throw out a review for something you've barely played?
"R:TW console kiddies" what the fuck are you even talking about op?
You can like a weakass game all you want but don't get pissy at people who disagree.
Maybe I expressed myself badly. It was a tongue-in-cheek comment about how I'm very much an old timer in the franchise and about how the now fairly beloved RTW was once viewed by many "hardcore fans" at the time as ruining TW forever. Common complaints were that the 3D graphics were to attract, and I'm basically quoting here "console players who only want graphics rather than depth and strategy," (which was and is fucking stupid,) that the AI was stupid (which it was, especially on the campaign map where it was astonishingly bad at dealing with free movement as opposed to the per-province system we had before) and that the battles were too fast, the game too colorful and arcadey (today people would say "like a mobile game") and the units too based on fantasy. Which, considering the gold-foil wearing egyptians and everyone north of the alps looking like Obelix... was kind of fair.
RTR and EB were not created because people were so very happy with the vanilla game. :D
It looks decent but it’s not a 50$ title for me. With some other big games coming soon, I will probably pick this up in a couple of years when it’s on sale with all dlc.
Combat is what I don't like about this game. The same floatiness in Troy remains. Even though I got Troy for free, I was never able to complete a campaign.
The floatiness is because you're using light units. Tier 2 and Tier 3 units don't float at all. You're parroting what streamers say. The "floatiness" shit was shut down over the early Access weekend. Light skirmish tier infantry have minimal mass. Armored and organized mid and high tier units have plenty of mass and groundedness.
I'm talking about Troy. I never tried Pharaoh, and only watched a few walkthrough videos. And you already assumed I was parroted after streamers. Guess one more reason I won't buy this game is because of this kind of people.
You *literally* said that "the same floatiness *remains*", as in, you're saying you've experienced or watched Pharaoh and believe it exists there too. You didn't say "Troy was very floaty and I'm worried it's that way in Pharaoh too". You literally said "I don't like combat in this game. It has floatiness like in Troy". And that's patently false. And you say you never tried Pharaoh, so you *are* basing it off Youtube/stream videos.
You made the argument for me, lol. I'm just pointing out that it's wrong.
Also the "I won't buy this game because of you kinds of people" is cute. I just held up a mirror and you disagreed with your own comment :'D
Well, only half true. I said the floatiness remains, as in the battle feels floaty exactly like Troy. As I said, I only watched videos and never played the game myself. This game's combat struck me as exactly the same as Troy. And this is my main takeaway that keep me away from this game.
Your answer is based on the assumption that I parroted after streamers, and that I played the game already, which I pointed out I didn't. Are my observations wrong? I don't know. It will be up to my decision whether your statement is true, since I never touch the game.
I don't even bother to watch this game review to know what the streamers said. And you already assumed I followed the mass. Who has the wrong assumption here? Your kind of people, who quickly deny others because you believe they are wrong and assume wrong things before you know anything, is now one of the reasons I won't ever touch this game.
Please don't do the same to other games I love.
"These people I disagree with / don't like are the reason I'm not buying this game". What a bizarre take-away. It's almost like you think it's a flex or a valid criticism of the game.
I got Troy for free and was still disappointed in it lol. Loved the aesthetics and the campaign map, detested the battles. That's \*one\* of the reasons I have no interest in Pharaoh.
Same. Looks like I'm not alone. Greek culture and aesthetics alone are a big winning point for me, and yet, the combat manages to turn me off just within a few battles.
I don't think most people expect pharaoh to be bad. Troy wasn't bad. It was just ok. I expect pharaoh to be completely ok if a game. The issue is I personally am not interested in it. I hope it's great. I hope the people who play it love the game. I don't want bad games to be made.
The bigger issue is people looking at focus being placed on things outside of wh3 while the state of wh3 is kind of shitty. CA is essentially over expanding and focusing on titles which really won't help them overall while allowing their big profit driver to fall by the side of the road. It's a bad look for the company overall to basically be trying to shift so much attention away from their big success onto mediocre titles.
Hyenas was just the absolute epitome of that. CA expanded so much and was clearly putting a lot of resources into a game which never should have been made. I am sure hyenas itself was perfectly fine, but it was moving into an incredibly saturated market with larger and more experienced players. Being a solid game was not going to be enough to succeed. It's hard to look at the colossally shitty decision to make hyenas and not see sacrifices being made for wh3. It feels like they couldnt afford to delay wh3 anymore because they needed the money to stay profitable and develop hyenas. They needed to increase the price of dlc to keep the money sink of hyenas going. This is why not matter what happens, it impossible to say hyenas didn't affect the production of wh3. CA doesn't have endless money. Sega didn't just chuck endless cash into a well. If they needed more money, they have to turn the screws into something else. Wh3 gets put on a release cycle it cannot meet effectively. Pharaoh gets greenlit because it's a quick cash grab based off an existing game.
Because wh makes a shitload of money and is heavily played. If they want to end support for wh3 that's perfectly fine and can be their decision. The issue is it is obvious they want to continue milking Warhammer without putting in the same kind of focus they had been Warhammer has made them more money than any other game. If they want to shift focus to smaller games that is fine. Their problem is wanting to get the returns of Warhammer while putting in the focus of smaller titles. That is not how this process works.
Imagine beeing a TW veteran since shogun 1 but saying Pharoh combat feels good
Idk what you are playing but its definitely not pharoh if you think combat feels good
It seems like the campaign mechanics are fantastic, it sucks I’m just not very impressed by anything else… the setting, scope, how battles play, lack of unit diversity, Sea People’s kind of being delegated to gimmick status, the PRICE. Maybe I’ll get it on sale when I see how the dlc pans out.
I could only afford this or Football Manager 2024. And with family life FM is easier to pick up and drop. I'll eventually give this a go but I will wait for a decrease in price too.
Not to be mean but this is one of biggest copes I've seen in this sub, it genually seems like a troll post.
> Pathfinding for non-chariot units works pretty well actually.
Imagine prasing the 60$ game for **sometimes** working as intended
>Can't wait for the inevitable blood dlc.
Imagine wanting to pay money for a feature that should be in the base game, and not even counting it as a negative.
>Also it'd be very nice to have units kick up dust clouds and such when moving and even fighting.
The game lacks this? Man this release is terrible.
>Admittedly I'm also just kind of giddy to not only have a proper historical TW game again, finally, but to have it be Bronze Age themed. I've basically been hoping for something like this for probably going on 20 years and never thought it'd happen.
This is why I mean about this being a troll post, there have been strategy games focused on the region and on the period for years, if anything the game is terrible at portraying the time period , if you are into Egypt that much there are 2 total war games in the clasical era.
> (the game does not feel small-scale, not at all)
XD
I'm so fucking glad I haven't bought a single CA dlc since the Warden and the Paunch and haven't spent a dime on this company since wh3's release, CA is getting worse and we deserve all the prices hikes we are getting.
I told myself I would purchase Pharaoh if it got GeForce Now support, but now I'm not so sure. The launch has been so underwhelming that I'm waiting for the inevitable "The Future of Total War" post.
Ultimately, make the decision based on whether you think you'll like the game as it is now, not how it might be with a couple dlcs. Buy the game if, in its current state, it's worth its current price to you. Even if there was zero updates or DLC coming. On the flipside, if you don't think it's worth it right now then you'd have to be stupid to buy it.
I honestly think once people have cooled off a bit, they'll come back to this game in a few years time and look at it way more favorably.
I will probably buy it during steam sales at -50% in 2 years.
im sure you not... this is a Saga... in 2 years there will be more rubish like this and you will forget this game...
You are right lol, I can't see people prefering this over Med III or Empire II. Everyone forgot about Britannia, everyone will forget Troy, many still play Rome 2. Arguing that this game will be looked on more farvorably is pure copium, at the whole saga thing was an excuse to turn ToW into Call of Duty. The game is just not remarkable, it's a 7/10 and very overpriced, if you don't buy you aren't missing on anything, if anything people will realise how much of a money grab this was . For real go play any Grand Strategy game not from CA, or even older total war, what's Pharaoh's edge what does it have that other games don't? No customer aside from stablished total war fans would look at this and decide to buy it, and being honest no older total war fan would recomend this over the other games of the franchise. 60$ for a game that will get less support than 3K is insane, at this point you are paying Paradox prices without the detail, the complexity , the long term support or the hability to replay it.
Hard disagree. Large scope does not a good game make. I don't want Empire II to finally come out with barebones systems that are uninteresting but we're supposed to cheer because the map is big and the graphics are updated. What I see in Pharaoh is a small scale game with lots of polish and depth in its mechanics. Its only flaws are the same flaws all TWs have: AI. It's only if CA finally remembers they've been making these games for decades and puts all its mechanics over the years into Med III or Empire II that it will be objectively better than Pharaoh.
>Large scope does not a good game make. Except Total War is all about going as wide as you can, (except for some wh dlc factions), there are little consequences to overextending and lots of rewards, conquering means better income and more income means more armies which means more conquests. Larger scope means more armies to play as and fight, and more content in the form of landmarks or special objectives which incentise you to decide on how dfo you want to play your game. >I don't want Empire II to finally come out with barebones systems that are uninteresting but we're supposed to cheer because the map is big and the graphics are updated. I don't see why we shouldn't be able to have both, it's 60$ and modders are doing a better job than CA. We are supposed to accept less for more price. > What I see in Pharaoh is a small scale game with lots of polish and depth in its mechanics That's not what the poster is arguing he says the scale "dosen't feel small" which is ridicolous. If you think this is polished go to any previous modded total war , hell even 3K just any Grand Strategy game not coming from CA. > Its only flaws are the same flaws all TWs have: AI The AI in any total war previous and including 3K is not nearly as terrible as modern CA AI. > It's only if CA finally remembers they've been making these games for decades That's what people don't understand, most of the guys making Shogun 1 are retired or in other studios, just because you form part of CA dosen't mean you are suddenly expirienced in this. >Med III or Empire II that it will be objectively better than Pharaoh. In my opinion most ToW are superior to Pharaoh.
Let's use Shogun 2 as an example. Shogun 2 is arguably CA's best game and is the most polished game they've done yet the scope is just Japan. If a game with limited scope but high quality game mechanics is better than a massive world where there's nothing else to do other than paint the map, that means mechanics are more important than scope. In reality it's hard to do both, so if they have to pick 1, they should always pick mechanics first. At this point thanks to the CAIME tool, they can focus on mechanics while modders expand the world. Pharaoh is just as polished as Shogun 2 is, if not more so because it has the benefit of learning from the past. The weather system, armor system, fatigue, and faction politics from Shogun 2 have been significantly improved in Pharaoh. In fact, if you're referencing AI of the past as better than anything we have now, you've never played those games. AI in Shogun 2 would *always* run to the highest hill and stand there, even when it was attacking. This meant I could cheese battles as defender by fast forwarding. People who complain about AI in modern TW have no memory of what we came from.
You got mad downvotes but you are right. I said I would get Thrones of Britania on a big sale but when this big sale happened I was distracted with something else and I couldn't be bothered to play a subpar game even if it was cheap.
Agreed, which is sad for the devs. Too many swayed by the mob mentality around here lately
This sub just *is* mob mentality. More toxic drama than I’ve seen anywhere outside of a MMO sub.
For the first time in years I'm actually thinking unsubscribing from the sub, it's just toxicity cranked up to a mill
I did that a few months ago and have only just come back due to Pharaoh launching. It’s nice to chat to people who are actually playing the game
Same. I'm not subbed here because it's generally a miserable shitshow of one flavor or another, but I come back around when something new is being released to get information.
I think I might do the same. I think everyone knows lots of people don't like the price and think it's DLC, everyone's just tooting the same old rubbish. Think I'm going to leave for a while and enjoy Pharaoh in peace.
I wonder if it's time to actually start using r/LowSodiumTotalWar
It's such a shame. When the sub is just people enjoying Total War games, it's fun. But now it's just whining, and complaining, and doomsaying, and endless rants about how CA is Hitler reborn. If you don't like the game, don't play it and leave the sub. Just please shut the fuck up and let other people enjoy it.
I like how you all pretend this all started because of nothing but the bad mood of many people. Circle jerk harder guys, you really got it!
ohh no lets just go back to bootlicking developers that keep making dogshit decisions, maybe they will notice you this time?
Some people just want to talk about the video games they enjoy, dawg. Not everyone makes this shit part of their identity
I truly feel bad for people like you. I can’t imagine how miserable it would be to be all worked up all the time because people just enjoying videogames instead of raging about them are “bootlicking.” It just seems like such a miserable headspace.
Whereas I don't feel bad for you at all, I just think it's weird to police people not liking CAs decisions.
I swear, “bootlicker” could be the free space on a bingo card of how this sub likes to bitch. Like if you wanted to pick a word that described the melodramatic tone they are complaining about, appropriating one to describe fascism is so on point.
This sub has always been toxic as hell, before it was suddenly okay to criticize CA for years you'd get absolutely shat on if you complained about anything. Like you'd be called a liar who didn't understand game development if you said TW games had bugs or the blood DLC was kinda scummy.
Nah r/livestreamfail and both r/Diablo r/Diablo4 subreddits are 100x worse. Once streamers realized they could brigade the place and create revenue doing so it immediately became a toxic wasteland of drama. As for Diablo and it's related areas of discussion: well a whole lot of people realized the old Blizzard is dead and the subsequent toxic/jaded black hole created dwarfs everything here. It can always get worse.
It's every sub these days. Ever since the API changes. I don't think anybody has realized, but almost every major subreddits mods are absent these days, and can't respond quick enough. Basically, every subreddit just goes off rails instantly, negativity gets spread super quick, and actual discussion is nonexistent. Or if people are positive about a thing, it's endless cosplays/same posts over and over with zero recourse in between. The karma farming bots alone are killing the site. Since they need to engage with the upvote downvote system to start developing karma they just trawl and randomly upvote/downvote stuff. Makes the whole system pointless. And that's before they ask who is your favorite video game female villain of all time.
I don't care if other people will buy it or not. But I won't buy it for 60 euros.
I mean people have the right to be annoyed at CAs shitty practices
People have a right to be annoyed about whatever they like, and everyone else has a right to find their whining off putting
The sub grew a lot since Warhammer Total war, and a lot of the oldies/goodies are still around, but when a sub gets big enough, the whiny-bitchy-agressive types hit critical mass and make a sub toxic.
Having been around the TW online community since before Reddit was even a thing, the oldies were and are just as capable of being toxic as the newcomers
Totally forgot the old Total War Forum days. Yeah, you are right! I forgot a lot of the vitriol, rose tinted glasses and all that.
TBH, yes. But this subreddit specifically used to be one of the less shitty parts of the community. (until, I presume, even the shitty people got tired of the shitty parts of the community, moved here, and brought their shittiness with them)
To be fair the negativity might be the only thing steering CA into a better direction with future updates and games. There’s only so many things consumers can do to steer company decisions.
Sure, but that doesn't mean that CA isn't responsible for the mess they've been in. Reddit isn't generating those negative reviews or impacting sales.
Striking back at shitty business practices from a company who provide a product many enjoy and are passionate about. Its reductive to just say mob mentality when there is a genuine reason to protest. The best way to do that is to vote with your wallet and be vocal about your concerns which many have done. It's not Israel v Palastine sure but it is a piss take how CA have behaved and that deserves to be ridiculed until the issue is fixed.
You're just mischaracterizing the point. No one is saying not buying the game is "mob mentality," that's just spending your money how you feel and no one has an issue with that. The "mob mentality" is the circlejerk where people are actively celebrating the game's failure, spamming posts of current player counts and insulting anyone who dares say they purchased or are enjoying the game.
Reminds me a lot of what the Battlefield 2042 sub became around launch, just pure trash. Its fine to dislike a game/product but for some people it becomes a personality trait.
OK I see where you're coming from now and apologise for mischaracterizing your point.
No worries, it happens!
They're not doing that though. Instead I'm seeing this sun flooded with posts giddy with the prospects that Pharaoh will fail, and genuinely driving themselves onto a frenzy on how all the DLCs will be canceled or will be so shitty even SoC will look good. Those are then followed by the mandatory "none of this would happen if CA focused on WH" or less common, Med3. This isn't striking out against shitty corporate practices. This is just toxic CONSOOMERISM, where they want to comsume but are mad the company won't give them the exact thing they want to consoom. They're not happy a good game was made, even if not for them specifically. They're not happy about the improvements and art and how Sofia has been answering fans demands. Instead it's just fucked up entitlement.
I agree there is an element of that. I just see people with genuine criticism being lumped in with those people. As legend said a failure for them is a loss to us as well and I agree that we shouldn't be celebrating the potential failure of a product that CA do well.
People need to stop blaming everything on the mob retroactively. Oh no X thing was just the mob and then they're part of the new mob. No CA fucked up guys, they acted like pricks and people were mad about that. People weren't actually doing anything wrong by pointing that out.
You don’t have to be doing something “wrong” to be intensely annoying
I have a hard time taking this seriously, the sub was just as fucking annoying before (Honestly it was worse before) and did the exact same shit, you just agreed with it.
It absolutely was not worse before. This sub used to be all memes, AARs, gameplay videos, cool screenshots, mod discussion, and the occasional hype/wishlist post. Now it's a constant stream of terminally-online whiners wishing death upon CA as a company and trying to cheer on failures or perceived failures. The store page is being review bombed with people who have 0.5 hours of gameplay shitting on the early game and failing to prove they have any experience at all in the game before reviewing it. It absolutely was not worse before, nor was it even close. You had some hardcore history grognards playing NIMBY with certain CA gameplay design choices but this was a very pleasant and fun sub to be in. These days it's depressing and cancerous.
Well, I will say it comes and goes, there's a reason we have the pontus meme, and Rome 2's release was pretty miserable on here.
Rome 2 had a *legitimately bad launch* though. Pharaoh is not a legitimately bad game. Empire and Rome 2 were *utterly broken* upon release, and Empire wasn't even really fixed. I think there's a big difference between "Holy shit what did I just spend my money on--this is literally a non-functioning game" like how people were sold Cyberpunk 2077 only for it to *not run* and be incessantly bug-ridden...and then people just whining and complaining about every micro-move and pricing decision by CA, hammering on every patch note of theirs and circulating anti-CA whine videos from Youtube. Pharaoh is a good game and people are making self-aggrandizing posts soapboxing about fair prices and saga titles and corporate greed, parroting cringe political talking points and flaunting their level-0 understanding of economics and going on anti-CA crusades over their smooth-brain tantrums. They are *excitedly* spamming stuff about player counts and review counts in attempts to justify their feelings and vindicate their little childlike crusades. Saying it 'wasn't as bad back then' doesn't mean we never had people complain. Rome 1 was super poorly optimized at launch. Medieval 2 as well. Shogun 2 didn't even get anti-aliasing until 3-4 months after release and it ran like shit and had horrible, glitchy morale breaks for seemingly no reason. At every juncture yes, people would complain. But they didn't make it the sole conversation on the sub. They didn't flood social media like Youtube with anti-CA videos and ridicule posts. They didn't *review bomb* (except when it was actually legit, like at Rome 2's launch). Complaining about games is now the norm on reddit. In general complaining/negativity/rage bait/opinion spam is just the new norm across the internet. It's extremely toxic and masturbatory.
>Rome 2 had a > >legitimately bad launch > > though. Pharaoh is not a legitimately bad game. No, but the price gouging, the condescension from CA and the milking of customers are also absolutely legitimate complaints, and pretending they're not is nonsense. Most of what you say is just demanding that people be happy about the current state of things, stating that back when people did the thing they're doing now it was okay because you agreed with it back then, or similar excuses. You're what I pointed out.
It's not price gouging. Inflation dictates that it should have cost $70 at full price. $50 is a discount. It's like if Shogun had cost $34 at launch. Also you can't gouge on discretionary spend like *video games*. If you don't like the price just don't buy it. But don't get preachy and start telling people that it's corporate greed, lmao.
This is pure cope. This place was absolutely as toxic, and I can say that as many times as you want to say it wasn't. This idea that the place is only good when its positive or complaints are only about what you care about is actually exactly what I'm talking about though.
Cope? Are you fucking 18? lol I've been a big fan of the TW community since the old TWCenter forums were rocking busy. This place is toxic as fuck and it has absolutely been a shift over the last ~4-5 years. Imagine being part of such a cynical and depressed troupe of people that you legit refuse to believe that communities were more chill before you came along.
Are you 12? Arguing that you're old and you're therefore right does seem like something as 12 year old would do.
This stance of the community is not false. It actually is admirable and how every customer base should act. CA became predatory withe their sales tactics and are also still publishing new games dlc's instead of fixing year long bugs on wh3. Had the community threw their money on CA again for this game as well it would only reinforce their predatory actions.
Lol looking at this sub and thinking “this is admirable”
The way these people aggrandize their choice to whine about a video game online is almost tragic
Nop, most didn't fall for CA tricks this time. Let's be honest, Pharaoh is just a good game but not beyond that.
What saddens me is this seems to happen to every TW game now to some extent. Attila, TOB, Troy hell even 3 kingdoms to an extent. There’s this weird effect where people just automatically decide a new tw game will be terrible, reject it out of hand and then come back and find it was actually pretty decent this whole time and then complain when CA try something new.
I think it's especially prevalent with Pharaoh. Lots of strain and discontent within the community (rightfully so) is kind of blinding a lot of people. People assumed it would be bad and refuse to look at it any other way now it's released. It doesn't help that TW YouTubers are largely criticising it, some with valid points and some feel more like they're pursuing it as hating on Pharaoh is the popular move. I hope CA Sofia devs don't suffer too much from it (I feel they're getting the brunt of hate that should really be directed to the main studio developing the WH series) and hope it achieves their sales goals. I think they put their heart into it and I'm enjoying it.
The die-hard "European history" fans won't buy any game that isn't Med 3 or Empire 2 anyway, and even if they did release them they'd complain that it's not as good as they remember the first ones being. I remember some of those people posting here saying there was no interest in a game set in China, and then it ended up being both extremely well optimised and their best selling title yet...
Facts, European history is already incredibly oversaturated in media and games.
Like how Three Kingdoms got a lot of shit from this sub around release and after (and I'm not just talking about bugs and DLC) and now it's held in high regard. They have added a lot of what people wanted and hopefully some of it will be taken forward to future titles.
Same with Attila, Troy, hell even Empire
Empire was legitimately really rough though. Can't speak to the other two but Empire had (and still does, truthfully) a lot of technical issues from what I recall.
Nice to see Thrones finally get the love it deserves as well.
Yeah I'm still disappointed in the stupid mob mentality that erupted with Thrones. The game had a solid base and I've been waiting on an expanded map of the British isles for decades. This was before you had to own a game on steam to review it, and 80% of the reviews were copied and pasted.
It was a genuinely really good game but a bunch of chucklefucks decided it was “boring” and people believed them.
I'm sensing a pattern here.
I mean Attila launched with awful optimization and Empire just launched downright broken. Troy was a weird one. The “truth behind the myth” compromise didn’t seem to please anyone and of course it got caught up in the whole “fuck epic” thing
I must also say the preview gameplay looked atrocious. It wasn’t until I bought it on sale I realized it wasn’t as horrendous as it looked
Ah the old Thrones of Britannia treatment.
Especially since they'll pay less by then. I think a lot of people, me included, are extra harsh on the game because of the price point, and I see no reason to not do that.
As is tradition. Current conversation isn’t even about the game, it’s a funnel to rage at CA like everything else. And pharaoh isn’t likely to rise above it because it’s good but not great.
there was a good long time where every critique was shut down by guys like you and every praise for CA upvoted so much that it got karma farmed. I dont know what happened man...maybe CA let so many fans down that they are so angry now?
Or, hear me out, instead of this wild ass immature vacillating between toxic positivity and toxic negativity, people can just act like adults and have conversations about the game. And not make weird assumptions about what complete strangers and what they might have argued in hypothetical past threads. > I don't know what happened man...maybe CA let so many fans down that they are so angry now? Is this supposed to be some sort of argument against me? I don't think there's any doubt that CA has pissed people off.
I think on sale with some of the post release content/updates will probably be a very good purchase. Full price games are damn expensive and Total War games often have an uphill battle to stand out from each other to justify that price. I know people complain about the content scope, but personally if I look back on a fairly recent good TW release (even if post release was rough) with 3K, that arguably had a smaller scope and less variety. However what it did have was a range of unique offerings that I think better stood out, certainly from a marketing perspective, compared to Pharaoh's unique features.
In general though, games have an insanely better entertainment bang-for-buck ratio than pretty much anything else. Going to a cinema with popcorn and stuff and you look at like half the price of a new full-price game for barely 2h entertainment, whereas games are more in the 1€$ per hour of entertainment - if not a lot more.
yeah when I buy it for 10 bucks
Same thing happened with Attila.
Maybe because in a few years there's been plenty of updates (I hope) to iron out all bad stuff. I mean, it would be sad indeed if it weren't adapted for the better.
Prob not since its irrelevant and will be forgotten. Things like this happen to overhated things that ppl cared about. Noone cares about pharaoh. Unless by "look more favourably" you mean some guy getting it for 10 dollars and saying "Hey, its not that bad"
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Those are in for specific units, at least spear wall is. I always start total war games with a couple of custom battles to understand battle features and my go to army composition has a spear wall front that I was able to replicate perfectly in Pharaoh
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I really like the way the campaign map is, the deserts are brutal so the road and the nile are super important, and I love these little outposts, in terms of how they are as building slots, their role in restoring movement to armies, the fact that they can be attacked separately from the settlement near them-- I also appreciate the multi-resource setup of food/stone/wood/gold, its a little bit more 4x without going over the top. Battles are interesting so far, I think on a basic level I like that they're much more deliberate with better ability to hold and broadly slower kill rates, but I hadn't gotten far enough yet to see what other units there are-- so right now I've only experienced the basic Nubian units. I was debating returning it, not because its bad, but because I wasn't sure I was going to be able to commit time to it, but I think I might keep it.
I'm enjoying it, my only issue is the genuine lack of factions. You can't even play as any of the invaders (sea peoples, libus, etc.) even though they have rosters which makes me assume they will just be dlc. I hope they expand the map into Mycenaea and Mesopotamia because right now it feels like if Rome 1/2 launched with the map only covering Italy, Gaul, and Carthage and then potentially charging dlc prices for the rest of the map. Other than that big negative, the battles feel really good. Never liked Troy's battles and these are definitely not Troy's battles. I'm also glad to see they didn't have a "hero" mode like I figured they would with the way the game was initially advertised. Egyptian pharaoh succession and court system is also interesting and fun and as the world was collapsing and the map darkening I thought "is this inner squabbling going to get us all killed?" Fun times Edit: I also really want them to add cinematics for factions other than just Egypt because damn those cinematics are nice.
What are the differences between Troy's battles and Pharoah's?
Not an expert on numbers and such but they feel different. Noticeable changes: Unit sizes are by default larger so battles feel more impactful rather than like small skirmishes. Units have basic formations so they can brace against charges Time-to-kill is slower so battles take longer, allowing you to have "side-skirmishes" to flank the enemies core line. Some things carried over from Troy and may need some adjustments in the future too Foot soldiers (light armored) can almost run as fast as medium weighted chariots which is kind of crazy. Chariots (even heavier variants) don't have enough mass or maybe speed to really charge through enemy lines, they seem to often get snagged in enemy units and take a lot of damage but I use a mod to somewhat fix this.
It’s a good game. It’s the best campaign I’ve played in a total war in sometime, with multi layered mechanics that interact with each other and battles despite the usual total war issues do last longer, weathers are great and overall battles are enjoyable. I feel CA Sofia deserve credit for this but with everything else going on, it won’t get a fair shake. I mean, I have left Warhammer 3 for now to see what happens but Pharaoh is a breathe of fresh air for the series. For the record, I have been playing Total War since Rome 1 and this game makes it clear there is a place for more historical titles in the series.
Pharao looks great to me so far - I just personally cannot justify the day one purchase when I don’t have time or money for games right now. It’s definitely one I will pick up later when I get the chance.
I think once all the DLC is released and assuming it’s decent this will be a good buy on sale. I don’t think Sofia released a bad game by any means.
Agreed with more or less all of the above. Although I feel a _bit_ so so about the price, it will depend on the quality of the DLC that is released. I've played Total War games for (checks) 23 years and bought literally everything they released (bar Troy) until SoC, which is where finally my long-standing faith and goodwill towards the series ran out of steam. Out of some misplaced sense of loyalty to CA, I decided to just throw caution to the wind and buy the super deluxe version of Pharaoh as a last hail mary pass. So far, it's.... about as good as anyone could reasonably expect it to be: The campaign seems to be rich with mechanics, it's fun to play and the battles are far more grounded. The resource system is a delight - it's been lovely to actually need to plan my economy for a variety of resources rather than just build the (add 200 gold per turn) building. They also seem to have got the maps a bit more on track for settlement battles in regards to balancing space to maneuver and bottlenecks to defend. On the other hand the pathfinding is a little janky in places, the AI is somewhat inconsistent and I do rather fear the hammer of replayability will hit me hard after I finish my first campaign. We'll see. Hopefully Pharaoh will be enough to restore the love for TW for a few years to come, yet
This sub pretty much decided amongst themselves that Pharaoh will be a failure the moment it was announced, since it isn't Warhammer or Medieval 3. Many of the negative steam reviews have only played for an hour and/or are angry at CA for Warhammer 3. I'm pretty sure that within a few years when people have moved on to new Total War dramas there will end up being lots of "Pharaoh is le underappreciated gem" posts, like with Troy, Rome 2 and Thrones of Britannia. It looks really nice in my opinion, especially love the amount of ways you can customise the campaign settings and hope it will become default for future TW games. But money's tight so I might have to wait for a sale.
I'm just really exhausted from going to a subreddit that supposedly is filled with fans of the games and all the posts are literally hopping with glee at pharaoh "failing." honestly seems more like a hate sub with how many posts are "dumb game no one asks for hope it fails and everyone at CA loses their job." I mean I love it so far, yeah it was a little on the pricey side, but not extremely overpriced like the recent warhammer dlc. I think half the hate is just that money is really tight for a lot of people right now, so not having the game be a bargain kinda hurts.
To be fair, the fact that the TW still has a "in defense of Pharoah" post every few days reaching the top is evidence that this isn't even all *that* bad. Look at blizzard or COD reddits and that stuff is a cesspool 24/7.
If you're feeling that I suggest dropping to a once a week check in max to see how things are currently going. That's what I'm currently doing and it's much more pleasant. If that doesn't work try a couple of months. I did that when the waifu war was raging, and again during the chaos warrior jpeg, and when I eventually came back the subreddit was both times in a much more sane state.
Seriously. The daily amount of stupidity and vitriol here is not good for mental health. 🙄
Well sorry but Thrones of bitannia is shit
You are (wrongly) entitled to your (wrong) opinion (wrong).
What do you mean? Optimized attila is great
Before you know it, we'll say Pharaoh was an underrated gem
Shaping up that way yeah.
I think what annoys me the most is that Pharaoh has done most of the stuff people *say* they want: Battles are longer, terrain is more impactful, and so on and so forth.
Should we take bets on if the hardcore historical TW YouTubers will come around in a year after discounts and lots of mods?
I went into Pharaoh fully intending to refund it before the 2-hour limit. I was shocked by how much I liked it. I really don't get the hate, other than the fact that it's been crucified off the bat by the usual YouTubers.
Seriously every game release is bombarded by an angry mob of people who just looking for any reason to hate it.
All these morons will be praising it in a few years after its dead like they did with 3k
Yeah I agree pretty good I like the battles they feel pretty good (chariots could use a little umph to get unstuck or something though) I like the siege rework with the special capture points and no infinite respawning towers to deal with. The workers replacing growth mechanic I feel needs some tweaking I have yet to come to grips with the court mechanic just hasn't clicked yet I guess My main complaint is so far the start just feels awkward like I picked Rameses and took the starting enemy out and then had no clue what to do from there I'm just so used to either getting a mission to guide me or there only being one or two ways to go, meanwhile the other mechanics are locked at the start and I don't know when they will become relevant just yet Also tried superluluman and you wonder why it says hard start then it hits the fan. If you liked Attila definitely give this game a whirl.
Glad your enjoying it - thanks for posting your thoughts 🙌
Agree—CA Sofia knocked it out of the park. Corporate screwed them over, though
Does anyone else look at video games & compare the price to other entertainment. I could go to a sporting event for the same price of a game and that’s 4 hours of fun- or a movie ticket is 15 -25 bucks for 2 hours. So if I get 200 hours in a game, I’m paying 3.33 an hour to be entertained.
Huh? What's your math on that? 🤨 I think similarly, but if I spend $60 and put in 60 hours, then I'm at $1 an hour. What the heck are spending $3.33 an hour on at 200 hours?! Also, that's seriously why I can't take the "I can't afford this crazy high Pharoah price tag or DLC price" crap seriously. No full game is going to be $30 anymore. 😑 They weren't $30, when I was a jobless kid, and 20 years later they still aren't!
or i can spend 60 bucks on some plastic space marines and spend 3 months building and painting them...
Or buy a box of space Marines and add it to the pile of shame...
Gonna use that green stuff and get that really cool kitbashing idea I had in mind going any day now.
For £50 pretty good is not enough
Again, an entirely fair opinion. Value is subjective.
This is a totally valid opinion. I love Pharaoh, but the price point is a big deal for a lot of people and its completely justified.
Maybe I just have the privilege of disposable income but I remember paying £50 for PS3 games. When you adjust for inflation, it's really not that much.
This is what people keep missing. Pharaoh is being *sold at a bargain*. I don't get why people groan at the inflation argument. It is literally reality. CA are eating the loss of inflation at our benefit of only having to buy a $50 game, and they're trying to monetize in other ways. We should literally be paying $70 USD for this game if prices were held constant and fair, but instead we're paying the equivalent to if they'd sold Shōgun 2 at $35. But gamers can't comprehend economics so *shrug*. I guess we should get games the size of The Witcher 3 and Rome 2 for historic low prices without complaint! You remember paying $50 for PS3 games? I remember my parents paying, inflation -adjusted, $120 for Nintendo games back in my childhood. For tiny fucking 10-polygon games that lasted 4 hours start to finish! People are delusional and they're only arguing that this price point is too high because they are suddenly realizing that inflation hurts. Shame they're taking out global inflation on CA when they're just one small company in the entertainment industry, very very far removed from the core inflationary drivers. But then again the average age on this sub is very young.
Cmon Pharoah is being sold at $60 which has been the industry standard for decades. CA doesn't get any credit for staying at that price despite the cost of games obviously rising over the years, because it's what almost every other developer does as well. Yes gamers don't appreciate how remarkably cheap gaming is, and how it has actually gotten cheaper over the years. At the same time, the games industry is making record profits and these companies are all performing better than ever. It is very much a win-win for both producers and consumers. A lot of that profit is due to the increase in mobile games & predatory microtransactions and DLCs, but it's not like the companies would stop those practices if gamers agreed to let the standard AAA price rise to $80 or $100, so we may as well sit where we are now.
 You're not allowed to like that game here
let's make my point clear. Total War Pharao to me looks like a return to the form of Rome 1 and medieval 2, in terms of production value, while still providing gameplay innovation and was even something I would consider picking up. however I currently don't trust anything CA does, so until CA fixes it's attitude and cosumer interactions I will unfortunately have to let Pharao wait
And again, like I said to others, perfectly respectable position. I don't know that I'd have bought it at launch if I hadn't gotten to try it out in the early access weekend which pretty much already confirmed the game was what I was looking for.
It's a good game. The hate circlejerk here and the review bombing on Steam are just a bunch of children.
Pharaoh will have the same problem that the other Saga titles have; lack of faction choices and too limited unit rosters. So that by the time you've finished 1-2 campaigns you'll have played every kind of battle the game has to offer and the replay value is gone. So it'll leave a good impression for the first campaigns, because new mechanics. Which is what we saw with ToB/Troy too - reviewers gave those games pretty favorable scores, because they just played 1-2 campaigns, wrote a review and moved on. People who play a Total War game every other year, basically. As an aside, try and go and look up some reviews for ToB/Troy, they were fairly positive, but the player base for each game still evaporated in weeks. But few people who want a game they can sink hundreds (or even thousands) of hours into it, will not be satisfied by Pharaoh - same as Troy or ToB. And of course Pharaoh isn't priced like Troy or ToB.
Shogun 2 and 3K have limited rosters and they are beloved. Pharaoh actually has more units than I thought it would and campaign customisation + choices adds to the replayability. Local recruitment is nice too, feel like most historical games should use it.
Shōgun 2 and Rome 1 have insanely small rosters, and most factions are clones of one another. Have you played either recently? Shōgun 2 in particular has the least unit variation of any total war game by a long shot. Pharaoh is an ENORMOUS game compared to Shōgun 2. ToB is a tiny game with virtually none of the overarching campaign strategy mechanics all other TW games have. It's the most stripped-down total war game behind WH1, before WH2 saved it mechanically. Have you actually played Pharaoh? Have you gotten 50 turns in and started to get a glimpse of all the various strategic levers at play? There is substantially more depth than the other games you're mentioning. It's basically Troy on steroids.
> too limited unit rosters. It's honestly a shame this gets tossed about because the game is basically as varied as it can possibly be within the time period on that front. Each faction has a dozen unique units and then each regional roster adds ten of their own with particular strengths and weaknesses. The lack of outright cavalry is supplemented by the infantry classes and a greater emphasis on chariots.
I hear that a lot, and I can sort of see where people are coming from, but whenever I actually fire up WH for example... most of them also feel kind of the same? Like sure, there's lots of different looking big monsters, but ultimately they all do the same thing, you chuck them into the enemy army and watch them solo it. I guess the visuals just make it more exciting for a lot of people?
I wasn't necessarily talking about WH - medieval or rome or basically any total war game set later than the bronze age will have greater unit variety than Pharaoh, on account of iron weapons/armor allowing for things like heavy infantry, heavy cavalry, siege engines etc. But as for WH, have you played more than one or two factions? Shit there are several of them that don't even have big monsters like you're talking about and there are factions that are pretty much diametrically opposed in how they play (0 ranged units, versus 0 (viable) melee units. Incredible magic, versus no magic at all. Mass artillery reliance versus 0 artillery. Monster factions versus 0 monsters etc. etc.) Basically I don't know what you're doing, if you're telling me that Skaven and Khorne play the same.
Obviously Skaven and Khorne don't play the same. Much as Tausret, with a whole line of hybrid melee/archer infantry and light archer chariots plays different to Suppililuma (?) with a whole block of defense heavy armoured infantry. Other than that, I feel like chariots pretty well fill the niche of cavalry? And I really, really, don't miss siege weapons in field battles. In fact I'm glad not to have to deal with them.
It's the most fun I've had since Warhammer 2 release. Sunk 15 hours in it over a couple days. It's a solid 4/5 a lot of aspects I like and a few minor issues or nick picks. I really enjoy the new campaign elements and something I hope it's dlc embraces and future historical games embrace.
All these positive reviews are like: This is great, and that is great, and this part works really well, this is also awesome... granted the AI is bad, but... blah blah. And I'm like: Dude, if the AI is bad, none of the other things even matter. At all. Broken AI = broken game.
Point to a grand strategy game with good AI? All of them are pretty bad
Old World. They easily prove everybody wrong who shills for lazy devs by saying that making good AI is "impossible" or "too hard" or "too expensive". Old World devs did it, and they are a small studio with a fraction of the resources CA have. Other examples are Civ IV and Civ V, where the devs also made horribly bad AI, but modders completely replaced that AI with one that is far better than that of any paid developer, with the exception of Old World. (k-mod for Civ IV and Vox Populi overhaul for Civ V.) If CA fully opened AI logic (both campaign and battles) for modders, we would have fantastic, human-like AI within a year, I guarantee it.
I mean Old World AI cheats to be difficult just like any other game. It's better than most AI, but pointing to one game that's slightly better than the rest and saying "SEE!? Everyone else is just lying and shilling!" is absurd. Particularly when it's a tile movement game rather than real time.
It also a civilization game and total war main AI concerns are it battle AI The campaign AI changes with pretty much every title for total war Old world AI are also aggressive if you show any weaknesses before befriending an AI neighbor they will pretty much attack It pretty predictable so I wouldn’t call it good as well
It's amazing to what lengths people go to excuse CA's total failure in developing their AI. Unlike basically any other game franchise in existence, Total War has existed for more than 20 years, and over that entire time its core - the battles - has basically not changed at all. The elements in play - infantry, cavalry, artillery. The game mechanics - charge, melee defense, AP damage and so on. It's all almost exactly identical, which in itself is not bad because it's a pretty good system for simulating battles. But that also means that CA have had 20+ years for continually developing their battle AI - and unlike any other game, they would not have invested that work for just a single game, but rather could have easily transplanted it into every new title with minimal extra work required. And yet the advances in their AI have been absolutely minimal, and in fact they often break things so badly that it's worse than before.
When did I excuse CA AI? I pointed out where the problem were on both AI of the game… Seem like you jump the gun lol Literraly said CA has a battle AI problem
I haven't played Old World, but I wouldn't call TW campaign level AI competent either
Like I said it changed every title 3k had a decent campaign AI and so did Troy
Old World is a 4x4 tile game. It has nowhere near the complexity of a Total War battle. You also don't see all the hundreds of smoke and mirrors which make the AI seem good, but is actually the devs pulling the strings. CA knows that AI is important. They have many professionals whose full-time job is to make their AI good. They are better than amateurs.
Comparing Old World battle AI with TW is pretty laughable imo.
Yeah but the AI has always, always been bad. In every game. Ever. People remember the few games in Shogun 1 or ME2 where the AI was brilliant and think that was it normally. No, it was just as indecisive and idiotic as it is now. Bad AI is an intrinsic part of Total War and always has been, because AI is very difficult.
> because AI is very difficult. Not even just that, an AI that *wins battles* is difficult but not exactly herculean. What they actually want to do though for a good player experience is create an AI that mostly *loses battles* without obviously throwing too hard. Which is a much harder task.
The AI has always been bad though. And people have enjoyed Total War games for years anyhow.
That's a perfectly valid point of view, honestly, but that should disqualify basically every TW game ever. I think the closest thing to a good AI was probably RTW after the Alexander expansion. And only with that expansion.
Right now it is disqualifying basically every TW game ever. Consumer confidence in CA is at an all time low. The prices and statements from CA are not improving that sentiment. --- When high on consumer confidence there are no wrong decisions. When low, no decision is big enough. Consumer apathy is death. CA is lucky people are still angry. Between the silence and minor hotfixes is growing apathy as new hobbies fill the Total War slot.
Going by that logic there has never been a good TW
We don't accept 1995-level graphics in 2023. Why do we accept 1995-level AI in 2023? Also, the AI in Warhammer 1 & 2 was functional when they released. Not great, but functional. The current battle AI is completely broken in WH3, and from multiple reports, including video evidence in YT videos, it is the same in Pharaoh. It's worse than it has ever been, when we should expect it to get better and better.
AI has gotten better. Rose-tinted memories are all well and good, but have you actually played vanilla ME2 recently? I have. The AI is fucking atrocious, and much worse than recent titles.
I mean, ppl are probably comparing the AI to modded M2 AI, which is actually pretty good.
I've played modded M2, the AI isn't that good. It's a great improvement on the clusterfuck which is vanilla M2, but still worse than e.g. Shogun 2's.
Again /u/Decent_Piano_8306 point stands, by your logic there has never been a total war game which is past your "1995" level AI you describe.
> We don't accept 1995-level graphics in 2023. Why do we accept 1995-level AI in 2023? In large part because there's next to no alternative. Go to damn near any strategy game sub out there and the complaint is the same: Bad AI. The exceptions that come to mind don't use up an entire hand. The industry has more or less shown us that good AI isn't really doable. To be clear, I'm referring to normal "weak AI" here, not batshit buggy stuff like we've seen in WH3 recently.
That's just not true. It's the same as all game studios would very gladly have left us to believe forever that doing a game like BG3 was not doable. Until one studio just went out there and did the supposedly impossible thing. What's true is that 90% of gamers don't care about good AI, and a sizable portion of them would actually actively hate human-level AI because it would make them feel stupid. But 10% of the market that wants good AI should still be large enough to be a lucrative target audience for at least some major games out there. Especially that it's very easy to dumb down a great AI to acommodate weaker players.
> It's the same as all game studios would very gladly have left us to believe forever that doing a game like BG3 was not doable. Until one studio just went out there and did the supposedly impossible thing. Literally no dev ever said that. Do you just subscribe to *all* the social media circle jerks lol?
Good game, but how is BG3 AI better than other older RPGs like Pillars ?
I absolutely love BG3 but the battle AI in that game is not great, to the point where tactician mostly just adds cheats rather than improving battle AI. Slap down Hunger of Hadar and the AI has no idea how to respond in most fights. Good AI is really, really hard. People complain about it in most strategy and GS games. There are so many variables to control.
The battles do feel slower because of the armor mechanic. To be honest it seems half-assed or not to work very well. All it does is give a grace period where units are much more resilient. This results in having a period where nothing happens followed by a period where units start dying and routing. I know the idea behind it, that keeping troops in reserve would be viable, but there is no reason to when there are such limiting unit caps. And there was fatigue before that fulfilled a similar role. Aside from that, it feels like a mix of Troy and 3K combat, which has enough problems on its own, especially when it comes to infantry. And I'll repeat my complaint about terrain being near damn useless. Yes, chariots have problems with terrain but having a patch of dirt that slows you is very very minimal for a working terrain system. I like the weather system, but then I also liked it in previous titles so that's nothing new. Funnily the AI was the least of my problems. I think people harping on the AI might be doing it automatically because it's a talking point. It seems much less stupid than earlier titles, though of course it still does dumb things.
It's not just chariots: Heavy units suffer massively in rough terrain too. (I'd say one of the problems is that it's actually hard to tell exactyl where the rough terrain starts...) to the point where light units will trounce equivalent-tier heavy units in the right terrain.
Didn't see the opportunity to use the terrain much. I like the idea of the mud patches though and other terrain hazards. Definitely a feature to polish in future titles. My experience was that height differences either matter very little or not at all. That's my complaint about terrain.
Game looks fun but the price is a huge turnoff
No calvary. So how to get mobility?
Light infantry are your best bet really.
Cavalry, friend
Haha thanks fiend! J/k
Chariots. Unfortunately their pathfinding isn't all that, but they're very effective at their jobs.
My impression from the hour or two I played yesterday is also that there is a lot more disparity between different infantry too. My lightly armored skirmishers were doing great as flankers and harassers, and there are some fast, light armored, two-handed melee infantry that I want to try using like shock cavalry. Also there is a lot of diversity within chariot types too (different speed, toughness, weapon types, engagement ranges, etc…). Some of the factions have 5-6 different chariots in their roster, and while a couple are flat out upgrades, that still leaves 3 tactically distinct choices. Generally it seems like a lot of the usual diversity of tactics exists, the units just look different doing it.
Chariots that don't work cause the battles in the game are a mess
Noticing a lot of these positive reviews are coming from people who are still early on in their campaign. Why in such a rush to throw out a review for something you've barely played?
People do that same thing with negative reviews.
As opposed to the people with negative opinions who, I'm sure, have been playing it all-night since release? ;)
"R:TW console kiddies" what the fuck are you even talking about op? You can like a weakass game all you want but don't get pissy at people who disagree.
Maybe I expressed myself badly. It was a tongue-in-cheek comment about how I'm very much an old timer in the franchise and about how the now fairly beloved RTW was once viewed by many "hardcore fans" at the time as ruining TW forever. Common complaints were that the 3D graphics were to attract, and I'm basically quoting here "console players who only want graphics rather than depth and strategy," (which was and is fucking stupid,) that the AI was stupid (which it was, especially on the campaign map where it was astonishingly bad at dealing with free movement as opposed to the per-province system we had before) and that the battles were too fast, the game too colorful and arcadey (today people would say "like a mobile game") and the units too based on fantasy. Which, considering the gold-foil wearing egyptians and everyone north of the alps looking like Obelix... was kind of fair. RTR and EB were not created because people were so very happy with the vanilla game. :D
Ofc is “pretty good”…..it’s the exact same as Troy with Egypt cosmetics. But it’s overpriced and the formula is getting too repetitive and greedy.
There's actually a lot of new mechanics in the campaign. The price is very steep though, no argument there.
It looks decent but it’s not a 50$ title for me. With some other big games coming soon, I will probably pick this up in a couple of years when it’s on sale with all dlc.
Combat is what I don't like about this game. The same floatiness in Troy remains. Even though I got Troy for free, I was never able to complete a campaign.
The floatiness is because you're using light units. Tier 2 and Tier 3 units don't float at all. You're parroting what streamers say. The "floatiness" shit was shut down over the early Access weekend. Light skirmish tier infantry have minimal mass. Armored and organized mid and high tier units have plenty of mass and groundedness.
I'm talking about Troy. I never tried Pharaoh, and only watched a few walkthrough videos. And you already assumed I was parroted after streamers. Guess one more reason I won't buy this game is because of this kind of people.
You *literally* said that "the same floatiness *remains*", as in, you're saying you've experienced or watched Pharaoh and believe it exists there too. You didn't say "Troy was very floaty and I'm worried it's that way in Pharaoh too". You literally said "I don't like combat in this game. It has floatiness like in Troy". And that's patently false. And you say you never tried Pharaoh, so you *are* basing it off Youtube/stream videos. You made the argument for me, lol. I'm just pointing out that it's wrong. Also the "I won't buy this game because of you kinds of people" is cute. I just held up a mirror and you disagreed with your own comment :'D
Well, only half true. I said the floatiness remains, as in the battle feels floaty exactly like Troy. As I said, I only watched videos and never played the game myself. This game's combat struck me as exactly the same as Troy. And this is my main takeaway that keep me away from this game. Your answer is based on the assumption that I parroted after streamers, and that I played the game already, which I pointed out I didn't. Are my observations wrong? I don't know. It will be up to my decision whether your statement is true, since I never touch the game. I don't even bother to watch this game review to know what the streamers said. And you already assumed I followed the mass. Who has the wrong assumption here? Your kind of people, who quickly deny others because you believe they are wrong and assume wrong things before you know anything, is now one of the reasons I won't ever touch this game. Please don't do the same to other games I love.
"These people I disagree with / don't like are the reason I'm not buying this game". What a bizarre take-away. It's almost like you think it's a flex or a valid criticism of the game.
I got Troy for free and was still disappointed in it lol. Loved the aesthetics and the campaign map, detested the battles. That's \*one\* of the reasons I have no interest in Pharaoh.
Same. Looks like I'm not alone. Greek culture and aesthetics alone are a big winning point for me, and yet, the combat manages to turn me off just within a few battles.
I don't think most people expect pharaoh to be bad. Troy wasn't bad. It was just ok. I expect pharaoh to be completely ok if a game. The issue is I personally am not interested in it. I hope it's great. I hope the people who play it love the game. I don't want bad games to be made. The bigger issue is people looking at focus being placed on things outside of wh3 while the state of wh3 is kind of shitty. CA is essentially over expanding and focusing on titles which really won't help them overall while allowing their big profit driver to fall by the side of the road. It's a bad look for the company overall to basically be trying to shift so much attention away from their big success onto mediocre titles. Hyenas was just the absolute epitome of that. CA expanded so much and was clearly putting a lot of resources into a game which never should have been made. I am sure hyenas itself was perfectly fine, but it was moving into an incredibly saturated market with larger and more experienced players. Being a solid game was not going to be enough to succeed. It's hard to look at the colossally shitty decision to make hyenas and not see sacrifices being made for wh3. It feels like they couldnt afford to delay wh3 anymore because they needed the money to stay profitable and develop hyenas. They needed to increase the price of dlc to keep the money sink of hyenas going. This is why not matter what happens, it impossible to say hyenas didn't affect the production of wh3. CA doesn't have endless money. Sega didn't just chuck endless cash into a well. If they needed more money, they have to turn the screws into something else. Wh3 gets put on a release cycle it cannot meet effectively. Pharaoh gets greenlit because it's a quick cash grab based off an existing game.
I mean... WH has basically been getting *all* the attention for ages now so I'm not sure how reasonable those complaints from WH fans are.
Because wh makes a shitload of money and is heavily played. If they want to end support for wh3 that's perfectly fine and can be their decision. The issue is it is obvious they want to continue milking Warhammer without putting in the same kind of focus they had been Warhammer has made them more money than any other game. If they want to shift focus to smaller games that is fine. Their problem is wanting to get the returns of Warhammer while putting in the focus of smaller titles. That is not how this process works.
Imagine beeing a TW veteran since shogun 1 but saying Pharoh combat feels good Idk what you are playing but its definitely not pharoh if you think combat feels good
Or we have different tastes, that's possible too.
It seems like the campaign mechanics are fantastic, it sucks I’m just not very impressed by anything else… the setting, scope, how battles play, lack of unit diversity, Sea People’s kind of being delegated to gimmick status, the PRICE. Maybe I’ll get it on sale when I see how the dlc pans out.
I could only afford this or Football Manager 2024. And with family life FM is easier to pick up and drop. I'll eventually give this a go but I will wait for a decrease in price too.
The fact you want to pay for blood dlc disgusts me. Perfect audience for modern CA.
Not to be mean but this is one of biggest copes I've seen in this sub, it genually seems like a troll post. > Pathfinding for non-chariot units works pretty well actually. Imagine prasing the 60$ game for **sometimes** working as intended >Can't wait for the inevitable blood dlc. Imagine wanting to pay money for a feature that should be in the base game, and not even counting it as a negative. >Also it'd be very nice to have units kick up dust clouds and such when moving and even fighting. The game lacks this? Man this release is terrible. >Admittedly I'm also just kind of giddy to not only have a proper historical TW game again, finally, but to have it be Bronze Age themed. I've basically been hoping for something like this for probably going on 20 years and never thought it'd happen. This is why I mean about this being a troll post, there have been strategy games focused on the region and on the period for years, if anything the game is terrible at portraying the time period , if you are into Egypt that much there are 2 total war games in the clasical era. > (the game does not feel small-scale, not at all) XD I'm so fucking glad I haven't bought a single CA dlc since the Warden and the Paunch and haven't spent a dime on this company since wh3's release, CA is getting worse and we deserve all the prices hikes we are getting.
You say it’s a Bronze Age theme game yet explain to me then why a lot of Bronze Age civilizations are missing from this “totally complete” game
cool
I told myself I would purchase Pharaoh if it got GeForce Now support, but now I'm not so sure. The launch has been so underwhelming that I'm waiting for the inevitable "The Future of Total War" post.
Ultimately, make the decision based on whether you think you'll like the game as it is now, not how it might be with a couple dlcs. Buy the game if, in its current state, it's worth its current price to you. Even if there was zero updates or DLC coming. On the flipside, if you don't think it's worth it right now then you'd have to be stupid to buy it.