Pharaoh: A New Era - remake of 1999 city builder

[Fargus]

When i look closely at the new visuals i can't shake the feeling that i'm looking at lazily done art for mobile game. Don't know, maybe just me.

I hope these subhumans won't be touching any other Impressions titles.

 

[Tyranicon]

From the current top steam review:

When they removed the RTS elements, they forgot you need soldiers to kill predators.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

Monuments seem to be bugged and construction stops for no reason.

One luminary in steam suggested to destroy the building and start again.
Happened to me with The Bent Pyramid. Luckily you just need to reload the game and seems to get fixed.

Some industries seem to get randomly bugged too, and moving materials through a river sucks ass.
I'm glad I'm just testing a repack. This remake somehow manages to simultaneously change nothing and make things worse
Will likely uninstall as soon as I'm done with the Giza level. Also you no longer have the choice between Classic/Egyptian names.

 

[Israfael]

Monuments seem to be bugged and construction stops for no reason.

It's how it always was in the OG. If it was possible to rotate camera in this de-make (tm) (C), then you'd see a tiny hole at the apex of pyramid that causes your workers to falll down (physics, yo!). It's actually a correct advice - it's not possible to 'fix' the monument, you either have to reload from an earlier save (just save it manually before the last few layers are finished, or turn on Ptah's help - he will wave the bug magically away and will allow you to finish the monument) or actually destroy the pyramid and start over.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

Funny, I never noticed that in the original, and played last year.

In this case they bugged during the first few courses.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

So is this another completely pointless remaster that does nothing other than to replace the original UI with some mobile shit and introduce new bugs?

 

[Tyranicon]

Monuments seem to be bugged and construction stops for no reason.

It's how it always was in the OG. If it was possible to rotate camera in this de-make (tm) (C), then you'd see a tiny hole at the apex of pyramid that causes your workers to falll down (physics, yo!). It's actually a correct advice - it's not possible to 'fix' the monument, you either have to reload from an earlier save (just save it manually before the last few layers are finished, or turn on Ptah's help - he will wave the bug magically away and will allow you to finish the monument) or actually destroy the pyramid and start over.

IIRC, they rebuilt the game from scratch in a new engine and everything. How did this same exact bug get replicated?

Or did they end up getting their hands on the source code after all?

Also... what is point of remake when you don't fix well-known bugs from the original?

 

[TheEntitledOne]

I can see very few improvements over the original, if you can call them that.
Is not like the OG doesn't look good in modern systems, and the gog version runs just fine. Some of the visual changes are abit cartoony, not bad but not really an improvement.
I don't mind the minor interface changes. Now if you hoover over population number you see the unemployment/labor shortage without having to check the overseer. But I don't see any particularly convenient changes otherwise. Eh, I guess your farm cart guys don't just drown when the Nile floods (but still stay in the water until they get storage room, lol).

And somehow you still have access to towers and walls? Do Transport warfs have any use ( maybe the Pharaoh asks for military aid via river route?) And I can't tell the point of naval combat, you still need to fight on land afterwards.

Really, I have no idea what went wrong with this.

Edit: Another funny bit is that they went with WEWUZKANGZ by making the intro Egyptians clearly blacks, but then the first enemies you fight, the bloody Nubians, are generic middle eastern looking guys. Just like all other enemies.

Edit: Also, it doesn't seem like you can selectively turn off straw production. If you want grain you will be stuck getting straw and manually ordering every storehouse to not store dtraw.

 

[Tyranicon]

RIP (not really, people are still gonna buy it).

 

[RobotSquirrel]

They actually did it. The madmen. They actually made a game I'm interested in.

What an intoxicating innocence.

RIP (not really, people are still gonna buy it).

Doubt it. That numbers going down fast.

 

[Alienman]

Pharaoh: A New but Worse Era.

That should be the tagline for all future remasters by the way.

 

[Israfael]

Or did they end up getting their hands on the source code after all?

No idea, they might have decompiled some of the code or got their hands on the in-game logic (some of which was written in .txt files, I think)

 

[flyingjohn]

Pro tip for any remake devs:
Take the gog version and apply a piss filter with meme achievements and charge 30 bucks. Instant profit.

But holy shit at the changes from one of the reviews:
-Houses no longer "consume" beer/pottery/linen/etc
-Game does not pause while scrolling
-Monuments must connect to the kingdom road
-Police, magistrates no longer kill dangerous animals
-There's no point in having an item available for trade at multiple docks
-You can no longer see what Bazaar workers are carrying
- You can no longer partially fulfill burial provisions

 

[BrotherFrank]

So verdict is in, they managed to fuck up the remake of a 20 year old game in every way possible, impressive.

Hell even the things they did improve, im not crazy about. I LIKED that farm workers with their carts drowned if you lacked the space for their ressources, that’s your own fault for letting it happen and made for a fun rush when harvesting season came in and you scrambled to build excess granaries to take in all your goods or see it all get flushed down the drain alongside the farmers.

What about religion? That was probably the biggest annoyance of the OG game for me since it really was just check back on the screen every few months to keep up your worship rotation (or just keep praying to bastet if she is available), pure pointless busywork.

 

[Naraya]

Somebody on the old Impressions forums posted threatened that if the game did favorable they would "remaster" Zeus as well.

 

[Harthwain]

But holy shit at the changes from one of the reviews:
-Houses no longer "consume" beer/pottery/linen/etc
-Game does not pause while scrolling
-Monuments must connect to the kingdom road
-Police, magistrates no longer kill dangerous animals
-There's no point in having an item available for trade at multiple docks
-You can no longer see what Bazaar workers are carrying
- You can no longer partially fulfill burial provisions

I am guessing the police not killing animals is a bug. Also, I think the game doesn't have the mini-map.

 

[Tyranicon]

But holy shit at the changes from one of the reviews:
-Houses no longer "consume" beer/pottery/linen/etc
-Game does not pause while scrolling
-Monuments must connect to the kingdom road
-Police, magistrates no longer kill dangerous animals
-There's no point in having an item available for trade at multiple docks
-You can no longer see what Bazaar workers are carrying
- You can no longer partially fulfill burial provisions

I am guessing the police not killing animals is a bug. Also, I think the game doesn't have the mini-map.

Yeah minimap's been removed along with the perspective change.

-Houses no longer "consume" beer/pottery/linen/etc

Wtf? Do houses no longer self-upgrade then, or do they just skip these requirements?

This is straight decline.

 

[The_Mask]

As a person that liked the Zeus game more, I am totally fine with this trashfest. As long as they didn't trash the OST. The Pharaoh OST was glorious.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

But holy shit at the changes from one of the reviews:
-Houses no longer "consume" beer/pottery/linen/etc
-Game does not pause while scrolling
-Monuments must connect to the kingdom road
-Police, magistrates no longer kill dangerous animals
-There's no point in having an item available for trade at multiple docks
-You can no longer see what Bazaar workers are carrying
- You can no longer partially fulfill burial provisions

I am guessing the police not killing animals is a bug. Also, I think the game doesn't have the mini-map.

Yeah minimap's been removed along with the perspective change.

-Houses no longer "consume" beer/pottery/linen/etc

Wtf? Do houses no longer self-upgrade then, or do they just skip these requirements?

This is straight decline.

I think that is false, or an old patched feature. All of the items a house have a number that gets gradually depleted. Beer and pottery do get consumed at the very least (and houses downgrade). Maybe that was bugged on specific maps?

 

[jebsmoker]

hopefully pharaoh: a new era's shortcomings inspires whoever works on augustus' fork for pharaoh, ozymandias, to work on it more

a new era is fine if you just want city building, but the military mechanics were in pharaoh for a reason

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

a new era is fine if you just want city building, but the military mechanics were in pharaoh for a reason

Wait what they removed the Military Mechanics?!

 

[adddeed]

Caesar 3 was the sweet spot for me.
Caesar 2 is too much like SimCity although the province wide gameplay was cool.
Pharaoh has a stupid font i cant stand.
Zeus has a cartoony look i cant stand.
Havent played Emperor.
Caesar 3 looks and plays great. Also has mods so it works great in Win10 and Andoird with some QoL improvements (Julius mod) or even bigger gameplay changes (Augustus mod). But its more like a puzzle game than city builder.

 

[BrotherFrank]

a new era is fine if you just want city building, but the military mechanics were in pharaoh for a reason

Wait what they removed the Military Mechanics?!

In the new era, if nubians invade your land you respond with love and kindness and accept the cultural enrichment.

Probably the same reason why you can't build walls or do the old tricks to mess with immigration such as trapping people. Even police got defunded ffs, literally Pharaoh Woke edition.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

a new era is fine if you just want city building, but the military mechanics were in pharaoh for a reason

Wait what they removed the Military Mechanics?!

In the new era, if nubians invade your land you respond with love and kindness and accept the cultural enrichment.

Probably the same reason why you can't build walls or do the old tricks to mess with immigration such as trapping people. Even police got defunded ffs, literally Pharaoh Woke edition.

Afaik, you still recruit an army, but it takes place automatically on a different screen (more like a minimap resembling a shitty mobile again). Don't remember walls, but you can still build towers and doors, which allegedly provide benefits to the battles.
Really, the game barely offers any improvement over the original (Edit: while fucking up a few things), which still looks and plays quite well (I guess you can now pause and build).