Total War: PHARAOH

[Lacrymas]

That's because DLC is very cheap to shit out and they don't need a big team for that, it's better for them to go onto the next big project and leave a skeletal crew to man the already released titles. That's what they've done since at least Rome 2 and it works for them. The problem now, however, is that WH3 was released and is still in an abysmal state. Bugs galore, the worst AI the WH games have seen thus far, unbalanced to an extreme factions, samey battles, boring campaign gameplay and now arrogantly overpriced DLC on top. They have to dedicate the entire studio to fix up all these issues while creating DLC in the meantime, they'll never do that because it's not financially viable for an AAA studio to fix an already released product. They'll do and have done the bare minimum.

 

[Nirvash]

I still cannot wrap my head around WH3. Literally a golden goose, where you can release new content basically forever and people will buy it, and instead of capitalizing on that like anyone sane would, they decide to put it on life support while going to make some retarded shit nobody cares about.

They can't survive on Warhammer, not long term.

Games workshop likely asked for a bigger %, again and again, and what if they revoke le license?
CA need something else, something they own and something beyond rts.

 

[JarlFrank]

They could have made a bigger Bronze Age game, or maybe combine it with Troy to make it feel less provincial.

Pharaoh is a smaller Saga title, except without calling itself Saga.

Or they could have done another Medieval, or Empire, and went the same route of combining games (Medieval 3 - 1492 Americas game - Medieval China game - buy all three and you can play a grand campaign on the entire world; or similar thing with another Empire: 1700s Europe and Near East, 1700s India and Asia, 1700s Americas, buy all three games get a world campaign).

They had a winning formula but blew it by constantly delivering sub-par downscaled products.

 

[Gromoer]

something else

Like a very popular franchise that has no rivals on the market, has dedicated fans and procreative community? Indeed, CA seems not to possess any, what a shame.

Spoiler

They had all the chances, but opted for more income and diversifying business. It’s probably not even their fault per se, that’s basically how corporate business works nowadays with blind expansionism in its veins.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

I'll echo what the CA leaker said. The problem is that they're reliant on an old engine (Warscape) which originally when it was built was built in the conditions of Empire total war, an absolute shitshow of development that saw 50% of the studio leave during its development. Most of the core components of the engine were maintained by people that never implemented it in the first place so there's much esoteric knowledge there that the current staff just simply don't have, they complained about how complicated the engine is to work with which slows them down, so the technology end is unsustainable in the long term same can be said about Bethesda both studios operated very similarly in that 1. they were unwilling to fire veterans who were ineffective out of fear of losing knowledge of the technology they relied on and 2. unwilling to develop new technology as its expensive so they're stuck.

This is going to end badly.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

they decide to put it on life support while going to make some retarded shit nobody cares about.

wh3 and its focus on the chink troops (and previous derailing for a full chink rot3k stand alone) was already the retarded shit nobody cares about.

 

[JarlFrank]

Warhammer 1 was already the retarded shit because they dumbed down combat mechanics as the remaining devs at the company are too stupid to know how to make fantasy battles work without turning them into boring number crunching.

 

[thesecret1]

they decide to put it on life support while going to make some retarded shit nobody cares about.

wh3 and its focus on the chink troops (and previous derailing for a full chink rot3k stand alone) was already the retarded shit nobody cares about.

Nobody cared about the chinks, but a massive map with the majority of warhammer setting on it? People absolutely did care. Had they given it its due focus and didn't throw in retarded jewing with shit like "you need to own all three games to play this, goy", they could be happily milking it to this day. It's not like they wouldn't have enough room on the map to introduce whatever hero or faction they wanted, and people would buy that shit (unless, again, starting to jew with ourageous prices for tiny amounts of content)

 

[OndrejSc]

 

[markec]

At this point im pretty sure that the reason why we still dont have Medieval 3 or Empire 2 is because someone in the leadership thinks that it will make white nationalists happy.

 

[OndrejSc]

 

[La vie sexuelle]

I still cannot wrap my head around WH3. Literally a golden goose, where you can release new content basically forever and people will buy it, and instead of capitalizing on that like anyone sane would, they decide to put it on life support while going to make some retarded shit nobody cares about.

They can't survive on Warhammer, not long term.

Games workshop likely asked for a bigger %, again and again, and what if they revoke le license?
CA need something else, something they own and something beyond rts.

Now they will make a 40k trilogy or the Horus Heresy. I know some people doubt it, but GW has allowed CA quite a lot of freedom with Fantasy Battle (starting with resurrecting a then-dead world), so shooting-based Total War and a mix of smaller and larger units is a thing for the next few years.

Warhammer 1 was already the retarded shit because they dumbed down combat mechanics as the remaining devs at the company are too stupid to know how to make fantasy battles work without turning them into boring number crunching.

After Pharaoh's flop, CA will finally understand that fans of their historical games and Warhammer are two different groups...or they will decide that they should fully devote themselves to simplified games, and over time their "historical" games became indistinguishable from fantasy ones.

There by Medieval III some day and will be like Pharaoh.

 

[Mitleser2020]

Had they given it its due focus and didn't throw in retarded jewing with shit like "you need to own all three games to play this, goy", they could be happily milking it to this day.

They dropped that a while ago. Nowadays, you only need the other games to have access to the other (base) factions.

Previously, you had to own all three Total War: WARHAMMER games to access Immortal Empires. However, Immortal Empires is now available to all WARHAMMER III owners, regardless of whether they own the other titles.

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/tww3_immortalempires_240_faq/

 

[Raghar]

The problem is nobody wanted simplified games. CA decided that on theirs own when they simplified Rome II total war.

 

[Nutmeg]

That's not true. I want the game sufficiently abstracted so that it can be played well by an AI, given that it's primarily a single player game. This sometimes entails simplification e.g. what I've been harping on about for a while -- going back to a "board game" format for the strategic map.

But they're not doing this either.

Total War is just a UEBS competitor. That's the direction they've gone, because ultimately that's what the market and consumers want. The way to fix this is radical political reform towards centrally planned game creation bureaus and worker owned co-ops but I digress.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Shogun 1 had tremendous style, though. And everything that it did do, it did well.

I think a lot of people lack perspective. I played Shogun coming from Myth on release, and it was mindblowing at the time. As I said before, I also miss the simple elegance of the Risk-style strategic layer, which I feel has been made needlessly complicated in later titles and doesn't really add anything except distractions that must be constantly micromanaged.

 

[Nutmeg]

I played Shogun even before it was released (I played the demo which was released a few months prior IIRC). I thought it was the best game ever made. I spent 100s of hours on it.

 

[Harthwain]

I think a lot of people lack perspective. I played Shogun coming from Myth on release, and it was mindblowing at the time. As I said before, I also miss the simple elegance of the Risk-style strategic layer, which I feel has been made needlessly complicated in later titles and doesn't really add anything except distractions that must be constantly micromanaged.

I would love to see a mix of Total War: Medieval 1 map with movement points and fixed roads. You could a road go by a forest, making it an excellent place for an ambush. Or have hills/a river at some point, making it a great defensive point. The complete free-form movement negates terrain most of the time.

 

[Raghar]

I think a lot of people lack perspective. I played Shogun coming from Myth on release, and it was mindblowing at the time. As I said before, I also miss the simple elegance of the Risk-style strategic layer, which I feel has been made needlessly complicated in later titles and doesn't really add anything except distractions that must be constantly micromanaged.

I would love to see a mix of Total War: Medieval 1 map with movement points and fixed roads. You could a road go by a forest, making it an excellent place for an ambush. Or have hills/a river at some point, making it a great defensive point. The complete free-form movement negates terrain most of the time.

Do you mean force army to go into place that is great for ambush? And then that army would be surprised and ambushed... And the leader of the army had rich parents that paid for his education and he got proper title on a prestige European university. And that was the reason why neither he, nor his subordinates ever scouted that place that would be obviously used for ambush.

That's what high education does to people. They are stopping thinking and they are doing what teachers told them.

 

[JarlFrank]

Talking about terrain, remember how Rome and Medieval 2 created the battle maps based on surrounding campaign map terrain, so if your army was stationed near a mountain you'd have steep hills, in a forest you'd have lots of trees, on a bridge you'd get an actual bridge battle, etc etc.

They no longer do this.

 

[OndrejSc]

This was true in Empire and Napoleon as well.

 

[Harthwain]

Do you mean force army to go into place that is great for ambush? And then that army would be surprised and ambushed... And the leader of the army had rich parents that paid for his education and he got proper title on a prestige European university. And that was the reason why neither he, nor his subordinates ever scouted that place that would be obviously used for ambush.

Yes, something like the Teutoburg Forest.

Obviously, you could make it so that each commander has his own stealth/conceal and scout/reveal characteristics (which were a thing as far as Medieval 1) to make it a bit more nuanced.

 

[OndrejSc]

You should be also able to smell the barbarian army from afar.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Wake me up when they make a game that:

1. Drops that 60iq province "development" system and replaces it with something at least as interesting as base building in a late nineties rts for 14 year olds.
2. Drops that criminal approach to ai/computer factions where everything related to them is designed to be as irritating/annoying as possible instead of providing challenge.

The battles ain't bad, but that stuff ceased to be exciting somewhere around Rome2, tops.

 

[AdamReith]

It's very interesting playing atilla a bit. It's the first time I've got into something >Rome 2.

I think it is decent but it's more like another company's immitation of Total War than a legitimate continuation. It lacks any charm and attention to detail, something designed to deliver a fix rather than truly immerse you.

The retarded unit level health bar and pointless campaign busy work really weigh it down but there's still fun to be had if I distance it from classic Total War in my head.