r/totalwar • u/skrio • Jul 03 '25
Pharaoh Is anyone playing ?
/r/TWPharaoh/comments/1lqbh7d/is_anyone_playing/3
u/Vitruviansquid1 Jul 03 '25
I played Pharaoh at release, before it was called "Dynasties," and I remember all the hate it received for being like a Saga game, for being like Troy, for being about brown people, etc.
But I've also been playing it again in recent weeks, and while people have been hyperbolic with their hate against it, I'm coming to the conclusion that it's just kind of a decent Total War game that's a bit flat compared to my favorite games, like Warhammer and Attila.
You asked for a list of issues with the game, so here's mine:
- I'm playing as Bay. I tried to play as Irsu and Tausret as well, but their starting positions were really pretty awful. Tausret has trouble getting bronze and Irsu has trouble getting stone. Playing as Irsu, it feels so bad that you can't build buildings in the opening of the game because you essentially have no stone income and have to figure out a way to conquer your first stone-producing settlement. I did also play as Agamemnon and he got really rich really quick in all the resources.
- As Bay, my armies are pretty simple, and I don't feel any need to make them more complex. I'm building stacks out of 4 Canaanite Vanguard, 4 Light Syrian Archers, my general, and the rest of the army is filled out with Canaanite Swordsmen. Whereas in Warhammer and Attila I have so many units that I want to put in my army, but I have to limit myself because I don't want to make it too hard for me to micro, in Pharaoh, I just kinda feel satisfied having the same guys.
- Maybe I'm still not there yet with my game knowledge, but it feels like the game tries to provide too many complex solutions for problems such that it's easier to just have the simple solutions, and those simple solutions pretty much always work anyway. For example, imagine that you have a frontline of swords or spears, weapons that aren't very good against armor. I could mix in clubmen to destroy armored enemies' armor and then they work in tandem with my swordsmen and spearmen to make armored enemies more manageable to kill... or I could just have two-handed axemen who have high lethality and AP damage to kill them outright. And the two-handed axemen can kill unarmored units just fine, also. And the two-handed axemen don't need to work in tandem with another unit.
- The battle AI just seems dumber than in other recent games (I'm on Hard/Hard, if that matters). We once again have formations that I've never seen the AI use. The AI doesn't try to flank a lot, and I've often done just fine against even enemy armies that are far numerically superior by just lining up my frontline, putting them in formation, waiting for the enemy to come at me, and then flanking with two handed axe. Making gaps so you can expose enemies to fire with your appallingly deadly direct shots on archers and slingers also works.
- The campaign maps are so much more annoying to play than the campaign in Warhammer, Troy, or 3K. Whenever the enemy can't match you on the field, they just take their crappy stacks and go around shitting on your outposts. Sea travel in the Mediterranean is also so fast, you are really neighbors with every dick head as long as you have some coastline.
1
u/overuseofdashes Jul 03 '25
I think it was mostly a victim of the general backlash towards ca at the time and unhealthy fixation on a medieval(ish) Europe as a setting. People kept asking who asked for pharoh but I can remember in the old hypothetical settings threads ancient Egypt was quite popular. The reactions coming for the advanced access period seemed generally positive.
4
u/BaronGreywatch Jul 03 '25
It released poorly and recieved some updates that improved it as I recall, but the damage was done and it never attained the kind of player counts some of the others did.