Total War: PHARAOH

[Gromoer]

Pfff 3K didn’t sell because it’s as lame of a setting as Pharaoh is (probably even lamer). Chinese didn’t buy it because it’s not enough weeb, you know no flying people smashing entire armies with telekinetic punches. It’s died deservedly fast and good riddance.

 

[True Ukrainian]

3k had the strongest launch of any modern TW title. It's what gave CA the idea to try and appeal to Chinese gamers with WH3.

 

[likash]

You are better off playing the Bronze Age mod for Rome 2 than this crap.

 

[Lacrymas]

You are better off playing the Bronze Age mod for Rome 2 than this crap.

It's the same crap. There is only a marginal difference between Rome 2 and Pharaoh.

 

[Raghar]

You are better off playing the Bronze Age mod for Rome 2 than this crap.

It's the same crap. There is only a marginal difference between Rome 2 and Pharaoh.

I played Rome II recently, and I had blast with RELEASE DOGS button.
Ballistas hammering Romans and dogs eating retreating Romans looked amazing.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Dogs were freaking OP in Rome 2

 

[Theodora]

Maybe of interest to people who still get some enjoyment out of Rome 2 and its mods, the upcoming Divide et Impera update (1.33, currently in beta) finally updates the Rise of the Republic campaign to fit DeI's standards -- and it was already arguably the best campaign in Rome 2 vanilla. Bound to be a good time. I haven't had time to check out the Mithridatic Wars campaign they added in the previous update, but there's a lot to be excited for. We're blessed to have some slightly obsessive nerds making up for CA's shortcomings year after year.

 

[JarlFrank]

They aren't "exaggeratedly vilified". It just feels shitty to have to pay double/separately to get what people think ought to be a single product.

The single product, FoG2, was released a couple of years ago with plenty of nations and units to play with.
The other single product, FoG: Empires, was released a while later as a grand strategy game with optional FoG2 integration for fighting out battles. It works surprisingly well together.

Both then received a bunch of expansion packs centered around other historical eras. They were complete games out of the box, just had additional content added by DLC. The FoG Empires expansion set during the rise of Persia is a completely independent campaign from the original, their content does not interact in any way. It's exactly like older Total War expansions, where buying Barbarian Invasion and Alexander for Rome 1 gave you two new campaigns to play with, but had no impact on the base campaign.

The FoG2 DLCs allow you to pit any army from any included region and era against each other, but the "intended" way to play it is to keep it historical and only fight battles where it's nations from the same historical timeframe fighting each other. In fact, you have to select a specific option in the battle/campaign setup menu to enable armies from different eras to face each other. If you have FoG: Medieval, you can use that mode to play against ancient armies if you have FoG2, for the ultimate wargame sandbox. Swiss pikemen vs Macedonian phalanx? You can do it!

This doesn't mean you need to buy all three games and all DLC to get a complete package. What it means is, if you buy these games they interact with each other in a way that gives you more, additional features as a nice little bonus (not intended to be the core gameplay experience).

 

[Lacrymas]

If we are to believe the base game's blurb (and why wouldn't we), there are 48 nations and factions in the base game alone. I don't know how anyone can interpret that as "half a game".

 

[JarlFrank]

If empire 2 is ever made, it will have a grand total of three factions, each with three hero characters. Every additional faction will be DLC.

Friedrich of Prussia: Hero with exceptionally high armor vs enemy gunpowder (based on the anecdote how his cigarette wallet saved him from a bullet once), can recruit a special unit of 2 meter tall giant grenadiers
Empress Maria Theresia: Girlboss hero with a varied unit roster because the Austrian Empire has so many ethnicities in it, but having too many different units in your army can lead to a Karansebes event
King George: Gets a massive bonus on taxes but it increases revolt risk, gets unique spell "Britannia rules the waves" that makes ships invincible for 5 seconds

 

[9ted6]

More like Phar-blows.

If empire 2 is ever made, it will have a grand total of three factions, each with three hero characters. Every additional faction will be DLC.

Friedrich of Prussia: Hero with exceptionally high armor vs enemy gunpowder (based on the anecdote how his cigarette wallet saved him from a bullet once), can recruit a special unit of 2 meter tall giant grenadiers
Empress Maria Theresia: Girlboss hero with a varied unit roster because the Austrian Empire has so many ethnicities in it, but having too many different units in your army can lead to a Karansebes event
King George: Gets a massive bonus on taxes but it increases revolt risk, gets unique spell "Britannia rules the waves" that makes ships invincible for 5 seconds

Not sure this is accurate. It'd never have naval combat.

 

[Lacrymas]

Hot take: Naval combat in TW is unnecessary and CA are right to leave it out. It adds almost nothing to the game while taking up enormous amounts of resources and dev time.

 

[JarlFrank]

Rome 2 had the best approach to naval combat by having combined naval-land action. Sadly the actual naval combat mechanics are weaker than Empire and Shogun 2. Especially coastal city invasions are amazing when you have both an army and a navy.

Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail does this too, as will Ultimate General: American Revolution.

 

[thesecret1]

Ultimate General

If Ultimate General added a campaign layer that'd be at least comparable in complexity with TW's, CA would be finished.

 

[True Ukrainian]

Allowing the navy to bombard the coast also adds depth to the campaign map.

 

[AdamReith]

Navy was the only modernish mechanic that I actually found interesting. The tall ships blasting each other to pieces in moments in Fall of the Samurai was pretty amazing.

 

[JarlFrank]

Ultimate General

If Ultimate General added a campaign layer that'd be at least comparable in complexity with TW's, CA would be finished.

That's what he's aiming to do with his new American Revolution game.

 

[Harthwain]

The single product, FoG2, was released a couple of years ago with plenty of nations and units to play with.
The other single product, FoG: Empires, was released a while later as a grand strategy game with optional FoG2 integration for fighting out battles. It works surprisingly well together.

I am aware of that. I am talking in the context of Field of Glory: Kingdoms. There are times when certain business models are justified and there are times when the exact same models become a questionable practice. Which is what happened to Paradox, for example.

If we are to believe the base game's blurb (and why wouldn't we), there are 48 nations and factions in the base game alone. I don't know how anyone can interpret that as "half a game".

Nobody does. The number of nations and factions is not the issue here.

Hot take: Naval combat in TW is unnecessary and CA are right to leave it out. It adds almost nothing to the game while taking up enormous amounts of resources and dev time.

Wrong. Navies are important aspect of any strategy game that takes place in an area where there are large bodies of water present. Or at least they should be. There are many examples in history where having a strong navy was vital for a nation and one point or another. I wouldn't mind abstracting it (kind of like Europa Universalis does), but naval combat as such is a must.

 

[Lacrymas]

Field of Glory: Kingdoms is a Grand Strategy game, end of sentence. If you want to, you can combine it with Field of Glory 2, which is a standalone, complete tactical game. Nobody cut out FoG2 out of Kingdoms to sell it separately. Quite the contrary, FoG2 came out first and is a tabletop adaptation.

 

[Gromoer]

Assaulting coastal cities with Danes’ naval units in Charlemagne was absolutely awesome. I keep recalling Charlemagne and I think what they did with vikings there is the best possible take on making a faction distinguishable. Their bonuses and penalties effectively forced a particular playstyle which somewhat resembles their historical image.
I may suggest that as Charlemagne had a pretty narrow selection of factions, it was easier to make them more distinguishable. Though I struggle to recall any other faction that was as cool as vikings in Charlemagne.

 

[JarlFrank]

Yeah the ability to play out battles in FoG:Empires is basically a bonus for people who own both games, not an integral feature of the game itself.

Imagine if Paradox made a tactical battle game and then offered the ability to import EU4 or CK3 battles into that game, play them out, re-import the savegame to EU4/CK3.
There are actually mods that do that with Medieval 2 Total War.

That's what FoG Empires + FoG2 is.

 

[Lacrymas]

I'd even argue that it's not a super good idea to combine them because most of the fights are lopsided and don't use FoG2 to its fullest, so it really is just a bonus.

 

[Raghar]

Dogs were freaking OP in Rome 2

Early on you could get them only as mercenaries and 300 gold upkeep, in comparison to normally trained levy spearmen 60 gold upkeep, or 90 gold slingers upkeep. That's a lot of income in early campaign, if you want more of them 900 gold upkeep for 3 units is quite nasty.
So 15 units of cavalry resistant spearmen that can held a line for a bit (or at least make slingers/bowmen to run out of ammo), or 3 units of dogs.

The real kickass dogs required animal DLC and were in certain area hirable as mercenary only.
Problem is Rome II required DLC to have fun and that's bad game design.

 

[Harthwain]

Field of Glory: Kingdoms is a Grand Strategy game, end of sentence.

So is Total War. And that's the benchmark you are going to be measured against. Even Knights of Honor (1 and 2) also had tactical battles. Just because some grand strategy games don't have tactical battles doesn't mean they all can't. This argument gets even more ridiculous when we're talking about the game that literally offers the possibility of integration of tactical battles as an addition to its strategical game, but it's sold separately as another game.

Nobody cut out FoG2 out of Kingdoms to sell it separately.

That argument doesn't hold water after Field of Glory: Empires. Now selling it separately is a conscious business model, not "it just happened to be that way" scenario.

 

[JarlFrank]

So is Total War. And that's the benchmark you are going to be measured against. Even Knights of Honor (1 and 2) also had tactical battles. Just because some grand strategy games don't have tactical battles doesn't mean they all can't. This argument gets even more ridiculous when we're talking about the game that literally offers the possibility of integration of tactical battles as an addition to its strategical game, but it's sold separately as another game.

Field of Glory: Empires was designed as a Paradox-style grand strategy without tactical battles, they added the FoG2 integration as a cool option for people who own both games.

I'm all for adding tactical combat to grand strategy games, I find auto-resolved combat extremely boring, the battles are the highlight of every campaign for me. But I see absolutely no issue with what FoG: Empires did there.

That argument doesn't hold water after Field of Glory: Empires. Now selling it separately is a conscious business model, not "it just happened to be that way" scenario.

Wrong. Field of Glory 2: Medieval was released first as a sequel to FoG2.
Then they announced Kingdoms as a sequel to Empires, and decided to keep the same integration feature.

It again happened to be that way.

Both games are made by different dev teams IIRC, so it wouldn't even be feasible to make a game that includes both modes natively.