Total War: PHARAOH

[Eirinjas]

It's got a black pharaoh what more diversity could you want?

There actually were Nubian pharaohs for a period (the 25th dynasty, to be exact). Not during the late bronze age collapse though, but while the Egyptian pharaohs from that time weren't black, they weren't light-skinned either. The actual pharaoh at that time was Ramesses III, who looked like this:

The Total War depiction doesn't seem that far off, tbh.

Two things:
1. What did the paint on that look like before centuries of oxidation?
2. Egyptians were fat diabetics, but you rarely see that depicted in their art

 

[Gromoer]

For some reason these bright heads never came up with the idea of making ranged units prioritise enemy targets that are not engaged in melee thus avoiding friendly fire. Simple tuneable fire at will zones would have done the trick nicely, but somehow it is left for the player to micromanage.

 

[Lacrymas]

I'd make ranged units be unable to fire at enemies engaged in melee combat at all, except maybe if the archers are shooting them in the back. This entire franchise (apart from Troy, funnily enough) has devolved into training as few melee units as possible and then overwhelming the enemy with archers. Pretty boring gameplay if you ask me.

 

[JarlFrank]

The series has declined with Rome 2, and ever since it has only been going further down with each subsequent entry.

 

[Oberon]

We wuz Egyptianz
We wuz Romanz
We wuz Britonz
We wuz Aztecz
We wuz Jewz
We wuz Ainuz

Am I missing any?

 

[Sinilevä]

Guys, guys, guys the prerelease trailer just dropped! So hyped!

Spoiler

 

[El Presidente]

I absolutely love Egypt as a setting, but it's highly likely we'll never see it portrayed again as anything but a cheap platform for faggots and fat whores going full "look at the amazing ancient empires the Mighty Blacks managed to raise! If only le evil whites didn't ruin everything and enslaved them all right guise wink wink wink", which is, obviously, yet another ridiculous Blackrock-funded piece of demoralization. I mean what should we even expect from the developers of HYENAS, after all?

CA is dead and gone, just play their old stuff and ignore the new.

We were Kings and such.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

 

[likash]

Play Rome 2 Bronze Age mod instead of this garbage. There are overhaul modes for Rome 2 and Attila that make these games much better. Ex: Dei for Rome 2 and Ancient Empires for Attila.

These clowns are not even trying anymore. They are just re-skining shit like EA does with the sport games.

 

[Lacrymas]

Overhaul mods tend to either bloat the game or have no concept of balance.

 

[Pocgels]

I thought broken crescent was a really good mod for Medieval 2, granted it has been close to a decade since I've played it

 

[Konjad]

The series has declined with Rome 2, and ever since it has only been going further down with each subsequent entry.

Attila was great and Three Kingdoms was good.

Everything else was garbage though.

 

[JarlFrank]

The best TW released in recent times is Rome Remastered, because the company that worked on it (Feral) listened to the community after a disappointing launch and made several patches that remove modding limits, so now you can have a Total War with Europa Universalis sized maps.

RTR Imperium Surrectum is a giant of a mod, and while it's still in early beta, it's already impressive and fun to play.
I really hope they do the same for Medieval 2 (which was ported to mobile already, and Rome Remastered was based on the mobile version).

When it comes to the bronze age, sadly it's a less popular setting for both commercial game releases and mods.
There's a bronze age mod for Rome 1 made by Russkis, which is a little buggy (sometimes crashes) but otherwise pretty good.
There is one that's still being developed for Rome 2, and it's looking good.
There's also one for Crusader Kings 3.

But when it comes to commercial projects, the bronze age - or pre-classical antiquity in general, the earliest we get is usually Alexander and nothing before him - is rarely used as a setting for grand strategy and wargame titles.
When it comes to pure wargames, Field of Glory 2 had a bronze age DLC.
Other than that there's only city-builders, mostly set in Egypt (but there's one in Mesopotamia, Nebuchadnezzar).

I did recently find an in-development grand strategy game set in the bronze age, mostly made by one dude, and it looks glorious:


Sadly it has no manual combat system, just your average Paradox style autoresolve, but I talked to the developer and he's really putting a lot of effort into delivering those bronze age vibes.
I'm looking forward to this one a lot.

 

[Nutmeg]

According to some YT video I watched on the Bronze Age collapse, Bronze Age armies were usually a few 100 people, at most 2000. Cities likewise rarely exceeded 10,000. So Bronze Age wars were like one village in modern Europe fighting another village in modern Europe (except further apart), where one guy in the village proclaims himself king and also recruits people from the surrounding farmsteads into his little war band.

 

[tabacila]

Seems like the crack CA AI team is literally on crack with this one as well:

 

[Lacrymas]

AI in Total War is beyond shit. More news at 11.

 

[OndrejSc]

Total War: 3rd Reich when?

 

[Lacrymas]

Total War: 3rd Reich when?

Only if Germany gets a mechanic where they get numerical bonuses the more Jews they gas.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

How much is even known about ancient Egyptian warfare? It wasn't a particularly warlike society. I assume this is just going to be "war dogs" tier typical Total War fantasy.

 

[OndrejSc]

How much is even known about ancient Egyptian warfare? It wasn't a particularly warlike society. I assume this is just going to be "war dogs" tier typical Total War fantasy.

 

[Lacrymas]

We don't know a lot about bronze age warfare in general, not only Egyptian style.

 

[OndrejSc]

We know chariots were the equivalent of PzKpfw VI Ausf. E. And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kadesh was like Kursk of the Bronze age.

 

[Lord_Potato]

How much is even known about ancient Egyptian warfare? It wasn't a particularly warlike society. I assume this is just going to be "war dogs" tier typical Total War fantasy.

You don't get to survive thousands of years as an ancient civilization by not being a warlike society. Natural borders (Mediterranean, Red Seas and a western desert) helped Egypt of course, but they did their share of fighting and had a reasonably strong military. Just read about the battle of Kadesh, Egyptians brought 20-50k soldiers to the battlefield (according to different estimates) against a similar number of Hittites.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

How much is even known about ancient Egyptian warfare? It wasn't a particularly warlike society. I assume this is just going to be "war dogs" tier typical Total War fantasy.

You don't get to survive thousands of years as an ancient civilization by not being a warlike society. Natural borders (Mediterranean, Red Seas and a western desert) helped Egypt of course, but they did their share of fighting and had a reasonably strong military. Just read about the battle of Kadesh, Egyptians brought 20-50k soldiers to the battlefield (according to different estimates) against a similar number of Hittites.

That's Middle Kingdom, when they were already a very old civilization and were forced to adopt foreign military technologies such as Ramses' famous chariots. That period of geopolitical expansion and large military projects seem very exceptional in Egyptian history(I assume this is the period depicted in the game). They just aren't associated with many military innovations and seem to have had a rather primitive military for most of their history.

 

[Harthwain]

How much is even known about ancient Egyptian warfare? It wasn't a particularly warlike society. I assume this is just going to be "war dogs" tier typical Total War fantasy.

You don't get to survive thousands of years as an ancient civilization by not being a warlike society. Natural borders (Mediterranean, Red Seas and a western desert) helped Egypt of course, but they did their share of fighting and had a reasonably strong military. Just read about the battle of Kadesh, Egyptians brought 20-50k soldiers to the battlefield (according to different estimates) against a similar number of Hittites.

That's Middle Kingdom, when they were already a very old civilization and were forced to adopt foreign military technologies such as Ramses' famous chariots. That period of geopolitical expansion and large military projects seem very exceptional in Egyptian history(I assume this is the period depicted in the game). They just aren't associated with many military innovations and seem to have had a rather primitive military for most of their history.

They also were not very expansive empire when compared to the Romans, the Mongols or the Ottomans.