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Total War: PHARAOH

Eirinjas

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 8, 2014
Messages
2,521
Location
The Moon
RPG Wokedex
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:
KhonsuTemple-Karnak-RamessesIII-2.jpg


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

Educated
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Joined
Jan 26, 2023
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238
Location
Vault 15
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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

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
18,625
Pathfinder: Wrath
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.
 

Oberon

Learned
Joined
Feb 26, 2021
Messages
309
Location
Helheim
We wuz Egyptianz
We wuz Romanz
We wuz Britonz
We wuz Aztecz
We wuz Jewz
We wuz Ainuz

Am I missing any?
 

El Presidente

Arcane
Joined
Nov 3, 2018
Messages
1,569
Location
Oval Office
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.
 

likash

Savant
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
May 9, 2018
Messages
938
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.
 
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Pocgels

Scholar
Joined
Nov 15, 2016
Messages
166
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
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
34,300
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
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

Arcane
Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 12, 2013
Messages
23,197
Location
Mahou Kingdom
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.
 
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Joined
Sep 1, 2020
Messages
1,426
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.
 

Lord_Potato

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 24, 2017
Messages
10,800
Location
Free City of Warsaw
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.
 
Joined
Sep 1, 2020
Messages
1,426
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

Magister
Joined
Dec 13, 2019
Messages
5,321
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.
 

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