Hittite Experience / Pharaoh Review

[Xeno]

The Hittite experience and Pharaoh review. I'll start off with the bad. My first campaign (2nd attempt) playing as the Great King Sup, and when I reached a minor victory I've started a second campaign as Kurunta, and have been bouncing between the two campaigns.

My major gripe is that I don't feel like I'm playing as the Great King of the Hittite Empire as Sup, I'm just another faction, the same as my neighbours. Like there's a court and all with neighbouring Hittite city states, but it doesn't feel like we're a nation or an empire.

I feel like all the Hittite factions should start as your vassals, and each vassal has a mission tree which once successfully completed they confederate with you. However, the Hittite vassals are able to fight amongst themselves without calling you in, perhaps you have to spend a currency to force them to stop or something. As Kurunta you are a vassal of Sup as part of the Hittite Empire but you are able to still fight the other Hittite city states, and other outside forces. With options to stay within the Empire and fight for the crown or break off and do your own thing.

Talking about vassals, I did learn that Sup does have the diplomatic option to vassalise other factions when Kurunta isn't able too, so every couple of turns I would check to see who I could vassalise. It wasn't long until I actually felt like I was playing as a Great King of an Empire, and that the court started to feel personal and relatable as these were my vassals.

Sup's campaign other than easily en-massing vassals is spent chasing after Legitimacy, which I find tiresome and tedious it took 70~ turns to accumulate 200. In my quest for Legitimacy I'm only using the court feature to steal it from other members in the court.

The rest of my time is spent chasing Phrygian and Kaskian invaders. I think there needs to be a unique outpost or building in specific regions to prevent the regular spawning of local nomadic armies.

My general opinion of Pharaoh is that there's too much stuff and fluff even for a Total War title, and I feel the game could be streamlined a lot. Take settlement management, there's so much fluff and I feel half of the building available for major settlements I will never build. Administration, Landmark(if it has one), Management, Military Support, Recruitment, Production, Resources & Religion. Compared with Warhammer 3 that has Province Capital, Landmark (if it has one), Resource (if it has one), Basic Military, Advanced Military, Defence and Infrastructure.

That 7 building categories compared to WH3's 4, excluding one off categories for both titles like Ports which both games forces you to have, resources and landmarks. Anyway, once I've figured out what's actually worth investing in and what's fluff I can say that I like Sup's faction buildings. His unique major and minor settlement garrison building although a little bit more expensive than the generic type it does impact influence and give an extra unit. Along with the Safe Haven building that increases happiness and growth, you have a nice two building combo that negates the Management category buildings (fluff). Army Supply Centre is fluff.

Kurunta's faction buildings feel more fluffy (useless), for example I try to standardise my province development, so for minor settlements one slot for a garrison building and the other two slots for resources, or a obelisk or a unique resource management building. The Mercenary Hunting Village doesn't fit well into standardise plan, and doesn't seem worth a slot. The other two unique buildings are for major settlements, now Military Sabotage Camp would replace Sup's Army Supply Centre. I like the idea of it, however once your empire expands it just wastes a slot. The final faction building - Mercenary Centre, I like this building and it replaces two generic buildings, however the Campaign Customisation negates this building by changing the recruitment slots.

I said I would start off with the bad and haven't really reached any good bits. I haven't even touched on recruitment, battles, technology, gods and legacies.

I like the units, and recruitment, especially regional recruitment. I do enjoy that aspect of the game. The battles do feel better than Troy, however, the hitpoint system with the armour system destroys the immersion, makes the charges un-impactful and it just doesn't look right. Please revert back to pre-Rome 2 combat systems!!!

The tabs! I feel that the tech tree in Pharaoh is the weakest out of all Total War titles. I personally feel that Pharaoh's technology tree is the least impactful on your campaign. For example take Empire/Napoleon, your research is locked by what you have constructed on the campaign, whilst having buildings/units locked behind technology, and you can increase your research by having more colleges and universities. The campaign and tech tree play off each other and is impactful, another good tech tree is Thrones of Britannia, where for example if you recruit a certain amount of the same unit you will unlock research to be able to boost them, or upgrade them.

Gods and Legacies. As the Hittities there two legacies to pick from, and you are advised go with one. As Sup collecting vassals, I like the advised legacy, it is useful, however as Kurunta both legacies are based on vassals, so they're useless until you become a Great King or Pharaoh. The god tab has been completely ignored.

Wow, a wall of text, never knew I had it in me. I very rarely express my feelings for a game. The Hittite experience isn't what I was expecting, I was expecting to control an empire so this is disappointing. Pharaoh as a whole is very wordy and full of fluff, sometimes it causes more questions than it answers. The experience feels like a Saga title, and similar to Thrones of Britannia needs rework, it is not worth the price tag it is at.

[Darth Glorious]

Raider armies love to raze your outpost so I build a juicy outpost as honey trap and get an army ambush nearby. Work every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ time.

[Kendji]

The critisism about Hittites not being an empire is fair tbh, but it's also historical. The Hittite empire where disintegrating and vassals declared independence or rebelled, Kurunta possibly launched a Civil War and the Assyrians had fought a Battle of Nihriya with them where the Hittites probably lost a chunck of their military power.

What I miss with the Hittites is this level of danger and being on the brink playing as them, this urgency. Suppiluliuma even abandoned Hatti, weeks before it got burned. Potentially setting up shop in Tarhuntassa or somewhere else. The hittites had done this twice before in their history, mounting a fight-back from a more secure city.

Nice review!

[Aluminum Elite Master]

A handful of important things first:

Kurunta is not a vassal when you play as him. He's a Hittite and part of the court, if you so choose, but being in the court and being a vassal are different things mechanically.

Kurunta can annex just like Sup... it's not a faction mechanic, but a King/Pharaoh mechanic. Become King, get the legitimacy up, and you get certain special abilities as King/Pharaoh. Kurunta just doesn't start as King like Sup. does.

The tech tree is ridiculously powerful in later techs. The edicts that drop upkeep costs on units... the edict for gold per T-5 building... some of those are super OP, actually. But yeah, in general, it's a tech tree that requires no buildings at all (even TW:WH has some factions with techs locked according to what is built, let alone how much that happens in Napoleon or how Shogun 2 locked entire tiers of tech in FotS depending on development levels).



I agree, though, with a fair number of comments here.

The Phyrgian and Kaska invasions (and Libu as well) should have more to them. It's pretty lame that they just spawn on the map in roughly the same spot every so often, with no way to be affected. They become whack-a-mole nuisances eventually.

Battles are way better than Troy. Troy was a mess, IMO, as melee was extremely brief and there was no time to maneuver... just rush everyone into battle. Troy was all-time bad TW experience for me in the tactical game. In contrast, Pharaoh does so much better there, especially with representing the effect of armor.

And overall, yes, Hittites feel like they got a lot less detail than Egypt. Though, that being said, Canaanites are even worse (don't even have their own court).

And there definitely are balance issues with buildings. Sup's garrison buildings are amazing... meanwhile, there are some factions with these terrible buildings for adding sacking/raiding income in adjacent provinces, and I hardly ever raid, so they are a total waste.

[elixEtneicnA]

Xeno eredeti hozzászólása:

The Hittite experience and Pharaoh review.
Kurunta's faction buildings feel more fluffy (useless), for example I try to standardise my province development, so for minor settlements one slot for a garrison building and the other two slots for resources, or a obelisk or a unique resource management building. The Mercenary Hunting Village doesn't fit well into standardise plan, and doesn't seem worth a slot. The other two unique buildings are for major settlements, now Military Sabotage Camp would replace Sup's Army Supply Centre. I like the idea of it, however once your empire expands it just wastes a slot. The final faction building - Mercenary Centre, I like this building and it replaces two generic buildings, however the Campaign Customisation negates this building by changing the recruitment slots.

I myself never ONCE even used one of Kurunta's factional buildings plus you start off with the grand temple of Kurunta. In just a few turns if you rapidly take the entire province to the west with 4 regions, then you will have max favor for the god Kurunta no problem. He has a really easy starting position and the only challenge is keeping pace with Suppulul's legitimacy values during the civil war when you join it. I found his faction specific buildings stale and worthless. So immediately after I got the Great King achievement with Kurunta (around turn 40-50) I was bored out of my mind and couldn't handle anymore. The Hittites have a much better skinned civil war CINEMATIC though with their Hittite panopoly and all...........