Attention CA - Feedback from a 10k hour player of your Games

[LetGodSortThemOut]

Hi.

I've played 10k hours of Total War games (please note, 0h on Warhammer TW, ew). Probably A LOT more if we can include hours on MTW2 before it was Steam logged.

Q: Who asked for Pharoah? I've never seen it trumpeted in any TW discussion ever.

The game has some good improvements over previous TW titles, most of which are Diplomacy and Economy related. Experience/Tier/Traits gain for Generals is pretty good here. Unlocking Titles is pretty interesting added facet to that. Battle is ok. Not the best, not the worst. Maybe I'm not executing correctly yet, but Chariots seem not that useful though, or perhaps it is the terrain limitations of most of the battle maps that sets them back.

Regions are better balanced than in some other TW titles- Thrones was atrocious, MW2 needs more regions (settlements), Empire could have done with some large regions being split up a little more (i.e. France, Spain, England), 3 Kingdoms was getting somewhere, Shogun 2 was good enough for the geographic limitations of Japan, RomeII and Attila were decent.

But what Pharoah most suffers from is being placed in a Historical setting no one asked for. If you took the Diplomacy, Economy and Generals management and pasted it over the setting of Empire or Medieval, you'd have a hit instead of a revolt.

Why didn't you do that? It seems like an obvious move. It kind of blows my mind a little where this even came from.

I dunno where I was going with all this other than to say I will probably keep pouring more hours in to a modded out Empire or MTW2 before I even get close to eclipsing 100h here on Pharaoh. It's not because the game is bad, it's because I don't really care about the age so it's not as engaging as other TW games well over 10yrs old. That should be a troubling bit of input and raise questions about where some of the decisions that led to this game came from.

Please take a community pulse before you really start pouring resources in to another game set in a period no one wants to play. Simulating the era and experience of it is what it seems like most historical domination strategy players want. Thanks for teaching me more about the period than I was interested in knowing I suppose, but you'd have more grateful players (payers) if you gave them something they actually want.

Also, if you do MTW3, steal some heraldry/title/family concepts from CK.

See yas on the next one hopefully.

[Iskar]

Publicado originalmente por Hugh de Salle:

Publicado originalmente por Defmonkey:

You are joking arent you? Base game AI? I vividy recall lining up scorpions to shoot the general off its horse while the AI army stand s there and looks at you.

That is not my experience normally if you have range advantage the AI will advance and not sit still , The AI if on high ground will sit if it feels it has a good advantage and plenty of ranged troops.

Yeah, that is NOT how it used to be in older titles. I remember enemies just sitting ducks until my archers had emptied their entire ammunition them. Later AI improvements by mods did away with that but it was definitely an issue in the old vanilla games.

[VoiD]

Publicado originalmente por kpt. Wodzionka:

I think it's not only aesthetic - bronze age is severely limited in troops / strategies etc. I agree that if the improvements they made were applied to a more complex (warfare-wise) period of time, it would be much better.
I'm currently waiting for more content or a better price. If they did another Medieval, Empire, Shogun or some other period they've not done yet (early pike and shot?) I would definitely have already bought it.

I think you're all right.

-The setting sucks, nobody cares about the era, hell 99.9% of the players can't even name any of these generals or imagine if they were even relevant or made up characters.

-The era itself limits gameplay, it's basically a lesser version of Rome, which is already lesser than Medieval by default, you're missing several unit types and weapons, the game basically only has infantry, ranged infantry, and charriots, and the later kind of sucks and gets stuck everywhere so most players probably don't even use them.

-People are tired of the 10th Rome2 reskin using the same moshpit battles, the same damage systems, the same buildings & province systems, with a slightly different UI.

[Iskar]

Publicado originalmente por VoiD:

Publicado originalmente por kpt. Wodzionka:

I think it's not only aesthetic - bronze age is severely limited in troops / strategies etc. I agree that if the improvements they made were applied to a more complex (warfare-wise) period of time, it would be much better.
I'm currently waiting for more content or a better price. If they did another Medieval, Empire, Shogun or some other period they've not done yet (early pike and shot?) I would definitely have already bought it.

I think you're all right.

-The setting sucks, nobody cares about the era, hell 99.9% of the players can't even name any of these generals or imagine if they were even relevant or made up characters.

-The era itself limits gameplay, it's basically a lesser version of Rome, which is already lesser than Medieval by default, you're missing several unit types and weapons, the game basically only has infantry, ranged infantry, and charriots, and the later kind of sucks and gets stuck everywhere so most players probably don't even use them.

-People are tired of the 10th Rome2 reskin using the same moshpit battles, the same damage systems, the same buildings & province systems, with a slightly different UI.

- counter example: I care that era. Laze bronze age is a fascinating epoch and I bet you many people can at least say "Ramesses". They may not know the number, but given he's the one from the relatively famous Medinet Habu reliefs, I don't think this is such an obscure period.
- correction: you have javelineers (short-range-high-damage), archers, slingers (long range, counter-archers) for ranged troops, spearmen of various weights, swordsmen for the line, swordsmen for ambushes, swordsmen for flanking, heavy axe shicktroops, light axe ambushers, light spear anti-chariot chargers for infantry, and finally heavy armoured melee chariots, ranged medium chariots and fast, light ranged skirmish chariots. That is probably even more diverse than the rosters of previous games.
- Pharaoh is really not a Rome2 reskin. The campaign mechanics are vastly different and the graphics are more akin Troy than to Rome2/Attila.

There are things one can criticise about the game (map scope, intended time scope of the campaign including lack of dynastic gameplay, maybe the price), but the above criticism is not valid.

[VoiD]

Publicado originalmente por Iskar:

Publicado originalmente por VoiD:

I think you're all right.

-The setting sucks, nobody cares about the era, hell 99.9% of the players can't even name any of these generals or imagine if they were even relevant or made up characters.

-The era itself limits gameplay, it's basically a lesser version of Rome, which is already lesser than Medieval by default, you're missing several unit types and weapons, the game basically only has infantry, ranged infantry, and charriots, and the later kind of sucks and gets stuck everywhere so most players probably don't even use them.

-People are tired of the 10th Rome2 reskin using the same moshpit battles, the same damage systems, the same buildings & province systems, with a slightly different UI.

- counter example: I care that era. Laze bronze age is a fascinating epoch and I bet you many people can at least say "Ramesses". They may not know the number, but given he's the one from the relatively famous Medinet Habu reliefs, I don't think this is such an obscure period.
- correction: you have javelineers (short-range-high-damage), archers, slingers (long range, counter-archers) for ranged troops, spearmen of various weights, swordsmen for the line, swordsmen for ambushes, swordsmen for flanking, heavy axe shicktroops, light axe ambushers, light spear anti-chariot chargers for infantry, and finally heavy armoured melee chariots, ranged medium chariots and fast, light ranged skirmish chariots. That is probably even more diverse than the rosters of previous games.
- Pharaoh is really not a Rome2 reskin. The campaign mechanics are vastly different and the graphics are more akin Troy than to Rome2/Attila.

There are things one can criticise about the game (map scope, intended time scope of the campaign including lack of dynastic gameplay, maybe the price), but the above criticism is not valid.

-The number is pretty important, as they are completely different people, but yes, that's probably the one and only name or term anyone could possibly relate too, which is exactly what I was saying.

- None of those are valid categories, after all, if you add all the missing unit types from the period you can also expand them all into sub categories, such as siege onagers, trebuchet, cannons, mortars, single rockets, rocket barrages, etc... Plus add more variants with different ammo types such as regular cannon balls, explosive cannon balls or grapeshots, if you attempt to go on that route your position gets much weaker.

- Yes, it's a Rome 2 reskin, and the fact that you'd name yet another Rome 2 reskin, Troy, as it's source, reinforces my point.

[IonizedMercury]

Publicado originalmente por Iskar:

Publicado originalmente por Hugh de Salle:

That is not my experience normally if you have range advantage the AI will advance and not sit still , The AI if on high ground will sit if it feels it has a good advantage and plenty of ranged troops.

Yeah, that is NOT how it used to be in older titles. I remember enemies just sitting ducks until my archers had emptied their entire ammunition them. Later AI improvements by mods did away with that but it was definitely an issue in the old vanilla games.

Yep. If you attacked the AI in Shogun2 for example, they'd not budge from whatever hill they camped on, even if you had a sizable firepower advantage. To say that the old TW AI was better is just plain BS. They either let nostalgia talk or are just parroting stuff from Volound and LotW.

[VoiD]

Publicado originalmente por IonizedMercury:

Publicado originalmente por Iskar:

Yeah, that is NOT how it used to be in older titles. I remember enemies just sitting ducks until my archers had emptied their entire ammunition them. Later AI improvements by mods did away with that but it was definitely an issue in the old vanilla games.

Yep. If you attacked the AI in Shogun2 for example, they'd not budge from whatever hill they camped on, even if you had a sizable firepower advantage. To say that the old TW AI was better is just plain BS. They either let nostalgia talk or are just parroting stuff from Volound and LotW.

The shogun 2 AI was not bad, but it was very predictable, they always did the exact same formation, flanking with the same cavalry in the exact same way in every battle.

The AI on Empire, however, was purely broken, I've had line infantry sitting behind their generals firing until they wiped out their entire unit and they didn't move a single unit, they will often leave the castle and form a single, stretched line accross the map (and maps in empire were MUCH bigger than in modern titles) in a way the player couldn't do even if he tried, and even in Medieval 2 there were plenty of examples of AI getting stuck around corners or on towers during sieges.

The AI of older games was rather bad, I don't believe they were poorly made, I believe that was some of the best people could do in games at the time.

The AI in modern TW games isn't just bad, however, they are intentionally crippling it, I don't know if you've been around during the launch of WH3 in which people complained, mostly over very minor bugs as if it was the apocalypse, but back then, before immortal empires, the AI was truly unleashed, at least compared to other TW games, it was relentless, hyper aggressive, and it was (finally) starting to move with multiple full army stacks of elite units as a single unit, I've had multiple battles I've lost because I simply couldn't fight such large forces, and those weren't event spawned armies from some random nonsense, actual empires on the map were training and sending armies in unison.

The battle Ai was also much better @ movement & flanking, often wrecking my ranged-centric armies around with cav and fleeing as I tried to chase them down, it was an incredible improvement over what we had back in WH2.

Then, for some reason, WH3 came out, and I believe they must have copy-pasted the AI models from WH2 into WH3, and all of these changes were suddenly gone, the AI was lobotomized, and I've never seen them moving multiple stacks in unison or flanking like they were doing previously ever again.

Hell, the AI was even ignoring my heroes as I tried to block them so they'd blob around my lord so he could AoE them all to death with artillery & magic, and after immortal empires, suddenly, they've started blobbing around single entities again.

Whatever happened seems to be a secret only CA knows about, and not many players seem to remember.

[Hugh de Salle]

Publicado originalmente por IonizedMercury:

Publicado originalmente por Iskar:

Yeah, that is NOT how it used to be in older titles. I remember enemies just sitting ducks until my archers had emptied their entire ammunition them. Later AI improvements by mods did away with that but it was definitely an issue in the old vanilla games.

Yep. If you attacked the AI in Shogun2 for example, they'd not budge from whatever hill they camped on, even if you had a sizable firepower advantage. To say that the old TW AI was better is just plain BS. They either let nostalgia talk or are just parroting stuff from Volound and LotW.

As oppose to the mass blob effect of modern TW where power creep is king and mass power stacks rule , Smaller maps no tactics utter crap imo.

[Adventurous350]

Publicado originalmente por Hugh de Salle:

Publicado originalmente por IonizedMercury:

Yep. If you attacked the AI in Shogun2 for example, they'd not budge from whatever hill they camped on, even if you had a sizable firepower advantage. To say that the old TW AI was better is just plain BS. They either let nostalgia talk or are just parroting stuff from Volound and LotW.

As oppose to the mass blob effect of modern TW where power creep is king and mass power stacks rule , Smaller maps no tactics utter crap imo.

That is just untrue. There is definitely tactics and Pharaoh is probably the most tactical of all. One, the maps have various types of terrain including advantageous positions such as cliffs and natural barriers such as rocks and bodies of water. Two, the formations have really added to this game. The Spear wall has been around before, but it is very useful. I have not made much use of the fall back function yet, but the advance formation function is fantastic. When attacking enemy camps, I have found my Anatolian Armored Swordsmen engaged at an entrance in a standstill. I tell them to push and they literally start pushing forward. It can then clear a path for my troops to enter the city. I could provide lots of examples, but to say it isn't tactical and is just a mass blob is false. If you want blobs then sure you can mindlessly throw your men at the enemy, but I rarely have mass blobs. If you call Pharaoh blobs then you must not enjoy any melee style Total War, because all melee is technically a blob.

[Defmonkey]

Publicado originalmente por Killersnipe:

Publicado originalmente por Defmonkey:

I would agree with some assessment here but, Historically we are dealing with Bronze age collapse with Egypt, correspondence with Mesopotamia for example during this time seems very limited. Had the time frame been say 100 years before then this would make a lot more sense, why CA didn't choose to have a broader time scale i don't know. But for the scope of this particular period i think is not bad.

Greece had all but collapsed by this point also... perhaps could have some pockets of resistance perhaps. This is one reason why you are not seeing all the the major civilizations you think should be there, also if they do historically correct Assyria, Babylon etc they would not be what many would expect, this isn't iron age. They are also a shadow of themselves, with names of kings that barely anyone knows unless you follow the history.

The problem with your attempted justification of the lack of more Bronze Age cultures in the base game fails due to the fact that CA has already announced 3 additional dlc factions, meaning by their own logic they acknowledge that there are more relevant factions to the time period, otherwise they would not have 3 addition factions prepped and ready to add to the game.

I can fully accept someone enjoying the game but I simply do not understand people defending CA’s scummy corporate practices. No one forced them the leave out half the games factions and make them paid dlc, whether that’s Mesopotamian factions or some others. And of course, they chose the date they did. As you said, they could have made it 100 years earlier and had a more expansive Bronze Age game that way as well (if they do intend to actually leave out Mesopotamian factions completely from this game). I don’t know which exact 3 factions are coming with the dlc but either way your logic still fails (for arguing that the three included base factions are the only ones relevant to the game’s historical scope)

This is not an attempted justification, i am providing some historical context as to why they may not make a lot of sense with a 1200bc start for a game based on sea peoples invasion through a largely egyptian view. I have stated as well that they could of shifted the time period to include more of the factions, but for whatever reason CA decided not to do that. Personally i am not fixated on this one way or another, i am all OK for dynasty spanning TW games and i'm all OK for more focused ones too. both perfectly fine provided the game mechanically functions well.

As for DLC i am not 100% sure what we will see... it will be the campaign item that i am most interested in seeing. This is not a failure on my part at all. You may find all of these faction DLC's to only be in the scope of the current map, personally i don't want this, but i can understand why some areas may not be included. This may not be to some peoples liking and i get that too.

If i had some guesstimates, for this time period we are missing 2 Pharaohs, Siptah (The Pharaoh that had Bay killed and may have had a clubbed foot) and Setnakhte (Ramesses father and the fist Pharaoh of the 20th Dynasty), so i think these will be very likely. Looking at the map that is there, we will probably see some form of Greek Faction / Western Anatolia, Lucian and similar, maybe some sea peoples. As for the existing Canaanite and Hittite i'm not sure what we will see, maybe some development of the city states in Canaan such Ugarit and Cyprus since there is a lot of history that has been discovered there from this time frame.

The campaign pack will be interesting to see what they do. I hope that they do include Mesopotamia within the campaign, i personally would like to see many more factions added. If they do a stick on Troy or Mythos i would be disappointed.

So on the aspect of defending CA's scummy corporate practices, i'm not sure if you are referring to me in your reply or was just a general remark, but one thing i would add here is that i've already posted above one reason why i dislike Shogun 2 since it was the game that made DLC mainstream and started the more egregious practices we see today, including blood pack and stripping out factions on release (Clan Hattori). I'm all for criticizing this but you are aware this practice has been going on for nearly 14 years with CA, this will happen regardless of the release, Medieval 3, Empire 2, Stone Age Total War, its going to happen to all of them going forward.

[Witski]

Publicado originalmente por normative:

Publicado originalmente por IonizedMercury:

Have you trolls anxiously fretted about Med2's or S2's player numbers when they were out?

No, because they had healthy player numbers.

No, they had a healthy and not toxic community

[IonizedMercury]

Publicado originalmente por Witski:

Publicado originalmente por normative:

No, because they had healthy player numbers.

No, they had a healthy and not toxic community

It's also a lame deflection because he in fact did not anxiously look at the concurrent player numbers back when S2 came out.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Publicado originalmente por VoiD:

-The setting sucks, nobody cares about the era, hell 99.9% of the players can't even name any of these generals or imagine if they were even relevant or made up characters.

-The era itself limits gameplay, it's basically a lesser version of Rome, which is already lesser than Medieval by default, you're missing several unit types and weapons, the game basically only has infantry, ranged infantry, and charriots, and the later kind of sucks and gets stuck everywhere so most players probably don't even use them.

It's these two that are the core problem CA should have anticipated.

I only recognized Ramses in Pharaoh. That's literally it, whereas in R2 I knew Hannibal, Julius Caesar, and in general knew of Carthage, Rome, Parthia, and the Iceni. Even in Troy, I knew of Hector, Achillies, and Agemennon. Even then, I can't spell half of the names correctly, but I least knew *something*.

Combine that with a roster that has the least technology to it in all of TW, and it's a sort of apathy that sets in for me. Despite liking the game, there's no 'wow' moment like getting matchlocks in S2, or getting Praetorians in R2, or the picklegun in Empire. There's no 'wow' moment when famous generals collide.

Pharaoh has a sort of emotional weightlessness to it. Even with liking a lot of the game mechanics, and even with kind-of overall enjoying the game, it does feel held back by having a very simple roster with a bunch of characters I know literally nothing about.

[IonizedMercury]

Publicado originalmente por Aluminum Elite Master:

Publicado originalmente por VoiD:

-The setting sucks, nobody cares about the era, hell 99.9% of the players can't even name any of these generals or imagine if they were even relevant or made up characters.

-The era itself limits gameplay, it's basically a lesser version of Rome, which is already lesser than Medieval by default, you're missing several unit types and weapons, the game basically only has infantry, ranged infantry, and charriots, and the later kind of sucks and gets stuck everywhere so most players probably don't even use them.

It's these two that are the core problem CA should have anticipated.

I only recognized Ramses in Pharaoh. That's literally it, whereas in R2 I knew Hannibal, Julius Caesar, and in general knew of Carthage, Rome, Parthia, and the Iceni. Even in Troy, I knew of Hector, Achillies, and Agemennon. Even then, I can't spell half of the names correctly, but I least knew *something*.

And how many of the characters in the starting roster of S2 did you recognize? O yeah, and how many from R1/M2 considering that those titles just flat made characters up?

[Adventurous350]

Publicado originalmente por IonizedMercury:

Publicado originalmente por Aluminum Elite Master:

It's these two that are the core problem CA should have anticipated.

I only recognized Ramses in Pharaoh. That's literally it, whereas in R2 I knew Hannibal, Julius Caesar, and in general knew of Carthage, Rome, Parthia, and the Iceni. Even in Troy, I knew of Hector, Achillies, and Agemennon. Even then, I can't spell half of the names correctly, but I least knew *something*.

And how many of the characters in the starting roster of S2 did you recognize? O yeah, and how many from R1/M2 considering that those titles just flat made characters up?

Lol so true IonizedMercury! I didn't know anything about this time period either and also only recognized Ramasses. What this game has done for me though is gain a new appreciation for the Bronze Age. It's a cool time period with alot going on. Take the opportunity to learn about the time period along with the game. Expand your horizon. There are tons of units and to me with the new formations these are some of the best battles total war has had to date. I always had to mod the previous games for slower battles. This feels just right in vanilla form.

[Moonship]

there where DLCs for Rome 2 and Attilla that had complete new Campaign Maps with many new factions like the King Dlc for Attila or the End of Rome DLC for Rome 2 .

There also was a Sparta DLC for Rome 2, years later Total War Saga Troy was released and it was almost the same Map with same Fractions ?

Come on....

We all know that Creative Assembly COULD do so much more in so short time,

Medieval 3 could be made by CA in one Month if they would, just reusing the Attila Map,add the factions from Medieval 2, do some little graphical updates and boom we could have Medieval 3 in shorttime.

But Creative Assembly will not do it because they know if we have Medieval 3 we wouldnt buy any other Total War behind it....so it will never come.