Meanwhile Zoomers after 10 seconds of this video: BuHHHh cAn Mah SkIBBidI OrCz BE GREn!?! NuH? BaHD GAm, BAD. Gee... I wonder why games are so 'accessible' now.
Creative Assembly can only take on so much of the blame. The significant number of players who refused, consistently refused to have any standards, any at all are also to blame. We warned you so many times that you needed to hold Creative Assembly accountable and every time you ran corporate defense. Congratulations, you slowly ruined the thing you loved. You played yourself.
Couldn't you take them at chokepoints uphill in the second battle? Considering the two high rank matchlocks you had, you could go for a mass rout maybe.
I recently played unmodded Rome 2 on legendary difficulty the other day feeling a bit nostalgic. The game was somewhat fun (and very easy) when I just pressed auto resolve for every single battle. With how stupid the Ai-Cheats during manual battles are, playing battles manually felt awful with meele units hitting each other for hours (and being useless unless it's pikes), cav being useless too and unit quality making me uninstall the game after I won the campaign. Shogun's battles just play so much better. It's actually drove me insane. Thank god I'm not buying their games anymore. During the whole Campaign I've not fought a single defensive siege (for a major settlement) and that felt really sad too because I loved defensive sieges in past games. Offensive sieges are awful too.
Dang I wish my laptop still could run this game, for some reason it cant any more even in the lowest settings… very frustrating, so I gotta content with Crusader Kings 3 in my PS5 I already got 300 hours in it, I love these kinds of games, bannerlord 2 I got 100 I think. Probably gonna duplicate because it’s vacation in South America now.
I was hoping Pharoah devs paid more attention to the relationship between building armies, and how they are employed over time. Really shape the game to refelct the improvement of tribal skirmishes, vs massive imperical armies becoming professional organized forces. Armies starting of as groups of renowned warriors to then become leaders. Certain kingdoms choose their leaders differently so the political system would have to be reimagined. Incorporate a pre battle screen with your assigned commanders as your faction improves in warfare. Give them pre orders to carry out, or small missions. The better thr generals, the more options unlock to convey the unconventional strategies used during real recorded emgagments. Rather than units being deployed in blocks as the typical rome total war standards, that should be something earned over time to further seperate the cultural differences of actual existing empires. Some nations just lined up and charged, while others used tactics when fielding their armies. All of these should be depicted and fleshed out.
fire by rank almost requires the bamboo wall for it too be effective, in a land battle ive had matchlock gets around 200 kills (if of course you can build the walls)
The third battle made me question usefulness of bow units in this game. Like seriously, if archers are better used as flanking unit, what's even the point of recruiting them? I feel like only Warrior Monks/Daikyu Samurai are even worth recruiting
The best answer i can give is flexibility, bow samurai are a good defensive unit and useful if you need to defend a recently captured province. Also the inverse of your idea: why get katana samurai when i can get another samurai unit that can skirmish if needed? Especially since flanking attacks are morale based regardless of which units are being employed..
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498You know, that's actually a good point. I forgot that Bow Samurai have better melee stats than even Bow Warrior Monks and with enough experience and upgrades like in this battle they are not utterly helpless. I suppose when you get archery dojo built by AI, it wouldn't hurt to recruit a few of these guys.
I agree with the clear visual telling, one of the things i dont like in Med 2 is how you cant see where archer are shooting, I always turn on fire arrows so I can see whats going on
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 yeah but its not worth it. Unless you completely ignore other tech trees you're not getting this unite before turn 80, and at that point you basically won already
@janbazuine6636 yari cavalry also take massive losses vs bow samurai. Charging bow samurai with *any* cavalry in open terrain is a bad idea. Yari ashigaru will be doing most of the fighting anyway. I almost never use my light cavalry outside of chasing routing units.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 if you get a good rear charge in they dont. Light cavalry can only kill generals and persue routing units (maybe double or triple team some archers occasionally). Yari cavalry can take out a enemy cav (isolate and 2v1), take out archers and deliver devastating rear charges.
Why would i need yari cav to fight enemy cav when ashigaru can do that Why do i need to rear charge bow samurai when i can obliterate them with a walking yari wall to the face (cheaper and completely expendable)
Strange take. Sounds like a random crit chance like tf2. It's optional because it's the complete opposite of tactical flexibility lmao. Why make plans if you can throw crits
"opposite of tactical flexibility" what tactical flexibility does Pharaoh even have as it stands? Is this tactical flexibility with us in the room right now?
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 On a more serious note, i agree with your take on modern total war having better vision mechanics. I actually think Total War Arena had some interesting vision mechanics. I doesnt translate 1to1 to a regualar total war, but i did like how terrain and vantage points affected visibility. In history sending a light trooper on a hill or to take a tall building was common. It would incentivise having some troops for different tasks. I would also add a climbing stat. How steep a ledge the unit can climb. It would compliment visibility mechanics. Naturally heavy units are bad at climbing, mountain peoples are good at it, chariots suck at it and so do elephants.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Im not sure about actual swimming in open water, but shallow water crossings/wetlands/rivers in general. It makes me think of all the creative ways ancient general would use to allow troops to cross a river without having to wait for the engineer crew to build a bridge. It would be great if maps had weather/seasonal variants. I think Pharao ikinda has different reach of wetlands depending on if its raining or not. I would go further, with rivers partly flooding, drying up, freezing. Vegetation being thicker and reaching further in some parts of the year than others. It would reward adaptability while still allowing you to roughly predict whats the best time for you to begin your campain or with roads to follow to minimize the procentage chance of having a battlefield where you have a disadvantage. To quote Napoleon "I defeated an army by marching"
the text itself is interesting and important since it gives a bit of insight into what it is they're trying to do, its important context whatever the results end up being
Would be cool if they brought some of this to Warhammer 3. Sophia will be working on most of the future dlc for this game. Cavalry is super ass in the game unless you use Bretonnia or monster cav.
more "options" is, in the context of modern day strategy / RTT a smoke screen for "we didn't know how to balance our game and didn't want to commit to a consistent vision for fear of alienating a certain subset of players, therefore we left it to the player to do the busywork of sifting through settings trying to figure out what the optimal experience is" Things were much better when it was a difficulty slider and campaign length slider. Also more importantly none of these options make this into a worthwhile game.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 (that feel when you type out a whole reply, then bump the stupid panic button and opera closes the window *pepehands*) basically, what i said was agreed pharoah bad, more options good despite circumstance because player agency, advanced difficulty options smallest issue with franchise regardless of motives for implementation.
Simplest way I can put it: I don't order pizza from any place that also serves fried chicken or burgers. A variety of sides is fine, but main dishes: if they don't have a speciality, they won't have a reliable reputation for doing something well. What you get depends on which staff are on shift, and if it's not the pizza guy, they don't offer refunds. Pizza place that does only pizza and a few sides? ALL the staff have to be pizza guys, and the manager is right there with them making sure of it.
@Dishonorable_Daimyo People should be very skeptical as to TW, and I can understand the skepticism about the new update - but while the features aren't new (I don't remember that they market it as new to the series unlike the weather which they did and it annoyed me) I think the 3 main points are pretty good ones, and it seems that the Sofia team is actually trying to make a better TW game compared to the main team. So while I am still not convinced myself on buying Pharaoh, I will give credit where credit is due that there is someone in Sofia that seems to shift in the right direction ... one could only wish those were come for WH. Shame the guys who seem to care about the franchise are the ones who probably are getting very little breathing space to do so (Pharaoh's biggest issue is it being a really small budget game - was suppose to be a DLC). I personally waited years for a better implementation of the line of sight feature they mentioned (the Medieval 2 example is the same one I had in my mind for years).
Can't agree more. Adding more factions or a bigger map doesn't solve the core problems of the series. It's just asking for more of something bad instead of asking for actual improvement.
this lethality thing is an admission by sofia that how TW games currently play has massive problems. this is them admitting the hitpoint system has ludicrous results. and like you said, reintroducing a reintroduction. they tried it with thrones of britannia. after not having it since rome 2. when every game had it until rome 2. and yeah it is annoying to see them not even commit to it, leaving it as an option. just make a good game and stand by it. by the way, this video has over 1000 views and 57 comments and has almost certainly quadrupled pharaohs current player numbers as just about the only pharaoh video in about 6 months.
@@TheSonOfDumb it's not, R1 is incredibly fast, and it's great, battles could be over in a matter of seconds in the right circumstances because morale actually mattered
The answer becomes 'it depends' based on how many alternatives exist. In modern Total War, there are few real paths a player can take: so everything that increases lethality makes APM burden higher, battles shorter and Dopamine cheaper(and you lose the feeling that you 'earned' it). In a properly designed gameplay environment, more lethality means something else: it means stand-offs and stalemates, because a battle that could potentially be over in seconds is not one where either side wants to make the first move in case that move turns out to be a mistake. They want to avoid recreating the charge of the Light Brigade incident. You instead find you only commit to an attack when you either have no choice, or the potential advantage to be seized outweighs everything else. Total War used to have that, and now doesn't.
I cant wait to see what Pharaoh 2 has to offer. Pharoah 1 was incredible. The sand, the water, the sandy water, it was all so real I could pheel the chaifing. I think Faroah 2 should have more dlc called Fpharoas Pheatures where the game is nothing but a list of promised features that no one asked for, that may or may not be in Fphero 3. I really hope that number one on the list is good AI. CA really wants to do good AI because they have been working so hard on it for nearly 25 years! Thats how dedicated they are...its going to be amazing in Fphero PHOUR! Also, it would be neat if in pharaohoah Phive, they never spelled Pharaoh the same way twice. That would be an amazing feature too. They already nailed never spelling it right in press releases. Im so glad they love making these games. Thats why they will never make a medieval 3. So you see now? They have plenty of money to hire more developers but its important to make sure that they spend the money on other things, like FPS games. Thats whats makes TW so special. Where's Darthmod?
I personnaly hate line of sight. Older games operate on the supposition that when field battles begin both sides have scouted the enemy already. Also it's just plain annoying in gamey terms. Maybe thats just me.
maybe it should be relegated to lighter infantry units, or at least they can hide more effectively than heavier units, since after all, *noise* is an overlooked factor and heavy infantry are very noisy on the march.
I stopped playing TW with Rome 2 intuitively. I could never pinpoint my exact issues with it. The weight of the units and their overall dynamics just felt off. I mean I don't mind whatever bs health bar system or whatever they wanna use to calculate things, for me the battles just have to feel right and intuitive. I tried Rome 2 and Warhammer, both didn't do it for me. When I come back to Total War ocassionally, I tend to cycle between Rome 1, Medieval 2 and Shogun 2. But I observe myself playing them less and less. The singleplayer is just too easy after thousands of hours of battle experience. I would love if we had a proper Total War with a competitive 1v1 ladder where you could just hop on for a couple of games and play against evenly matched opponents.
What they need to change is the f'ing armour piercing system they currently use. The health pool of models isn't an issue by itself, but the AP mechanic just being a set amount of guaranteed damage that ignores armour entirely is completely nonsensical and it is what decays the experience following the increased health pools. Before Rome 2, there was a logical relationship between armour and AP where AP *decreased* the effectiveness of armour but *not* bypassing it entirely. Since Rome 2, however, AP is just a seperate pool of damage from that ignores armour completely, no matter how armoured the unit is. No relationship whatsoever. This is the biggest fault of current day Total War battles, because combat has become way more static and homogenous. The best middle ground I can think of is the mechanic used in XCOM 2. It's very simple; each weapon has a damage range like 5 - 7 DMG. Each point of armour decreases the incoming damage by one point. Each point of AP a weapon has decreases the armour value by one point.
There are several reasons why the XCOM 2 system is way more attractive; for example, weapons having varying damage ranges makes a lot of sense. No attack is static in real life, there are multiple factors affecting how 'powerful' a hit is whether melee or ranged. It's kind of weird to me that armour is the variable and damage the static aspect of current Total War. Having damage ranges instead of static damage also allows for an interesting dynamic of some armour being impenetrable where a weapon with a too low damage range simply can not damage something with too high armour. Basically like small arms versus a tank. We don't have this right now in Total War, but this dynamic definitively has its uses.
They need to add an additional combat modifier for the weapon itself. Crude weapons, vs military industrial weapons, vs commercial weapon. And the campaign progress could be made into a weapons race based on the geographical historicity of minerals and forging techniques implemented through time to improve weapons. Which is already a feature I believe in some sense
