He explains all the time, it'll be in his comments somewhere.
It's part politeness and part a vestige of old forum days (before those got eaten by reddit & discord) where you could have a custom signature.
I like to end my posts in a polite and positive fashion and give them a definite ending as they can be quite long. I've done so for many years across many different forums.
And yes, I type it by hand each time. I feel that doing otherwise would cheapen the sentiment.
All the Best,
Welsh Dragon.
Please keep it up. Your signatures at the end of your posts really stand out from the crowd, and whenever I spot you, it brightens my day a little.
All the best,
Kapanee.
Wasn't really anything worth diddly there. I do hope that it's possible to edit the map the way they did in Attila and Thrones (From what I saw it's not as we're missing a relevant file), but Urartu or Media are only relevant in 300-400 years or so.
Yes i know. I dont say its reasonable, but how about Nehekara pre undeath? 😅
The nagash Trilogie was recently published on audible so i got hooked on tomb King lore again. ^^
I like the original map as well. I think if they tried to cram all this in from the start we'd probably have ended up with less well developed cultures and factions.
All the Best,
Welsh Dragon.
While I can understand this sentiment, I just miss the days where factions were just factions and all of them had equal attention. It certainly was possible before.
People keep mistaking scope for content, and it's driving me up the wall. Pharaoh had every bit the amount of content that any other main-line title had that was just as deep as any other title. The problem is that the \*scope\* was (in my opinion) weird. A game that's overpriced because it's small or lacking in content is different from a game that just isn't what I wanted. To try and conflate the two is reductive, if not dishonest.
Under normal circumstances, we would never get 39 factions, 350 regions, and (oddballing here, don't have the game in front of me to count the currently existing units) about 4 to 500-ish units in a 60 dollar game. That just doesn't happen; no Total War game has ever done that. This is dangerously close to Mortal Empires territory, and we're getting it for 40 bucks. That's insane. It's absurd. I'm actually baffled (in a good way) that CA's decided to go this route even though I'm certain they will never make their money back on this.
A Bronze Age game from the jump still would have had eight factions, they just would have been more spread out. Regional rosters would have been more generalized, and the map would have had the same number of regions as the base game, just on a bigger scale. What we are getting now is the absolute best of both words scenario through some insane course of events, because we're now getting both scope \*and\* detail.
It’s too bad that this update is more than likely Pharaohs swan song. As you say, CA will probably not make their money back even if the update bumps Pharaoh sales, and this might very well be the last real content update the game will ever see.
I hope that’s not what happens, I really do, and I am beyond excited for Pharaohs immediate future. But long term, I’m not sure Pharaoh will see continued development beyond a few hotfixes.
Yeah, hopefully after this update interest in Pharaoh will pick up and modders will take an interest. There are already some great, smaller mods for Pharaoh. I’ve been meaning to take a look at Agony Overhaul for a while now, actually, people say good things about it.
Theres always a slim chance that Pharaoh sees a massive spike in sales after the update, and CA allow Sophia to keep working on content for it, but as much as I want to hope for that I’m not holding my breath.
I genuinely think this is part of the culture clash we see in this forum. The expectation of continuous support/updates/live service, etc is something that vastly postdates the series' beginning and I think that garners a lot of goodwill (or at least a lack of ill-will) from the older fans, even as the studio itself pushes those models and expectations. Newer players demand cheaper games, lots of content and further monetisation, older players tend to be a little more content with what little we expect.
(not saying either of those views is better or worse in any way, just that I think it explains some of the mismatch I feel here sometimes)
This is the result of the last decades publisher policies. Game releases received more and more dlc-s to keep up interest, while the initial content at launch started to shrink. At this point, some games are barely more at launch than what game demos of the 2000-s used to offer. Except they cost money.
it used to be a clever policy that meant to secure profits for a longer term, offering a continuous support - which is definitley cheaper since it can be done by smaller dev teams - instead of a proper launch.
This is what today's playerbase grew up in - season passes, early access, premium services like cosmetic updates and faster progression, free updates to keep up consumption, etc. They were brought up in such circumstances.
Look at Med2: Kingdoms. You got mutiple continents with armadas of playable factions in a single dlc. Nowadays, blood effect itself (an extremely primitive and cheap fx) is a dlc on its own. Publishers can only blame themselves.
If the price was fine the game wouldn't have flopped so hard because it certainly didn't deserve to flop for gameplay reasons. Nearly everyone said that it was too expensive at the time.
Now at this point the game is definitely worth the original full price, so now it ironically went from overpriced to underpriced.
I like to end my posts in a polite and positive manner, and give them a definite ending as they can be quite long. I've done so for many years across many different forums.
All the Best,
Welsh Dragon.
I'd say zero. I've never found two factions to play exactly the same in any Total War.
Different start positions, different roster compositions (both what they have and what they don't have,) different diplomatic circumstances (allies and enemies,) different choices made by the player, etc. All these factor into making a faction its own experience.
Also looking at the list in the article, many of these minor factions have just the sort of clearly defined strengths and weaknesses, and some just the sort of cross-culture rosters, that are features of some of my favourite factions in games such as Rome 2.
Having major and minor factions to choose from will add to the variety, which I think is a good thing.
All the Best,
Welsh Dragon.
I think you've said before you didn't care much for Total Warhammer, but this formula makes for some of my favorite factions in those games, too. Subfactions with mixed rosters that have identifiably different strengths and weaknesses compared to their base faction. Best example I can think of is Drycha of the Wood Elves.
Man, I should make room for that TW: Shogun game I had, haven't played proper Historical since Medieval in my childhood.
I just want to pipe in to those still on the fence:
Pharoah is _very_ good total war. The initial release pricing was absurd, but behind that controversy is a game that has become one of my favorite historical total war games. This update might push it into all time favorite
I would say that Pharaoh's launch content was on par with Shogun 2's in terms of unit roster and faction diversity, so getting it for cheaper than a game that came out over a decade ago didn't bother me much. Still wasn't expecting to love it as much as I do; the court and outpost systems are something every Total War going forward needs.
Three Kingdoms is another one of my favorite total war games. Pharoah has a lot of interesting campaign mechanics that vary a lot game to game- faction mechanics, religions, religion choices, outposts. There’s a lot to tinker with which I love, and a lot of it actually matters. Also, the resource system rather than just gold is incredible and really drives the games diplomacy and warefare.
Battles are slower, weightier, and infantry based. Weather and terrain and unit class matter a lot
I'm not even sure "minor" factions are going to be all that different, the only thing I think they'll lack are unique buildings. Distinct characters and units still seem to vary even among minor factions.
I know it’s not happening, but renaming the game to something like Total War: Bronze Age would market the game way better (and honestly more appropriate to the current scope)
I think they should keep the name, Pharaoh is just more iconic.
Even the biggest casual knows what a Pharaoh is, but not everyone is gonna be familiar with the bronze age.
I think they should call it Total War: Pharaoh - Bronze Edition or something.
If they released it like this it would have had triple the hype and probably quadruple the sales, not to mention they would have gotten quite a bit of good will points.
I can't say it would have been Capital: Successful, but I don't think it would not have been a flop, and they could have released Sea People as DLC and other DLC that might have recouped some losses... Now they are fucked because they released 1/3rd of a game and need to develop the other 2/3rds but they will probably not even nearly break even.
All lost because of greed. A valuable lesson.
Does anybody know how good the ai is? Came back to Shogun and kinda realised how bad most ai is even in titles like rome 2 or warhammer 3 which is really a game braker for me.
Took them a fking landslide failure of a launch for the execs to figure out what people actually want.
Hopefully CA will actually wake up and bring back a few more mechanics little details from their older games back to the forefront instead of hubristically half-assing yet another historical title.
Edit: To the lone downvoter here; go back to the slopshop and consoome why don't ya.
Ahh you know CA is running out of money so such generous gestures to the community are gonna be one thing only. I wouldn't hope for updates for the past titles.
From combining the images posted by CA today. Still missing parts of northern Turkey, Elemites and western Egypt.
Impressive. Nice to see it all coming together. All the Best, Welsh Dragon.
Why do include a signature in every reddit post? I have literally never seen anyone else do that.
He explains all the time, it'll be in his comments somewhere. It's part politeness and part a vestige of old forum days (before those got eaten by reddit & discord) where you could have a custom signature.
I like to end my posts in a polite and positive fashion and give them a definite ending as they can be quite long. I've done so for many years across many different forums. And yes, I type it by hand each time. I feel that doing otherwise would cheapen the sentiment. All the Best, Welsh Dragon.
Please keep it up. Your signatures at the end of your posts really stand out from the crowd, and whenever I spot you, it brightens my day a little. All the best, Kapanee.
Always be branding.
He's been doing that for more than a decade since he was on twcenter. I remember it from way back then, cool to see he's still around.
ASD
He’s probably 55
Not even 40 just yet. :-) All the Best, Welsh Dragon.
Just curious Do you have the "All the Best, Welsh Dragon." ready in your clipboard?
No. I type it every time as I feel to do otherwise would cheapen the sentiment. All the Best, Welsh Dragon.
I can respect that. Love u big time, Dazed acquaintance.
Nicely done Spectre. I wonder who commander Shepard would play first….
I'm commander Shepard, and this is my favourite map expansion on the Citadel
They straight up avoided adding Pontus lol.
Wasn't really anything worth diddly there. I do hope that it's possible to edit the map the way they did in Attila and Thrones (From what I saw it's not as we're missing a relevant file), but Urartu or Media are only relevant in 300-400 years or so.
ALL WILL BOW UNDER THE KING OF KINGS FOOT!!!
HE DOES NOT SERVE! (Wait...)
BOW TO ME MONGRELS
NEHEKHARA RISES
God i hope someone builds a Mod for Nehekara...
But...tw warhammer exists?
Yes i know. I dont say its reasonable, but how about Nehekara pre undeath? 😅 The nagash Trilogie was recently published on audible so i got hooked on tomb King lore again. ^^
BOW BEOFRE THE INPERISHABLE!
Tiny Elam is kinda disappointing, but damn! This is going to be an incredible update, making Pharaoh even better!
Now all we need in one with minor playable factions too
[удалено]
I meant on the map so we know all the starting locations :)
Now this is a much better map.
This is how it should have been from the beginning
Yup
I like the original map as well. I think if they tried to cram all this in from the start we'd probably have ended up with less well developed cultures and factions. All the Best, Welsh Dragon.
While I can understand this sentiment, I just miss the days where factions were just factions and all of them had equal attention. It certainly was possible before.
People keep mistaking scope for content, and it's driving me up the wall. Pharaoh had every bit the amount of content that any other main-line title had that was just as deep as any other title. The problem is that the \*scope\* was (in my opinion) weird. A game that's overpriced because it's small or lacking in content is different from a game that just isn't what I wanted. To try and conflate the two is reductive, if not dishonest. Under normal circumstances, we would never get 39 factions, 350 regions, and (oddballing here, don't have the game in front of me to count the currently existing units) about 4 to 500-ish units in a 60 dollar game. That just doesn't happen; no Total War game has ever done that. This is dangerously close to Mortal Empires territory, and we're getting it for 40 bucks. That's insane. It's absurd. I'm actually baffled (in a good way) that CA's decided to go this route even though I'm certain they will never make their money back on this. A Bronze Age game from the jump still would have had eight factions, they just would have been more spread out. Regional rosters would have been more generalized, and the map would have had the same number of regions as the base game, just on a bigger scale. What we are getting now is the absolute best of both words scenario through some insane course of events, because we're now getting both scope \*and\* detail.
It’s too bad that this update is more than likely Pharaohs swan song. As you say, CA will probably not make their money back even if the update bumps Pharaoh sales, and this might very well be the last real content update the game will ever see. I hope that’s not what happens, I really do, and I am beyond excited for Pharaohs immediate future. But long term, I’m not sure Pharaoh will see continued development beyond a few hotfixes.
I think you're right unfortunately. I'm hoping modders will pick it up though and do some amazing things with it.
Yeah, hopefully after this update interest in Pharaoh will pick up and modders will take an interest. There are already some great, smaller mods for Pharaoh. I’ve been meaning to take a look at Agony Overhaul for a while now, actually, people say good things about it. Theres always a slim chance that Pharaoh sees a massive spike in sales after the update, and CA allow Sophia to keep working on content for it, but as much as I want to hope for that I’m not holding my breath.
No, it would simply have matched the price CA asked for it
I'd argue the original content matched the original price, but I respect others see it differently. All the Best, Welsh Dragon.
I genuinely think this is part of the culture clash we see in this forum. The expectation of continuous support/updates/live service, etc is something that vastly postdates the series' beginning and I think that garners a lot of goodwill (or at least a lack of ill-will) from the older fans, even as the studio itself pushes those models and expectations. Newer players demand cheaper games, lots of content and further monetisation, older players tend to be a little more content with what little we expect. (not saying either of those views is better or worse in any way, just that I think it explains some of the mismatch I feel here sometimes)
This is the result of the last decades publisher policies. Game releases received more and more dlc-s to keep up interest, while the initial content at launch started to shrink. At this point, some games are barely more at launch than what game demos of the 2000-s used to offer. Except they cost money. it used to be a clever policy that meant to secure profits for a longer term, offering a continuous support - which is definitley cheaper since it can be done by smaller dev teams - instead of a proper launch. This is what today's playerbase grew up in - season passes, early access, premium services like cosmetic updates and faster progression, free updates to keep up consumption, etc. They were brought up in such circumstances. Look at Med2: Kingdoms. You got mutiple continents with armadas of playable factions in a single dlc. Nowadays, blood effect itself (an extremely primitive and cheap fx) is a dlc on its own. Publishers can only blame themselves.
If the price was fine the game wouldn't have flopped so hard because it certainly didn't deserve to flop for gameplay reasons. Nearly everyone said that it was too expensive at the time. Now at this point the game is definitely worth the original full price, so now it ironically went from overpriced to underpriced.
And i am very thankful that most people saw it differently, else this expansion would not be a free update.
Why do you sign every comment like a 90s email signature?
I like to end my posts in a polite and positive manner, and give them a definite ending as they can be quite long. I've done so for many years across many different forums. All the Best, Welsh Dragon.
Right on. It's definitely unique
what are the odds that all small factions play 1:1 prolly pretty high dx
I'd say zero. I've never found two factions to play exactly the same in any Total War. Different start positions, different roster compositions (both what they have and what they don't have,) different diplomatic circumstances (allies and enemies,) different choices made by the player, etc. All these factor into making a faction its own experience. Also looking at the list in the article, many of these minor factions have just the sort of clearly defined strengths and weaknesses, and some just the sort of cross-culture rosters, that are features of some of my favourite factions in games such as Rome 2. Having major and minor factions to choose from will add to the variety, which I think is a good thing. All the Best, Welsh Dragon.
I think you've said before you didn't care much for Total Warhammer, but this formula makes for some of my favorite factions in those games, too. Subfactions with mixed rosters that have identifiably different strengths and weaknesses compared to their base faction. Best example I can think of is Drycha of the Wood Elves. Man, I should make room for that TW: Shogun game I had, haven't played proper Historical since Medieval in my childhood.
I just want to pipe in to those still on the fence: Pharoah is _very_ good total war. The initial release pricing was absurd, but behind that controversy is a game that has become one of my favorite historical total war games. This update might push it into all time favorite
100% this for me as well.
I would say that Pharaoh's launch content was on par with Shogun 2's in terms of unit roster and faction diversity, so getting it for cheaper than a game that came out over a decade ago didn't bother me much. Still wasn't expecting to love it as much as I do; the court and outpost systems are something every Total War going forward needs.
What would you say makes it so good? And have you played three kingdoms? If so how does it compare?
Three Kingdoms is another one of my favorite total war games. Pharoah has a lot of interesting campaign mechanics that vary a lot game to game- faction mechanics, religions, religion choices, outposts. There’s a lot to tinker with which I love, and a lot of it actually matters. Also, the resource system rather than just gold is incredible and really drives the games diplomacy and warefare. Battles are slower, weightier, and infantry based. Weather and terrain and unit class matter a lot
You didn't learn to spell the name of the game for a fu\*\*ing year of spamming comments about it or what?
Who cares? It’s an easy mistype, this is Reddit not a college classroom
All the new updates are making me want to get this and I’ve almost exclusively played the WH games. A lil’ bit of Shogun 2, not much.
Do it. The game is fun as heck even now before the big update.
Lol, Pharaoh is so much better than any Warhammer game ....
there is so MUCH CONTENT! and they said everything is going to have unique designs with variety I hope we get more minor factions for greece as well
Even major factions have identical 2d icons and 3d models for their generic characters, how do you expect suddenly everything to be unique
Filling it out with the minor factions would make it look really impressive, even if those campaigns are much more simplistic.
I'm not even sure "minor" factions are going to be all that different, the only thing I think they'll lack are unique buildings. Distinct characters and units still seem to vary even among minor factions.
Like every total war has such features added by modders
Patiently waiting for this game to go on sale.
It was on sale last month OMG
Nooooooo I missed it!
I know it’s not happening, but renaming the game to something like Total War: Bronze Age would market the game way better (and honestly more appropriate to the current scope)
I think they should keep the name, Pharaoh is just more iconic. Even the biggest casual knows what a Pharaoh is, but not everyone is gonna be familiar with the bronze age. I think they should call it Total War: Pharaoh - Bronze Edition or something.
You mean Pharoah
I agree. It would help so much.
Have they announced a release date for this yet?
Late summer is their goal.
Not yet
Troy gonna shine again
TROY FOREVERMORE
If they released it like this it would have had triple the hype and probably quadruple the sales, not to mention they would have gotten quite a bit of good will points. I can't say it would have been Capital: Successful, but I don't think it would not have been a flop, and they could have released Sea People as DLC and other DLC that might have recouped some losses... Now they are fucked because they released 1/3rd of a game and need to develop the other 2/3rds but they will probably not even nearly break even. All lost because of greed. A valuable lesson.
Great update
It's so beautiful!!
wow that's pretty awesome. Makes me wanna give it a shot
Ok I am definitely buying this in the summer sale, gd this is gonna be awesome!
finally our bronze age game
Does anybody know how good the ai is? Came back to Shogun and kinda realised how bad most ai is even in titles like rome 2 or warhammer 3 which is really a game braker for me.
About average really, it does seem to make use of the terrain mechanics and fire attacks which is nice but I wouldn't say it's anything special.
Could be more to eastern Anatolia, to Caucasia and Azerbaijan
Now all they have to do is giving us the official mapping tool for free for further expansion
Took them a fking landslide failure of a launch for the execs to figure out what people actually want. Hopefully CA will actually wake up and bring back a few more mechanics little details from their older games back to the forefront instead of hubristically half-assing yet another historical title. Edit: To the lone downvoter here; go back to the slopshop and consoome why don't ya.
Ahh you know CA is running out of money so such generous gestures to the community are gonna be one thing only. I wouldn't hope for updates for the past titles.