Total war pharaoh - coming October

[Destraex]

I love the era but the problem is with the limited information they have about combat in the era. This makes it easy for CA to do their usual trick of turning the game into some sort of role playing fantasy extraviganza. I will certainly NOT be pre-ording this game. I have not paid for any total war game since Attila and the first warhammer. I have not enjoyed any total war game since Shogun2. I expect CA will pay more attention to stats, social elements and flag symbology instead of the battle simulations and the ability to watch the freakin men fight those battles. It was supposed to get better at it's core mechanic not worse.

Where are my:
* Better siege mechanics and physical representation of more fortification types. We should be fighting inside castles and walls by now.
* Where is my more organised and better army operational mechanics.
* Where is my supply system that can be physically intercepted
* Where is my physics model for fighting. Instead we got glorified sprites that slide all over the place and turn into 6 pixels at a short distance. Because the models change so much over such a short distance it just hurts my eyes. Trying to focus on something that changes so much just becomes an exercise of constantly re-aqcuiring your target. Thus the flag simulator
* Where are my more realistic battlefield and strategic communications systems?
* Where are my better more complex and canonicle command and control systems for the battlefield?
* Where are my improvements (not streamlining!!!) of the interface.
* Where are my visual upgrade and unit preferences. My ability to change my troops to adapt. I used to love the marius reforms in rome1 because of the professional changes that came with it and the look changes.. the lorica segmentata vs the earlier lorica hemata and more.
* Where are the unique styles of fighting for each faction and the differences in command styles?
* Where are my slow down options rather than having to use a mod? You know so the animations don't look wierd?

I mean nothing has improved since total war rome 1 really. The game has been in caretaker mode since Empire Total War as far as I am concerned.
I just have no interest in playing flag stat wars. The game is aimed at some office worker in marketing who loves to watch soap operas. It's a different beast focused on the wrong things. It's been corrupted so to speak and there is nothing to replace it.

[Grim.Reaper]

Well, this office worker (although don't watch soap operas) intends to try and enjoy the game for whatever it turns out to be

[Gusington]

As an office worker in communications ( ) I agree with a lot of what you said Destraex.

There's a reason why I mod the hell out of the Attila, Rome 2 and Medieval 2 games.

[Destraex]

I meant no disrespect to office workers in general. I meant the type of office worker that is in perpetually unproductive meetings that are really just paid to waste time and play office politics. The entitled office workers that want ice cream and smarties as well as bean bags or they get edgy. The office worker that is so far up the ivory tower they have no idea what the world is like outside. Am I just digging a deeper hole for myself? 
I am trying to say I am an old salt that wants a different game to the emerging markets these guys are aiming at. As a grog I was happy when total war looked to be heading off to being the ultimate battlefield simulator. Now even I am annoyed by headless chickens on speed simulator. You guys used to say total war needed slow down mods, which I used as well but the game was not unplayable without for me. But now I just can't keep up unless I use the flags.

[Gusington]

'ice cream and smarties' 

I give Creative Assembly credit for going in a more rare historical direction, but that is heavily reduced by not listening to their audience clamor for a new Empire or Medieval TW :/

[Grim.Reaper]

'ice cream and smarties' 

I give Creative Assembly credit for going in a more rare historical direction, but that is heavily reduced by not listening to their audience clamor for a new Empire or Medieval TW :/

But I wonder how much of their hardcore historical audience they are really concerned with?  They have attempted to open up their games to generate a lot of money which I suspect come from a lot more people than their hardcore fans that give them feedback.  Although I liked Empire and Medieval, not sure just repeating some of their old games is the answer either, especially if nothing revolutionary is put into it. 

Who knows, I have come to accept what they offer and then comes down to choice whether people buy:)  I doubt we see any deeper stuff added anytime soon,

[Gusington]

^Yes, new systems in the games would help too, instead of the general paring down that has been happening in the historical titles :(

I one day hope to see a game as well produced, beautiful and engaging as Shogun 2...still the best in the entire series, IMHO.

[glen55]

<snip> Am I just digging a deeper hole for myself?  <snip>

[Destraex]

You always need a bit of creative fat and passion on projects like total war. You need somebody with passion and an end goal that you can share with your audience. Not including a "guard" command on release of rome2 was that cardinal sin that shocked the hell out of me when it happened. It gave me intimate knowledge of the direction the game was heading. They actually wanted fights to end up being furballs with masses of hollywood individual fights. They did not want you to be able to keep your lines disciplined and organised.

Then the perfectly amazing graphics they had in rome2 got hard coded into the ground. You can't see colors from even a moderate distance anymore. The glory of ancient armies that we love to see on tabletop battlegrounds is immediately lost. When you play a tabletop wargame. You get the spectacular visuals as well as the mechanics that try to be as realistic as possible. Total War had both. At rome2 it lost the spectacular tabletop visuals. You cannot see your men without zooming in and losing track of the battle anymore.
At the same time total war started going backwards or at the very least becoming stagnant and uncaring about simulating the battlefield in a realistic way. Guard mode showed this intent. Instead of no guard mode I wanted to see germanic light cavalry with light troops holding onto their horses and hitching a ride. I wanted to see chariots offload light infantry and remount them. I wanted to see the latest historical research incorporated into how hoplites fought. Instead we got flag wars and no progress at all. The re-introduction of guard mode in rome2 still has roman units once engaged not keeping formation as I remember it.

This is the best I could do recently when I loaded it up. You might say whats the problem... you can see color. To me it's just not sharp and the animations are dumbed down at this range as well. It looks like a giant blur against the terrain when moving. I think the older games now also look this way, BUT we were looking at them in 640x480 or some similarly tiny resolution, so it's like watching a film shot for a tiny TUBE TV on a huge flatscreen TV. It's going to look dated.

[JasonPratt]

I'm old enough now (with less and whiter hair now) to remember the fans wanting Total Warhammer so badly they modded it for years; and every time a new release announcement was alerted we'd wonder will it FINALLY be Three Kingdoms?

Well, we have those now, and for WH:TW it's super-well produced. They did give the fans what the fans asked for, although I feel pretty safe guessing that the Warhammer line has been a lot more profitable than 3K (since there are now three connected Warhammer games plus oodles of DLC, but only one 3K game and some DLC faction setups.)

Fans really wanted Viking Invasions remade and/or Dark Ages Total War; they gave us Britannia and Attila.

Fans wanted Troy Total War, and we got that, too (in the experimental vein of Britannia).

They even gave the fans a remastered RTW1, although that's admittedly a sop to the modding community, which has gone to town on it.

At this point the only big 'unproduced' property fans have been wanted enough to see modders really working hard to fill the gap, is Lord of the Rings. With WW1 a quixotic pipe dream.

The quality is admittedly questionable, moreso in some cases than others. But they've been giving fans new things that were wanted instead of remaking Medieval again. (Mainly because the modding community has been filling in the Medieval 3 gap.) Must be working out for them profitwise, too, or they'd have folded up shop by now!

As to functionality and quality of life improvements, I agree they ought to be doing better. Modders do help with that, but they can only go so far due to hard-coded limits. Then again, CA leans hard on the support of its modding community.

[Destraex]

Jason are their any mods you know of that fix rome2's draw distance issues and slow down troops to walking pace as well as fixing the aweful formation wrap around tendencies? It's ironic that those wrap around tendencies would be fine for barbarian troops that are undisciplined, but with Romans I want to see them stay in line.
If that were fixed then I would want to move on to putting Rome1's strat map mechanics back in as well as Napoleon total wars regional farms and other facilities like mills being outside the city walls and therefore raidable individually.
Putting supply lines in would be great as well.

[Gusington]

Who asked for Troy: TW, Pratt?

WH is clearly their moneymaker but CA 'giving the fans what they asked for,' outside of WH, was 8+ years ago. They have been tone deaf since then.

And I say that as a fan boi of CA since the original Shogun back in the dim past of The Year 2000.

[SirAndrewD]

Who asked for Troy: TW,

No one I heard.  And the "demand" for Three Kingdoms was a lot less than I think actually existed. 

The only game I've heard historical TW fans begging for, and screaming for even since the release of Atilla is Medieval 3. 

[Destraex]

Who asked for Troy: TW, Pratt?

WH is clearly their moneymaker but CA 'giving the fans what they asked for,' outside of WH, was 8+ years ago. They have been tone deaf since then.

And I say that as a fan boi of CA since the original Shogun back in the dim past of The Year 2000.

For one I was actually glad to see CA do troy, three kingdoms and now pharoah. I loved that these historical periods were or are getting a go. That is part of the reason I am so bummed that I just can't stand playing their games now.

However I can say that I would never have asked for Troy. Not enough info on soldiers and tactics etc of the time. Not much historical to put in. Too much guess work. A mythical epic to follow as events and battles sources. We got giants.
Three Kingdoms was a great move as their is a lot of evidence for some things. A mythical epic to follow as an events and battle source. We got heroes who could slay whole armies.
Pharoah - Scant evidence for most things but a heck of a lot more evidence than their would be for Troy.

My question for those in the know would be, are the historical games we got during the warhammer total war reign just transposed warhammer games with similar mechanics rather than real attempts at historical games?

[Gusington]

^I did like Three Kingdoms myself. But no one asked for it