In Defense of the "Haters" | Total War Pharaoh Will Probably Suck | A Response to
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- Опубліковано 27 вер 2024
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#totalwarpharaoh #totalwar
For those of you who want to know a bit more about how Rome 2 was the paradigm shift into garbage for this franchise, check my video examining the combat systems in Total War: ua-cam.com/video/qavY___5U4s/v-deo.html
Rome 2 was good tho
@@koldonn1111 >links video detailing combat systems in Total War, including the gutting of such systems in Rome 2 with video evidence to back it up
>lul but Rome 2 is good bro
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 but Rome 2 is good bro
@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Don't get me wrong, It was a drop-off for sure... but I don't think the drop-off from FotS to Rome 2 was too horrendus. I just think Rome 2 is a good/solidish game, even with the shortcomings in comparison to Shogun 2.
@@koldonn1111 Dunno mate, nearly every aspect of bad mechanics of modern total war games were started with Rome 2 and they've never looked back. God awful unit collision with flimsy weightless battles and only general armies. All started with Rome 2.
DD is the hero we need but did not deserve.
only 1 minute in and you are already highlighting that actually *great* reddit post showing the UI clutter. bravo. perfect way to address that. this reminds me of when admiral price defended the rome remastered UI in 2020 when he was being a massive shill.
agreed its a very knowledgeable response
@@The_Dodge_Meister Facts ! All of CA's marketing power backed up by big early access channels can't hide how bad this game is and the chances of CA admitting that and trying to fix it before release are slim to none . ☹☹
Icon bloat is visual pollution.
At best, you should rely on visual and audio cues to gauge your unit; do they maintain orderly formation, or are they just a blob of men? When you click on them, do the commander sounds like he's out of breath, or does he sound like there's still fight in him?
Show, don't tell. Icons introduce a degree of separation which hurts immersion.
@@IceniTotalWar exactly seems nobody has common sense nowadays and its sad
If you need to add the OPTION to turn off UI elements, doesn't that imply your UI is too bloated to begin with? I know this doesn't apply to EVERY game out their but Logic would dictate that if you add the option to disable something, your UI has TOO MUCH STUFF.
A strangely huge number of Total War youtubers have a crypto/AI bro mindset towards games. More is everything and more is better. Craftsmanship and quality be damned.
Line go up!!
They have zero taste. The type of person who is a big fan of Medieval 2 or Empire. Two bloated games with a quantity over quality philosophy. Shogun 2 is by far the best Total War. A classic example of "less is more" and that gameplay needs to take precedent over everything else. Only thing it was missing was a "Create your own faction" option for the campaign.
@@FaithfulFumoFan23 It isn't even a taste thing. 8 factions is alot of factions. Thats hundreds of hours of campaign content for most other TW games, but yet people complain.
@@FaithfulFumoFan23 Med2 is peak quality wdym. Also Empire is one of the most bare bones tw games out there, wouldn't exactly call it bloated
@@arkos4366 Tons of useless units that are just there for flavor.
to give some grounding to the whole "engine" thing. first of all, its very obvious now that all of these games are basically just rome 2 over and over again. the hp system. the province system. the stats.
but also, ive had it confirmed by ex-CA of a few years (coder, software engineer) that all total war games since 2016 are build using a modified attila engine. attila is the codebase from which everything in the past nearly a decade results. we are all playing attila when we play a total war game since attila. and of course, attila is just a modified rome 2. but attila was the point where total war branched. one branch was thrones of britannia (a dead end). the other was every single thing we have had since 2016 that was not thrones of britannia.
a different ex-CA also talked to me anonymously. extremely long conversation. and a guy that was at CA for an extremely long time. he reported that "tech debt" there is massive. coders always complain "we need to clear some of this tech debt and work on this for a few months", but they always got told "soon", and it never happens. they just work with their poorly maintained spaghetti code from 2014 i.e. attila. it is so bad that people have left the company. i was told "The code base is creaking at the seams... so much tech debt accumulated and no time to fix it". both of those quotes are verbatim what i was told. the engine (the codebase) is outdated and poorly maintained and it produces bad results. a new engine would at least give new games a chance. as it stands, they dont have any. attila forever.
Tech debt is a really serious issue. I have encountered it myself and I am a one man show as far as the coding goes... Can't even imagine how complex it gets when you have dozens of hands in the pot, all making code no one else understands. Nightmare.
Boiling people who raise legitimate concerns down to just being 'haters' is a typical shill approach to defending something when you know you're on the wrong side of the argument, typically done in favour of things that suffer from lack of quality due to corporate greed.
you shouldn't hate a game, but you can love it as much as you want
just another form of toxic positivity
in 2020 it was "toxic historical players". or "historical community". now the handwave snarl word is just "haters". not even creative.
Kinda funny how weather effects were removed from the series for so long that they suddenly became a major selling point.
they were removed because they were useless most of the time and i guess there trying to make the weather system not be useless in pharaoh which is nice
@Recon_TW Omg did u know that rain makes the ground wet? CA finally figured it out
@Recon_TW it was supposed to make combat more difficult when you fought in bad weather in the older totalwars but I swear the only game I ever noticed weather making it more difficult was medieval 1 I remember arrows would fly kinda wonky in rain and on empire it made your firing line suck more on shot damage but the rest of the games weather claimed to do things but I never noticed the difference
@@The_Dodge_Meister wtf. Nobunaga used the rain to hide his cavalry. Hannibal used fog to ambush the Romans. Khalid ibn Walid used sandstorms to hide his light cavalry.
if total war don't know which features are imitating the real combat, just uses dice from now on
@@AvengerAtIlipa right but you can just change the weather to clear or dry so its useless why would anyone wanna be at a disadvantage fighting in the fog rain or snow other than it looks cool?
"The UI looks bad"
"yOu CaN tURN soME tHings OfF!"
Yep, great response there
He started with he preferring simpler UI and that it has been like that since some of the previous games.
Yeah, choosing between a sea of icons or not knowing what the fuck is happening is not a great design, not to mention how difficult it is to click on the damned units, at least for me
I'm really sick of the content creators who have been shilling the stagnation of this series.
Same
its even worse on the forums and other total war media platforms frankly. Try at all citing any demand for enhancement or variety on various systems and you will get bombarded by the mobile fanboy coalition on every front arguing at every angle. Its gotten to the point where people are literally just saying "I dont care. Why do you?" when they remove something as critical as an ingame text chat for multiplayer for older total wars. Like seriously? How much of a shill do you have to be to excuse this level of gross behavior.
@@robosoldier11 ikr
All a part of divide and conquer.
Place all these npcs into their cubicles playing all their preferred games; make sure that no interaction takes place
The main problem people should adress towards Pharaoh is its price and economic model.
70€ for a game which is the offspring of Total War saga Troy is wrong.
This game is a « mod »/DLC of Troy and yet they’re asking us to pay the price of a triple A game.
A Shamefur dispray!!!
Yup back in 2012 we were getting FotS for what half price?
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 and it actually added a ton of things unlike Pharaoh (up until now at least)
15:00 I think this is made worse by the sheer lack of banners, that was one of the key ways armies of the day knew where their unit was and where they’re meant to go. So even if there wasn’t a massive difference between your units and the enemies at least you saw your factions colours flying in the wind.
Shogun 2 doesnt have a menu to toggle 20 different UI elements because it doesnt need it, the UI is just good lol
One thing also is how they're making a game on the bronze age collapse and not including Assyria. Just another red flag from this game.
If ever there was obvious omissions in the name of future DLC, this is up there
No Greeks or Cypriots either
"They're bringing back unit formations" Oh Heck yeah, now we've come back to how TW games were 10 FUCKING YEARS AGO, that's great !
I still can't get how these players/content creators can applaud CA from going back to square one after having ditched so much down the drain.
24:00 I made the complaint about how similar this game was to Troy, not because that Troy looked bad, but because this was probably an expansion to Troy (which was hinted at in the game with the Egyptian gods) and because Troy failed so badly they couldn't do anything with the work they had done and try to establish this expansion as a new game. Part of this can be seen in how lazily this game has been marketed, for example the trailer is the worst we have had in Total War, this game just feels like an afterthought to make a quick and easy buck. With Napoleon, at least they were honest and said, ok guys, this is a standalone as well as a FotS. Pharaoh Hoverever is just pure greed to hide all these facts while continuing with a bad system as you pointed out
Ideally, because of Warhammer, total war has fundamentally adopted that playstyle versus authentic battle simulation. A major issue for Stat stacking, comparably when you play warhammer table top, the similarities become apparent. In terms of how weapons are used, and units engage in table top, those players only wanted a visual "come to life," experience with a popular board game. Thus, total war altered its functionality to be more congruent with that, and now it has spilled over into titles that should play more originally as total war. Battle simulation. Which follows the next point in regards of ui. Because the attention to detail in unit animations impacting real time has been replaced by modifiers, it doesn't mesh well with the over dramatic highly stylized kill animations that plagued the community since Rome 2. Admittedly, Rome 2 eventually took some getting used to, but you can clearly see the negative impact of units not holding formation, and blobbing up into mosh pits. Historically, the difference should have been applied as Rome 1 had more sense of that in combat.
Taking consideration of the map, and it's graphics. To make matters short, there is GPS satellite imaging to render a real map depicting real geography. And sure, ecologically different, the structure of land mass hasn't and so the map, though they look clean, on campaign ot doesn't translate well when tsardoms, eb, and more from medieval 2 look much better. Atilla being the worst imo.
Complaints about the engine is warranted if CA have conversed about its limitations. Using an engine that obviously limits the game from making any improvement to combat, physics and unit mass???? That tells me that the level of incompetence to fix or address these issues are of no concern to a company....a legitimate company. Pharaoh looks like Madden character creation. No backdrop art, or moving animations in the background....the map itself with enlarged buildings looks like Age of Empires more than total war.
It started from rome 2 bro, health was introduce back in rome 2. Attila some how still give value to tactic but the ai in attila is dog water and optimaization is poo poo.
Again no words for what total games have become and there are people defending with teeths and nails lmao
"The worst enemy of a black man, is another black man" - Malcolm X
U just dont see that many who make good counter argument but those also understand that total war has regressed in places like I like warhammer but the Attila engine sucks for every other total war than war hammer cus u can't tell units apart and the health bar system only works for monstrous enemies that are the equivalent of tanks on the battle feild which the other games don't have like the previous single hit point dodge chance works better when u don't have a giant single entity. Cus I don't see how u can balance it the same way as warhammer does or better with the 1 hit point system. The other thing I like is it's easier to tell units apart ( only warhammer)and select specific units in shogun 2 I often have trouble selecting specific units and telling them apart on the battlefield
Edit:seriously that is one of the very few things the newer installments added tanks. A tank rolling onto the battlefield is the same as brining monstrous units fundamentally terrifying and changes how u fight and is the biggest threat on the battle often requires specialized weapons to deal with and capable of crushing infantry
Edit2:zoom out tell me if u can tell the difference between yari samurai and yari ashigaru or bow ashigaru and bow samurai cus I can't without zooming in or selecting them
As someone who follows paradox games, Andy’s Take and JumboPixel in particular have struck me as way too quick to defend the questionable decisions made by PDX. They seem like nice people, so I don’t want to say they are “shilling” per say, but when it came to their coverage of Vic3 I really questioned whether we were living in the same universe. It could just be general toxic positivity, but my theory is they were banking on Vic3 content to help their channels, so had an incentive to handwave away any criticism of the game.
I’ll probably still get TW:Pharaoh because it’s a Bronze Age setting, which I love. I’ll probably enjoy the game too, but I’m not going to act like the problems don’t exist.
Toxic positivity is a huge problem with game "reviews" and critique now. Victoria 3 was a fundamentally broken game at launch. Not just poorly designed, we're talking extreme instability and massive error logs worse than what most modders can produce in other Paradox titles - when running the vanilla unmodified game.
What I'm worried about is that they are making some legitimately good changes, but not addressing certain key issues, so the overall game might still be subpar and then they'll reason that the positive changes they made weren't worth it, when it's the core of their gameplay that needs addressing.
My problem with the current engine total war uses is the fact it just is terrible at weight and melee combat, it lacks the weight and physics found in the older engine where troops had real weight and consequences to their movements.
TW Bronze A...Pharaoh or whatever it is called is poop. Fix my damn Shogun 2 CA!!!!
loves your mods it's a disgrace what ca did to shogun 2
Sad part is I wanted a total war game set in the bronze era
Wasn't there another hidden/unannounced Shogun 2 patch a day or so back that messed up the game again 🤔🤔 Thank goodness i had binge recorded my Russian campaign last week and finished it.
Thanks for your great work @izzitfs2311 the community is lucky to have members like you. 👍👍
One thing I like about medieval 2 and hate about warhammer is how they use blood in medieval 2 soldiers would get bloodier as they got injured giving you clear looks on how close to dying your men are but in warhammer units get so caked in blood everyone is the same color and you don’t know who Is in your army and the enemies making it harder to look at what’s happening AND THE SHADOWS ARE WAY TOO DARK I always have to keep my camera facing the same direction as the sunshine to know what’s happening
yea we've gone from visuals conveying information to visuals for their own sake
also yes idk whether it's the shadows or texture quality or whatever but something, something is making these games so damn ugly to look at
my eyes start burning after playing 3K for 15 minutes because everything is so muddy and the lighting is atrocious
The text at 30:47 is pink because its placeholder. Pink text stands out very obviously against most backgrounds so its easy to tell what is placeholder or for dev tools vs what the player is supposed to see. Also at 20:40 the text for the monument has lots of [PH] markers on it which is another way of labeling something as placeholder, hell it even says at the top of the screen at 40:10 that it is alpha and (hopefully subject to change)
Paradox does the exact same thing, for example open dev mode in ck3/vic3/imperator and you will see pink text on some things like characters. Another example is the EU4 main menu had some pink text on it when leviathan expansion released and that expansion was so badly rushed it became paradoxes worst rated product ever on steam.
None of this is inherently a problem, but the fact that the official marketing material where this footage comes from has tons of placeholders in it indicates that this game is far from finished and likely very rushed development is being rushed to meet a release date. I mean its july now and the game is planned for release in october and its not even beta yet
The engine argument isn't over emphazised, it's underemphasized. The combat mechanics are so core to what the game is. Total War is not civilization, Total War is not just some tactics clicky clicky game, it's a battle simulation. If the battle simulation engine isn't good then the game is nothing. And those same core problems of units phasing through each other and sliding around are so utterly destructive to anything called tactics, maneuvering and positioning. It's what necessitates spreadsheeting because without real unit behaviours you don't have any other option for adding variety to combat. If you can just retreat a unit through another unit, or run a unit through another unit to attack, then the only thing that matters in combat is the spreadsheet stats of the units as you can always make every unit engage their perfect counter based on stats instead of having to hold a formation. With proper unit collision a unit that is engaged can't retreat through another unit behind it, with proper unit collision a unit can't cross another unit to get a more optimal engagement so maneuvering and positioning becomes super important. With proper unit collision a charge will physically break up the formation exposing more of the unit to damage so you don't need a spreadsheet stat boost to enable charge cycling.
The combat engine IS Total War, and without it there is not TW. And all these excuses about UI design and diversity and historical vs fantasy and campaign mechanics and the amount of "content" and price value are just canards to avoid adressing the elephant in the room which IS the combat mechanics. Shogun 2 was only just barely servicable exactly because they did the best job of making the combat engine work. If you have just one game with semi-good combat on this engine for 14 years then it's time to change engines and build a new one with a full understanding of what makes Total War work. There's no way around it. Adding more campaign mechanics won't fix it. Adding more motion capture animations won't fix it. Adding more content won't fix it. Making a better UI won't fix it. Only a new engine will fix it.
The games that "used the engine well" tended to all be games with 90% ranged combat. The unit collision etc ruins formations. I guess they dont help themselves with extremely fast battles and health bars though
Gaming has the devs it deserves. Just as mosquitos can thrive and settle only in swamps, likewise the former can only thrive in the swamps of our sins.
There are many aspects of Pharaoh that I would change personally. (Family tree, marriage, and adding Mesopotamia) The UI needs to be more Ancient and more feeling like its part of the time period. The modern UI style can be changed and that's why I'm waiting for mods to fix that. You also pointed out Rome II's inherent weaknesses and I will never deny that fact. Load up Rome 1 and you get this massive Roman army roster to choose from. Go to Rome II and you find a small Roman army which doesn't make sense. You also made a great point about the fact that bringing back old features that have not been reintroduced is going back to square one. TW should at least follow the basics of what made it great.
The Unit Cards need changing and one only has to look at the Age of Bronze Unit Cards to see the difference.
But I've never been an expert in the battle system and all that. I use mods to fix that. If I'm playing TW I'm playing to create stories, to create my own version, heck to create cinematic battles, and ambiences. I'm fully aware that Pharaoh TW is not winning over a lot of og fans, and I want to see how this game will turn out.
If you want to find me more critical of TW, I was way back in 2013, when Rome II released I was very burnt out but somehow I've been playing Rome II all these years(which is weird when the campaign gameplay is still shallow in many areas).
I don't like being put into the camp: You like Pharaoh that's such a bad game why would you get it and more importantly why WOULD you enjoy it if it is more of the same. Because I just do not see it that way. I'm afraid that's my point of view.
There's a reason I'm eager towards Pharaoh. It's a very rare chance that you will get a game on the Bronze Age. No one even knows the rich potential of this time period. And the fact that its coming to TW has always been a dream for me. I never expected to get it made, heck I was the most disappointed that they did not expand to Egypt or Mesopotamia after Troy's release. Now that they're doing it, I want that Mesopotamia in Pharaoh, not exactly in a 3rd game. I am not eager towards an 3k sequel, because I am not sure how abandoning on what you had with a good game like 3k, then moving onto a sequel...doesn't make sense. 20% of the novel had been covered by the time of 3K's timeline.
3k was always going to be fantasy in the first place because the whole novel is like an action packed rpg/adventure/high fantasy novel with dark fantasy combined together. And if we want to look at the fantasy elements of various 3k games, just look at Koei!
Would I say Pharaoh is going to be a success or disappointing game? Not sure. I'm going to get my enjoyment out of it because time period, soundtrack and the chance to create cinematics and ambiences. If people want to dismiss Pharaoh as being bad, as being a game that will wither away within 3-4 months so be it. I'll continue to make content on the game.
Understand that there are players out there that don't nesscarily want to focus on the stats/detailed stuff a lot. I play TW to create cinematic battles, to create roleplaying stories etc, to create ambiences. Sometimes I feel like if I like this game, it feels like I can't because everyone has declared this game is not for them. This is a game in the Bronze Age and I shall play the heck out of it.
It is very rare to get a game in this time period (And while Troy was interesting, the small map did not interest me. I want my entire big sandbox in the Bronze Age.) so its the game for me. Regardless of campaign mechanics I can work things around and mods will fix issues need be.
Personally I'm excited for it because at least they are making an effort to take TW into the right direction imo, I do also very much agree, the time period is really interesting.
I really really really want them to succeed. I've been clamoring for a Bronze Age Total War for years now, even in the old TW forums. Age of Empires 1 was an amazing Bronze Age experience so I think it's not the era that's wrong.
I've always wanted a Total War game set during the Bronze Age collapse and now it's here all of this is sad. I've even wanted a Bronze Age China game instead of 3 kingdoms. Imagine the rise of Shih Huang Di, the first emperor? Imagine him try to conquer a China that's not yet homogenized like how almost everything is Han in 3 Kingdoms.
Spring and Autumn Total War would have been so fun
You speak my thoughts man, so much
The physics of the situation should determine the outcome of the interaction. Instead of applied modifiers determining the physics of the situation.
If the engine was modeled correctly, you would be able to just have one unit of spear kneeling in spear wall, and one unit not in spear wall, then shoot arrows at them - and see which takes more damage.
We aren't necessarily asking for a historically accurate game. Total war used to be a Real Time Tactics simulation now it's a RTS game
The tech tree could have a really cool progression. With either prayer, or science, developing new units that show the technological upheaval at the time, from bronze to iron to steel. From chariot to horse. I wouldn't even necessarily have minded if the dichotomy of science vs prayer caused two "tech" trees. Science providing realistic advances, and prayer providing mythical ones. Instead, it's just stat buffs or de-buffs that mean nothing to the play or feel of the game. You could have had at endgame a total religious faction that chose to "trust in it's gods" spending all it's time on the prayer tree fielding units of naked fantics with falxes and insane morale against psuedo-scale wearing factions that tried to stay ahead of the technology of the time. That could be cool, the tech/prayer could mean something...
But it won't.
You know there is people who wants a game like TW Pharaoh, because of the lack of strategy games set in Late Bronze Age that contains Egypt. The market is overflowing with strategy games set in the Medieval Era, Early Modern Era and even Roman Republican Era that seeing big games set in more less touched on eras are fresh experiences. I am a big fan of ancient Egypt and the Bronze Age Near East, so I am excited about seeing a game set in that era and geographical era. Though there some things I have seen I don't like appearances of the characters of the game, like no one at the time or ever dressed like how they depicted Amenmesse. I know it probably a gameplay reason why they did that to make him standout but does make him look like he heads a fantasy faction not a historical based one. At the current moment I give TW Pharaoh 8/10 with the limited stuff we have rn and if they make the characters more historically accurate in appearance I would raise up even more.
Exactly this
The only thing I hate is beeing called a hater because CA makes bad games
I'm ok with it if we can be consistent and call the other side "lovers" or some crap
They only call out people for being supposedly negative but you can be all rosy eyed positive all you want (unless you are positive towards the older games in which case you need to get with the times lol)
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498Yah only negative review bombing is bad, the obvious positive review bomb8mg is fine for them.
"Good" graphics are a handicap for total war.
Getting pretty close ups doesn't help me if all units look like ants from afar and projectiles don't render. A good style can do the job with less power which can then go into more units, bigger units, proper projectiles, a more complex simulation and the possibility of reading it from a bird's eye view without the herrendous UI.
You can have all the polygons and 8k textures, if the image cannot convey what it should, it isn't worth a thing. Med2 has aged significantly, but looking at its battles I always see a battlefield. It conveys what it has to and helps you immerse into its world. If you want you can see the polygons, but you see beyond them.
Doesn't help that I never get a chance to use the close up feature. Having to constantly micro manage my units as my initial formation breaks into chaos because the game is so arcady. It just feels sloppy and a chore to play battles in Warhammer, Troy, and 3k. I think it does come down to the health bars and that soldiers in Warhammer at least didn't actually fight one another.
@@jojoabc100 in shogun 2 and FotS theres a lot of "idle time" in battles where you can just take in all the sounds and sights; i think part of why they keep on improving auto resolve and pushing more people to use it is that it'll reduce the time someone has to realize just how bad the effects have become.
I have tons of doubts and won't buy it, but then agan I haven't buy a new TW for quite a while so that doesn't say much.
"Playing the UI rather than the game" is a nice line, I wish more games take that closer to the heart.
14:38 Let's be fair here, that pinkish purple do make them completely ridiculous. The rest of them look pretty nice though, and I definitely prefer the more distinct/easier to tell apart design choice.
24:00 Is that not what most "Troy reskin" complains about?
30:37 Wanting it to be more coherent is pretty much his point, I think.
38:58 Maybe the color should be more saturated? Or maybe the map is too detailed? I don't know, but it is definitely hard to tell from a far, yeah.
42:41 Agreed that raiding has very little effect, especially on the AI.
43:38 From what I've seen, I don't think that many people criticize Pharaoh for the settlement system, but I'm not sure.
52:11 I haven't played Troy, but does that really matter when the topic is uniqueness?
Been a long time Subscriber of @AndysTake, love his content and usually agree with him 100%. On this occasion i totally disagree with him. Still Subscribed and will continue watching his content.
As soon as TW Pharaoh was announced the flaws were evident and as more and more content comes out I've actually become less interested in it and we all know CA shows off the best bits 1st.
There's nothing Revolutionary about this game and it doesn't even evolve the series.
I don't think games need to be revolution with every new installment, when you have a good game play sometimes you just need to add flavor. I would say Phroah is such an example, its purpose is to serve as anchor for Egyptian theme Total War game
It seems strange he's chosen this hill to die on.
Not saying that Phroah is good or you should praise the game, hell the game may not even had a good mechanic, but my point being don't expect game to revolution for the sake of revolution. CA is here to do some annual release in order to make their diagram look good for the company higher ups
To be real, Phroah Its just a filler game between actual releases. A tool for higher ups, I would just ignored it since I am not interested with it
@@tonyfranksland428 I was actually referring to CA past statements and game philosophy.
CA themselves used to state that they would make a Revolutionary game followed up with an evolution.
But i don't see either of those models playing out in TW Pharaoh.
You raise a good point. CA strayed away from a battle simulation and leaned towards table top chess. The unit animations should already be translated into animations. They should have focused on physics, and finding a better way to represent marching, formations, unit size, spacing, consideration for mass and amazing sound effects. Napoleon is the best example for what it should always look like. Especially the mod for civil war. Pixelated apollo had some replays and those battles never get old
Stop buying CA's steaming dog doo doo. They are vampires that feed off your wallet with DLC. Just mod Medieval total war 2 and Shogun 2, plenty of mods that do a 100% better job than new titles.
Exactly! I've never played the Warhammer mod that was out but I bet they did better than ca with it and I have played kingdoms grand campaign and it was way better than base medieval 2 and I have a version of third age that I've tweaked a little here and there as well as finding fixes in the totalwar forums and I got it more stable than medieval 2 lmao
Visually think you hit the nail on the head when it comes to functional ability of the colors. While yes the 'pajama' soliders look silly now the distinct colors of each unit only added to the flavor of each faction. To your example in Attila, eveyrthing just looks brown, gray, or black to myself, with some slight yellow/green mixed in. I get they were likely trying to show the depression of the age of attila, however all it ends up doing is constantly having me mix up my tiers of calvalry units without the UI on or being unable to tell quickly which infantry unit is losing as it just looks like a giant mass of brown/black blobbing.
I actually in Empire Total War I would have loved the option to not use Platoon Fire specifically because unlike Fire by Rank which is a strict upgrade, Platoon Fire is a side grade. It actually deals less burst damage than Fire by Rank but instead provides consistent fire, which you may or may not want depending on the situation. Other than that I do agree though...
You really put into perspective why I couldn’t get into 3 kingdoms despite it being set in one of my most anticipated time period for a total war.
Everything is just so overwhelming and convoluted that I gave up before the return deadline.
In architecture we have saying: less is more. It's doesn't mean we need to do less, we need to explore all possible options then reduce and combine it for easier use and maintain.
Correction: at 0:54 i should have said rome 2, not rome 1
In older total war games not o Lu could you see the arrows but you could hear the tension of the bows as they tense and release their ammunition.
This really is the art of gutting games for features and calling it progress
imagine unreal engine for all total war games includiing a full remake of all titles in unreal ungine the latest one
IT BROKE NEW GROUND
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 medieval 1 and 2 in the newest unreal engine a full remaster. it will never be done unless i become so rich i buy the rights
Did stark industries go out of business or somethin?
Its a SAGA total war in all but name same as Troy, Brittania, etc. Its coming out of their B team in Bulgaria and it shows. Its supposed to keep the people who complain about the Warhammer franchise getting all the love content with something resembling historical TW.
Bruh it's just Troy but in Egypt
Does Troy have changing weather in battles?
“Threat level” is such a dumb feature. It completely destroys the fun in learning total wars as you find out which unit is strong and what is not on your own without some nebulous feature basically taking gameplay from for what I’m guessing was some dumb concern for “accessibility”
You know i actually really wanted a totalwar set in ancient china and i was excited for it i was even still excited when i found out it would be based on the 3 kingdoms time frame then i saw how they implemented heroes like Lubu and Cao Cao and instead of thinking oh thats cool and realistic i thought huh reminds me of hero powers in age of mythology thats not realistic at all then i saw a battle being fought on youtube and i thought dynasty warriors they really going this direction huh and then i kept my money.
I couldnt agree more with most of your rebuttals. "Abstract stats that often times dont make any sense to what your seeing on screen"
To your tech-tree point, I think empire is a good example of adding a mechanic that integrates seemlessly into the game. Besides the techs being relevant to the time period and relevant to the quality of your faction, CA was able to make it a tradeable resource, there was the meta-game of using Gentleman to improve your research rate, you could steal tech from other factions etc. On top of that, conquering regions with Universities meant you could gain techs in parallel. In addition, researching techs usually granted you cool new features. Such as bayonets, first you had no bayonets, then plug bayonets(which meant once deployed they could no longer fire in the battle) then ring bayonets(which were always on and lowered your accuracy) then socket bayonets(which meant you could remove them to gain accuracy back). Other examples are firing drills, different types of cannon shot, square formation etc. And there were tons of things to research in different trees which meant you had to pass on some techs to get others. It also meant that you could focus your entire campaign on becoming the most advanced faction which ACTUALLY had an impact on the game and a visual impact when fighting battles(i.e. you have cutting edge modern line inf, while your enemy still has pike and shot).
Unfortunately, the state of Empire and its problems didnt allow players to totally experience what their vision was...which I think could have been incredible. It still had the Medieval 2 spirit but pushing the limits by adding more depth and things to do, and ways to win.
Live commentery
First point UI: In shogun 2 there are a lot of audio or visual background cues. However over the time i've noticed that for shogun 2 there's a lot of ppl who used to complain about UI for units being too minimal especually in replays and mp where spectators could not tell the differance between different spear units or spesific units that shared the same class. In more modern titles the UI was improved and a lot of it is optional and can be turned off in game/battle when you hold down the space bar and edit it in the little side menu to reduce clutter while you play. But overall i do agree that it goes in some aspects a little too far and the lack of background visual and audio cues in modern titles is really dissapointing honestly. I think when i first played wh3 half of the UI stuff was actually turned off by defualt.
Point 2: UI toggle is side stepping a problem and harder no notice faction colors for units
Shogun 2 had units have a color overlay that would change to their main faction color the more you zoom out, and at the end when zooming out you can see your yellow oda blob vs the red enemy takeda blob. This was a hit or miss since on one hand it makes it more clear, on the other hand for some factions, your white colored soldiers start to turn red for some reason when you zoom out? ew? ugly? makes no sense why?
As for the UI toggle, for the most part like in the previus point, a lot of it is turned off by defualt making it more clean compared to what is usually show in someone elses gameplay. I agree that it has more negative then positives but the positive is probably outweighs the negatives as its always better to have more freedon over what aspects of the game you want to see and not see. But like you said, new players may not know what each of those options does and would also be confused why some UI elements from previus titles are missing. Then having to spend 2 hours in graphics options and in game to set up all the UI and other settings to finally play the game.
sidenote about a little fun fact. When AndysTake lists the total war games that upgraded from the previus games. When he says warhammer 3 is an upgrade from the second game, that's actually technically not true. Warhammer 2 is upgrade from warhammer 1, warhammer 3 is upgrade from 3k. Three kingdoms, warhammer 3 and troy use the same engine that was developed and sort of seperated to make three kingdoms, and has it's own quircks and a lot of AI problems that are not in the warhammer 1 -2 engine.
Also when AndysTake is showcasing warhammer 3 particularly this 19:25 bit, he's using footage from the enhanced the gunpowder effects mod. So he's basically showing modded enhanced warhammer 3 not vanilla there.
33:19 again, troy's engine IS warhammer 3 engine. Not the engine in general that we had since empire. But the modified version that was split off to make 3k, that was later used for troy, that was later used for warhammer 3 and now being used for this game... Unless he means the current up to date version of that engine which i honestly don't think is that far off from 3k exept for the new coded mechanics that they added to wh3 and some battle visual effects.
The main problem is the company, not the game
On the topic of spear wall, yari wall is also more succeptible to arrow fire
Is it not always like that?
Holy shit with so much options for changing ui can ca implement manual resizing map like in shogun 1/medieval 1
Ducking heck that fire simulation makes far cry 2 fire a masterpiece
Rebidiom dammit
The game that had some of the best UI ever was Black and White (the first one). It's in a league of its own. Pity that game design philosophies, particularly in strategy, have since generally veered away from minimalist UI, high audiovisual cues and game interactivity (with a few exceptions).
I simply hate him for being Norwegian
Based ngl
I wonder what CA does if Pharaoh doesn't meet expectations.
lol
I used to want CA to make Shogun 3. After seeing them pump out utter garbage for the last decade, I don't think they could do it justice. Shogun 2 is hands down the best total war game.
Warhammer is pretty great, with all its flaws of course, if anything else it brought many people in great WH lore
@@worlddd7777 no its not
@@denishrg9843 It is not perfect game by any means, but it brought back WH fantasy and put it into mainstream, and just for that, it was great
Warhammer is not mainstream dude, it just has an unusually high amount of very very vocal fanboys
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Well, its not MCU level mainstream, but popularity is definitely there, especially 40K. Fantasy is literally brought back from cancellation and IP was introduced to many new people. So its fine, and it is CA most successful total war of all time, by the way
I miss oldshcool UI elements that would add atmosphere to the game. Like how Diablo 2 health/mana globes are held by angel and demon. The 31:50 screen meanwhile could be made in excel.
Sure, 3K tech tree was a bit too much tree, but I think it was really cool.
I think an important factor to look at when it comes to the new games is the campaign mechanics. While they have dozens of really interesting campaign mechanics they divide them to be 1 or 2 per faction instead of making them generic. Factio. Flavor comes from gating off things, this is tw warhammers business model but more egregious in 3 kingdoms. Cao Cao has an entire faction relation/intrigue system to himself when reasonably it could be given to everyone and he could just have a buff for it.
one of the 3K DLC factions has a mission tree that unlocks an extra army slot. You have to pay and then work hard for something that was just a given for every faction once upon a time.
I can’t wait until all these UA-camrs make a total war game. 🙂
"Randal sanity" oh man i remember those videos. Yeah im not sure if even HE knew WTF he was talking about when he brought up the engine. I don't even know WTF the "Warscape" engine even IS! i ASSUME its the "graphical" part of the TW 3 engine. If you GOOGLE the Total War Franchise and look for which game is on what engine, Empire TW to the Present is on the TW 3 engine. The only diffrence is Empire to FOTS uses 32 bit engine while Rome 2 and beyond if i recall uses 64 bit engine.
I think the "engines" Argument is that they reuse different "versions" of the TW3 engine for different games. Like, Attila and Thrones use the same engine, Troy and Pharaoh use the same engine. Although the only way someone would KNOW is if you pay WAY TOO MUCH attention to the UI and Graphics.
Andy is a big time shill.
great video. I hope some day a good game comes up where we can play tactics, manage armies and so on... something like totalwar but at this point I think it has to be another enterprise that picks up the idea and put it into work.
"On defense of people who jump to conclusions based purely on conjecture"
Conjecture is fine if you have evidence to back it up.
8 or 9 copy paste games in a row that dont address any of the issues people have had for years
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 if you had evidence it wouldnt be conjecture. conjecture by definition means you have no or insufficient evidence.
I repeat.
8 or 9 copy paste games in a row.
If that isn't enough evidence to know that the next will most likely be bad then that's delusional.
Also you kinda defeated yourself because according to your response, my conjecture is no longer conjecture because I have evidence.
Would you, Daimyo-sama, agree in me saying cathay in TWH3 is a callback faction to Shogun? Maybe l only say that because the announcer for them is the same VA from shogun2. They dont stand up to the other factions but l like the variety for WH. It isnt a very fleshed out faction, since they took liberties, CA tried to implement it. Warhammer fantasy beat out the strategic depth for spectical, and is a tragic loss.
"Spectacle" you mean some of the worst visual effects and SFX in the series?
Cathay is just a disappointment that was once something I once think could be good, the Yin & Yang system sounds great if units needs to work together/close to eachother to gain some bonuses.
And then Yin & Yang is just High Elves Martial Prowess with extra steps, getting +Melee Defense even if you're an unit who don't rely on melee defense, and not each unit type gaining different effects, which makes Warhammer epidemic of Sword or melee infantry units being just not worth it unlike before warhammer, from Rome 2/Attila Sword units having higher base damage, Shogun 2 Katana Units having a hidden bonus against Infantry, and even Rome 1/Medieval 2 where Spear units have a penalty against Infantry, making Sword Infantry units quite dangerous if you don't have cavalry.
And then Warhammer came and make Sword and even Axe Armed unit the same and with the power of bad calculation design, it just took 42 armor to make a basic Swords base damage useless, because the armor roll is 50-100% of the armor stat, and most swords have 21 base damage.
Excellent points. I do hate the fact that the series is going to such awful places. We really need someone to start competing with Total War titles
My biggest thing is I just don't understand the point of the game. I mean the entire game is just historical Egypt. That seems more like a DLC than an entire game. Nothing about historical Egypt screams out to me "Total War". I mean I sure there were wars and great events happening in Ancient Egypt but I have never heard of them. I actually had to google Ancient Egyptian Conflicts to see if they actually had any of significance. That is pretty bad. Honestly I feel they missed the boat going historical. If they would have went with a fantasy theme and leveraged mystical Egypt and had the LL's and factions, being thee Egyptian gods, now that would have been a game.
I would not care about how obscure the setting is if the studio behind it was competent
I knew zilch about Japanese history when I first started playing Shogun 2 in 2011 and it all seemed so weird that they would go to this period of history after they took us into the 19th century.
Honestly, mystical Egypt in the Bronze Age would be so good. Just imagine this game having a mythological mode!!!
17:00 Slight disagreement on the unit variety in TW3: We do have new unit types which are functionally (meaningfully) different compared to past games, especially Shogun 2.
Namely: Monsters, undead/daemonic, flying & casters.
-Monsters have special abilities (regen, contact effects etc.), do AoE damage and its models are much harder to kill.
-Undead don't rout and are less effected by morale debuffs (can't chain rout them).
-Flyers obviously fly, which adds vertical utility (bypassing meat shields/elite units on the front).
-Casters cast a variety of battle changing spells (can often win battles almost by themselves).
Nothing like these units existed prior to fantasy Total War. Like, if you're gonna be so reductive that a high tier spear unit is 'functionally the same' as a low tier spear unit because 'both have spears', then you might as well consider all infantry as one unit because 'they lack mounts'. The functional difference between low/high tier units is cost effectiveness (and in cases of Shogun 2, even abilities!) relative for their utility/availability. Total Warhammer brought new utility and different kinds of availability with these kinds of units, therefor Total Warhammer does have larger unit variety than previous games.
The overall point being made by Daimyo, that the default UI showcased for Pharaoh is bad, is still valid but this stood out to me as an odd comment.
yea man so much variety in TW WH when the meta is to spam single entities and ranged
this is a literal "tree falling in a forest with no one to hear it scenario" if a large chunk of the roster is chaff not worth bringing then they add no value to the game unless you're some sort of freak who gets off to the idea of having a bigger number
Also remark on "monsters" there was already an implementation of them, called war elephants
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I'm not sure what point you think you're making with the falling tree hypothetical.
Whether a tree colliding with the ground produces sound, is not dependent on a human being in its vicinity.
Extending the analogy back to Total Warhammer: Whether there is unit variety in a faction roster, is not dependent on whether most of said units are worth bringing.
Unit variety != balanced roster. That's a different criticism.
The part I cited from the vid, you were criticizing the idea that fantasy TW has more unit variety, as though supposedly all factions have spear/sword/bow/gun units that fill similar roles, in the same way.
But now you're criticizing that individual units are badly balanced, such that a lot of them aren't even worth bringing.
Which hey fair enough, I agree with that.
But that also ignores that as vampires (for example) in Total Warhammer you can't really muster non-undead armies.
Even the units that are worth bringing for those factions are still functionally different from their Empire counterparts by virtue of being undead (and/or monsters).
Since this is the case across multiple factions, therefor it is fair to say that there is more unit variety in Total Warhammer than in previous historical TWs. No?
It would be really funny if someone decided to make a Warhammer mod for Shogun 2 just to spite CA and show how it ought to be done, with all the oversights and stripped features corrected.
Bro trying so hard to hate on the game that he contradicts himself. That being said, good video and good critics overall.
I think you guys are all evaluating this wrong. Confusing all the various UI contexts is not a sound method. You are trying to compare and contrast the UI presentation by pointing out what is better or worse than it is in some other game. You are identifying things in one that you like but are missing from the other, or things you don't like in one that got added to another. IMO to best determine if a particular UI is good or bad is not to compare it with other games. The way to do it is to compare it with itself. Try inventing ways that the UI could be made worse or better than it is. How would I make it worse? Answering that will better identify how problematic it is. If you struggle to find many ways to make it worse, then it must be pretty bad already. If you can find unending lists of ways it could be worse, then it must be pretty good. Likewise, when you try to invent ways it could be made better. Find only a few and it must be good already. If you can invent dozens of obvious improvements, it must be substandard. You are not doing either. All you are doing is comparing wildly different UI which vary mostly because the games differ, the contexts those UIs support are different, therefore the UIs must be different. What works well in one context often can't in another context. The older simpler UIs are simpler and more intuitive because the games are simpler and more intuitive.
Example: 20:52 Here you make one of your best arguments. But you still are missing the problem and explaining it by venturing outside its proper context. Yeah, that window is a confusing mass of text and numbers and labels you can't understand. But the reason it is bad is because it is presenting information you should not need to worry about at all in order to play. You rightly point out that is isn't readily apparent, or even knowable, whether +7 is a good bonus or a great bonus or a poor bonus until you've played enough to find out. But that's not the underlying problem there.
I'll give you an analogy. In table-top D&D there are lots of numbers and formulas and calculations that you need to understand to play it. You need to figure out whether a dice roll is good enough to score a hit or make a saving throw. You have to understand AC ratings, attribute bonuses, and hit point numbers. You must know all the numbers and all the formulas involved in the ruleset because you must yourself compute the results manually to discover what happens. By contrast, in a computer game all those details and calculations are performed by the software...presumably to relieve players of all those time-consuming, prone to error, burdens. You do not need to know what the numbers are because you are not the one who needs to compute what happens. Yet the game UIs are presenting you with these numbers and conditions and bonuses and formulas and details that you ought not be required to know in order to play. The software is relieving you of the burden of doing all that yourself yet still insists on heaping them all back into your lap anyway. As if it is vital for you to know it too.
The screen you are showing here could be simplified greatly by having no numbers in it at all. Just maybe a color or progress bar that gives an indication. You need to know if the legitimacy or happiness state is good or bad. You don't need to know the precise values and thresholds which make that determinable by the software. You don't need to know +7, you only need to know if it's good or bad or average. You don't need to know what numbers showed up on the dice, you only need to know what the game computed happens as a result. Showing you the dice rolls doesn't help you play at all. It is superfluous distracting information overload. Unnecessary density. So, a color scale red to green, or a progress bar showing how much of the max you have is better than a number because it is simple and intuitive and nothing more complex than what you actually need to know in order to determine what to do. And there ought to be a probability that you get it wrong sometimes if you expect the experience to be entertaining, engaging, and surprising.
The UIs are complicating what they are supposed to be simplifying. That's the real problem with bad UIs. Or, at the very least, they are sticking in your face every detail of what they are doing when they are supposed to be computing it all silently behind your back to free you from details that distract you from simply making relevant important decisions. The problem is the UI is presenting you with the internals it needs to know to compute the results rather than just the minimal info you require to make your decisions. They are almost forcing you to compute the results before you decide what to do, so that you will always choose the best or most effective efficient thing. You end up choosing this "unit" because it has +8 influence instead of this "general" because he is exceptionally influential. The software is supposed to be hiding all that, so you don't have to do it all manually like a table-top D&D game forces you to do.
The more complex the formulas and massive the data volume being used by the software to simulate the battles are, something that grows and grows with each new release, the more unintuitive and unnecessary are the details you are being flooded with. And now that it has become so massively complicated across the entire Total War series, now that computer hardware is able to simulate vastly more variety and complexity, it is impractical to tell players every tiny bit of detail, every facet of its formulas and computations. So, it is only giving you a fraction of it anyway, the maximum fraction you can handle unfortunately, and that complicates the problem even further because you end up with only a fraction of the internal picture. As a result, often you will take the fraction of those data it gives you and relate them in ways the software does not, which only confuses you when you see results you don't expect because you computed them using a different or simplified method than the game does. As a result, they don't appear to make any sense or to exhibit the effects you expect them to during play, and you blame the UI for lying or presenting it poorly. The problem is that the UIs are being made always more complicated and denser simply because the simulation supports more complexity that you do not need to know about, but they presume you ought to know, for some strange unknown reason...because the fact is that you don't and shouldn't know.
The problem I am noticing is the UIs complicating that which they are supposed to be simplifying, overly explaining that which they are supposed to be keeping secret, burdening you with that which they are supposed to be relieving you of. It is no surprise they are more and more cluttered with each iteration. Good UIs are difficult to notice. The best UIs are nearly invisible. When I play, I don't watch the UI, I watch the game board and the units. The UI obstructs my view of that. Every time I am forced to look at the UI instead of what's happening on the game board, I get distracted and disconnected from the experience of playing the game and maneuvering my forces. I don't need to be told, or like being told, precisely how good or bad or average my forces are before I ever play them. I am supposed to find that out only after employing them and watching how they perform. War Hammer 3 is the perfect example of this. You figure out ahead of time what is most effective from the UI data dump, and so you cannot help but choose the right units to bring, then low and behold, you find they are indeed the best, just as you expected, just as you were told. What excitement and entertainment is possible when you are told every plot twist, the ending, and the moral of the story before you ever read the first sentence of the novel? If you could learn to cook by memorizing recipes, everyone would be a world-class chef.
I agree, you can even see in a lot of older games how all you get is "good armor, good against cavalry, etc." or a one-line description of what the unit is supposed to do.
You don't need to ask people to turn into accountants to have a good game.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 It is worse that that even. They are asking accountants to do accounting when they are looking to escape work and have some relaxing leisure time. Expecting engineers to do engineering during their vacation. Asking D&D players to use an automated system to help them play manually.
One of the things I disagree with you on is the ability to distinguish between friendly and enemy units. I think for all it's faults that's something 3k did well. The units looked relatively realistic with some colored fabrics worked in, but the best and quickest way to distinguish between two units was their flags. The flags had different colors and different shapes depending on the faction, and because there were quite a few flags per unit, you could always readily tell who was who (also the flags strewn all over the battlefield looked great.
I preferred this by a mile to any hyper colorized units in previous total wars. Blending that UI with reality was the best new-tw feature I can remember.
i can get back units looking like each on other factions since from the what i seen the recruitment of dependent on where you are on the map. a bit like empire where you get colonial troops in america.
But they just need banners or something to diverse the battlefield a little
@@HarryOvett I think Napoleon or Empire is a good example of the units looking kind of samey but working because back then you were dealing with a strict uniform structure with little variety within regiments. Even then though there was so much regimental diversity that even as someone who's a fan of the period, I would have difficulty distinguishing between the all but the most iconic units and a few pet factories like Napoleon's Dragoons
@@blitz8425 yeh i remember in empire pretty much the same roster across all european countries. i would only notice a difference if in empire i invaded indian and needed to fill ranks with native units
as someone whose first TW was Empire even as a kid I had no difficulty distinguishing Austrians from Brits from Prussians etc.
This was never a problem before Attila where they went for fifty shades of brown
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I miss the medieval 2 total war button that showed the enemy as red and your troops as green. (allies as blue)
if I am not wrong the guy also made video about how paradox games are euro centric when in fact most of the audiance itself is from the west and history that paradox covers usually around the time when europe starts to win against the rest of the planet
By that measure, shogun 2 is "asia centric". Its a useless term that is used only to generate an emotional response.
He's just trying to grandstand, lol.
I own all Total War games. I will not purchase Pharaoh. The EA is a dishonest company. So fk Them.
That's not how you pronounce "lingering." The g makes a guh sound, not a juh sound.
Absolutely love that you talked about sound and just how important it is to convey what is happening in the battlefield, they've reduced the games to the interface and they seem to think that the more they add to this interface, the better. ANOTHER DD win YUP YUP
medieval 1 still best total war
one of my best campaigns was playing sweden in empire...nothing fancy or fantasy...just sweden fighting against hordes of russians in the snow...tens of thousands dead...years of struggle...prussia backstabbing me...I finally took moscow and prussia...epic..even colonized the new world and fought indians in texas
You gotta remember unit card info in shogun2 is toggled off by default, and that shit was so helpful in pvp fights.
for three kingdoms @22:35~ 3 kingdoms I feel like you're misrepresenting it, the tech tree doesnt just hand all those stats like that, unless you mean +X public order/growth/+% on X income etc, then its very similar to shogun 2 in that regard it allows you to do excel your economy so you can make more men and allocate them elsewhere. Otherwise your looking at the Building chain and mistaking it as the tech tree, you do get new units, 3 kingdoms tech tree literally tells you when you unlock a new unit the only difference is you get guns in shogun 2 and not 3 kingdoms which is more of a historical era problem, but you can unlock heavy xbowmen which are pretty strong in 3kingdom and you know what 3 kingdoms allow you to do that shogun 2 doesn't let you do? build a building to add more garrison ofc this is more of a bandaid to an amazing tactic design CA removed from shogun 2 which was breaking up your army into multiple groups, but still I would still like shogun2 to actually having a building that adds garrison to your castle instead of having to create a garrison as a separate army, 3 Kingdoms is the only game after shogun 2 to bandaid this issue by allowing you to have 3 generals in one army and being able to break an army up for more control in the campaign map.
shogun 2 stat modifiers from tech tree were minimal, some gave 5% tax and +1 happiness but the vast majority were unlocking a building and/or unit.
One tech unlocks Naginata Samurai, another unlocks No-dachi, another unlocks fire arrows, one of them unlocks advanced gunpowder and rockets, there are the "Mastery" techs that offer buildings that cut recruitment time in HALF. These are all decisive changes. Almost every tech has a quick, visible effect on how you play the game.
You don't get with a bunch of techs offering x amount of extra military supplies.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 thats fair, ill give you that red tree or the military side tree is kind of lacking overall in 3kingdoms, since its a very niche but it does give you towers and stakes if for some reason your its been specced into at the start of the game, IDK how good they are actually are, its just fun smacking 2-3 towers into the ground.
However id argue aside from the red tree(I think it had bonuses for looting/sacking after battles and settlements while shogun 2 I don't recall you actually getting money for winning battles.), all the other trees enhance or allows you to strengthen your playstyle by letting you have more freedom with your economy, e.g Green bottom side of the tree allows you to gain cash by selling food from diplomacy or food markets, which is a pretty decent sum, yellow is good if you want to stack public order so you can tax peasants etc. which IMO are decisive changes while in shogun 2 I feel like there is a lack of decisive changes to your economy ofc trade nodes is all great, but shogun 2 tech tree for economy is very barebones. Because unlike shogun 2 in 3 Kingdoms you can have access to artillery from the beginning, which I would say, game is letting you be more free in how you choose your armies' composition and not limiting you in the beginning. While in 3kingdoms, different factions will force you to economize in different ways that suit your provinces needs it doesn't punish you to have a specific army comp except people from the north, which are super incentivized to use cav.
For this I'd say that unit unlocking and skill unlocking has some awkward moments because it creates a whole dimension of another issue which about shogun 2's(or insert other total war title) general upgrades in the campaign. Are actually they DECISIVE/MEANINGFUL? Since 3 Kingdom's general upgrades the fire arrows actually are from certain generals' skill tree instead of the Tech tree it makes general upgrades have more meaning, ofc not all upgrades are equal in 3Kingdoms but the recruitment dynamics are very different in shogun2 vs 3Kingdoms since you can muster an entire army on turn 1 but have to wait a while to get the full unit, instead of waiting idk like 6 turns that can be reduced to 3 turns if you use a character for an assignment to reduce mustering turns which while in the tech tree its quite meaningful in shogun 2, 3 kingdoms makes this more useable from the beginning of the game if you actually have a character with skill. Now for Unit unlocking, Correct me if I'm wrong, but In Shogun 2 for MOST factions you have to wait a long time for decent artillery and for the use of matchlocks since you aren't always incentivized to rush it, instead you are better off going for certain upgrades, and some upgrades especially the beginning are incentivized to get like Useugi's warrior monks instead of nodachis or nagi sams . While for some like oda and ikko ikki, the stars are aligned and you actually have expedited processes to get matchlocks so you can do whatever you want.
@Dishonorable_Daimyo One criticism about this video, something I disagree with both you and Andy (which care not much for his videos) is that it is alright to accept no change. Pharaoh is a new game, it is sold as a new game, it is even not marketed any longer as a saga which CA tried to refer to a smaller TW project - meaning it is marketed as a fully priced complete experience of a new game but like many of Andy's examples (with Medieval 2 as an exception) they are not full games. Rome 1, Empire, Rome 2 those are worthy of a the title full games, those games took more than 1 year to make, those were the result of proper development of 3-4 years ~ (not of just preproduction) but of actual development. Attila was an expansion pack and as much as people enjoyed the improvements it offered it didn't cost CA the same resources and effort to create it, neither was it pushing the franchise forward as the other titles that I have mentioned.
A new game can build and copy on previous work, it is good for them to copy and refine what they previously had done - this is what I want and many others, we don't want the same Rome 1 populaiton system, we want it in combination with the system from medieval 2 and further improve it with ideas such as what DEI did or other creative designs. So obviously copying alone isn't the issue, but being fine with zero change accross the board or blatant copy paste and a price tag of 60$ is something no one should accept. A new game should push forward in deisgn, UI, graphics, AI, simulation systems, sound and so on... it can push harder on some aspects and a bit less on others but if it doesn't try than its a rip off !
Pharaoh's issues isn't that it is doing something that has been done before such as finally removing ass ladders, no this is one of its best selling points but at the same time it means it doesn't push forward (especially seeing gameplay footage which indicates they didn't refine the AI to much) so to justify the price of a new game it needs to feel like a new game, and if its not the ladders, not the graphics, not the AI, not the seasons, and not unit sizes then it means that even where it does push forward, it barely pushes to justify the price - even if it will be fun to play !
I do see some good with Pharaoh, I like the changing climate in a battle, I like the fact it can change terrain types, I like the map now indicates terrain types, and I am curious about armour degredation (might need refinement) but those systems do not sounds anything close to be worthy of a full price, and the fact it is because Pharaoh is a very cheap game. It is made by a cheap labor force (no offense) which given a small budget (one year) and as passionate or talented (or maybe not) the devs are, there is a limit of how much they can do with that - games like Pharaoh are just easy sales to max profit for a work that had already been sold.
P.s. regarding the Engine discussion, I am glad you don't bring it up, because unfortunately most people who bring it up don't understand what Engine means - they heard the term and just use it without knowing what it means. There is however some people who do, and there is a reason to crticize it. Simplified an Engine is a set of connected tools that are built in a dedication to achieve a objective of a sort, for example an engine can be used to create a Third person game and can be used to create a FPS game as well but because it wasn't designed and dedicated to that objective it often will be ineffecient or hard to work with to bend it or twist it to apply itself to that will. TW's enigne for example is what allows it to make effecient calculations of many entities at the same time compared to other engines which will probably break down if you try to force them in to doing it. How it makes those calculations and how it impacts game play is something most people from the outside can't really know and at best can speculate, unfortunately most of the Engine conversations are pretty lame and I am happy you are a voiding it as a foundations to your arguments :)
p.s.2 you had a small hiccup chatting about the building browser as technology tree :) (unless maybe I didn't understand you)
All of the supposed improvements in Pharoah are either from past games or something that they should have done years ago
Yeah i made a mistake thinking the build tree was a tech tree but the same problem still applies, we wenh from unlocking units--giving a decisive option--to accumulating numbers.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498
In the world, in general, not only in gaming improvements aren't often 'new' - they are just the result of innovative minds piecing out a combination of previously good things together.
The sad thing that even the harshest critics of TW aren't excpecting CA to reinvest the wheel, they just want CA to take things they had done and on each of those just push a foward with every New Game, Medieval 2 is a great example of that - while it was done by a smaller different team, that team pushed what CA created in Rome 1 foward in almost every possible aspect - Graphics were massively improved, AI both on campaign and in Combat saw definive advancement (sieges especially, not only they got more complex but they worked better) and so on...
As I said problem with Pharaoh is that it is already clear that it doesn't push enough aspects forward in enough of a sagnificant way and it often seen as a step backwards compared to where the series had been in the past (such as the fort examples).
Don't know how the game will turn out - it might be a fun game (not perfect and with many of the issues that you had stated exist within it), my problem is that it cost way to much for what it offers and it offers to little cause CA doesn't reinvest any of their massive profits back into their titles - hence we are in 2023 recieving features that are primitive iterations of things that might have not worked well but were advanced for their time.
P.s. forgot to respond on the last segment of your video, I criticise but I also praise and give credit where credit is due - the 'Historical vs Fantasy' disscussion had always been to the detriment of TW fans and it was always poorly phrased and handled, I am really glad you tackled this issue !
Personally I had refered to it in many places in its proper form a disscussion between Simulation and Arcadiness(streamlining) which is something you brought up (and I enjoyed seeing, in your videos). The discussion rose up in the recent years as more and more people searched for the way to tackle the noticeable changes CA had done with the series both in battle and in campaign.
From having testudo applied beause of actually simulation of soldiers positions and shield location and having simulation of population to recruit from CA had moved to arcady simplier and easier to learn solutions which as you said created cheesy unfun experiences.
Medieval 2's simple cool down (and stacking) recruitment system and replenishment is the reason the players had to diversify their armies, to care for their elite troops, and were unable to just spam a stack of single entities easily - the problem hence isn't signle entities (per se) but that there is no longer any system even a simple one to simulate things like the time it took to equipt armoured elite footman and so on.
The problem is that I don't think there are to many people left working at CA that understand that or care for it or even see it as an issue and the few that do (maybe some of the Sophia team?) can't really give the executive orders to curve the game in that direction since simulations cost way more (in dev time) to create than a simplified streamlined system does.
Anyway, keep up on the good work, and thanks for the video :)
If it does turn out to be crap, we can still hope that it will be moddable
ive heard that one before and until this day i have not seen one instance of a bad game being turned into a genuinely good one through modding
After Shogun 2, this franchise just kind of died
Already told a lot of Total war UA-camrs
If you want to play Pharoah, play Rome 2
31:00
That's fuchsia, not purple. 0/10 would not watch again.
20:40 ….did DD mean tech tree even though what is on screen is settlement building list and not tech tree?
Even then it just shifts the criticism to the building trees where instead of giving access to a unit--something that will have a visible effect--you are amassing numbers.
Live commentary here
I have been hearing the critique of total war Pharoah being that "it wasn't what we asked for, give us medieval 3". I don't like this critique and while I haven't you heard you say this, other people in total war groups I am in have said it and I just wanna give my opinion here. I am not opposed to Pharoahs time period and I am not opposed to making total wars in any era, I just want them done well and I think people should be able to engage with total wars even if they don't like the period, I am not the biggest fan of the Sengoku Jidai era but that has never stopped me from playing shogun 2 because simply put, shogun 2 is a well made game. The problem is that CA in its current form would never be able to make a good game in any period because they are too busy making cheap uninspired games that just look unpleasing.
I agree that good games tend to have much less UI, less UI and letting me being able to take in the beauty of the world the developers created is what made me fall in love with Elden ring.
Does anyone else feel like the newer total wars art style looks extremely meh? for me Ive never been able to look at troy because it just looks like an ugly uninspired game, especially when compared to other Total wars like Shogun 2 or Medieval 2.
I will defend Total war Attila here: the lack of color compared to earlier total wars as in here is a design choice to show the end of antiquity and the rise of the middle ages and some of the factions that are leftovers from that era like the Sassanids and Eastern Romans are much more brightly colored compared to the "barbarian factions" and although Attila had many problems like UI, performance issues and some bad voice acting, it was the last time CA actually tried when making their so called "historical total wars" and to attilas credit, it is an atmospheric game.
OTOH, making the game like "Pharaoh" is not even "Bronze Age TW" game. It's akin to "Total War: England vs. France", with Flanders, Norway and Denmark as "flavor factions" instead of a proper Medieval 2. Not even calling it "100 years' war saga" would fix the crap taste.
Imagine even having to have a conversation about faction flavors if CA is already so sick with DLCitis that it never occurred to them that Mesopotamia existed and was a *basic* requirement for *any* TW game about Egypt, Bronze Age Collapse included (perhaps even specifically included). The only exception would be a game focused solely on internal Egyptian mess, but good luck with that.
The fact I don't hear -anything- a constant stream of information about *water* mechanics in a game about ancient Egypt is also a bad predictor. If you don't build such game around that, what exactly is there to build it around, really...
can't you turn icons off? the sound and graphics can always be better though.
I personally never liked any of Andy's videos. All I've tried to watch were clearly clickbait videos, void of originality
Like you, I don't care that Pharaoh is a reskin of Troy on principle. If Troy was good, I wouldn't really mind. However, I think Troy was pretty awful so yeah I have a problem with Pharaoh being a reskin.
Giving voice to a lot of the issues I e had since warhammer…. Granted warhammer can be fun but games before we’re a complete different vibe that I prefer
Funny you brought up EU4. I am digging Imperator Rome with the excellent modding community.
warhammer fans want to collect all DLC'S like theyre pokemons. expensive pokemons.
As much as I agree with your video, the one nitpick I'll die on a hill defending is the Rome 2 unit cards. Not as good as the shogun 2 unit cards, but they are leagues better than Atilla's, Warhammer's, or even the 3d mod unit cards replacements by DIE.
Besides the Greek pottery theme fitting the era, they're designed that a quick visual glance tells you exactly what kind and tier of a unit it is. Missile units all carried their weapons above their heads while melee units carried them in front of their torso. You could also tell the general quality of a units armour by the amount of detail their torsos had. In your example, the Praetorian unit cards immediately indicate elite infantry via their capes which stand out visually like a sore thumb, while the more exotic looking infantry cards clearly indicate auxiliaries (Brutian infantry, for example). The 3d mod replacements by mods like DEI look like the same generic soldiers with swords and shields.
The simplified "art" style of unit/building cards (again Shogun 2 is the best example) are a million times more visually clearer than Atilla's unit cards. FOTS and Attila's building cards were equally hard to distinguish. But that aside, agree with your video 100%. Shame what Total War has slowly become.
It's not about differentiating between archers and melee...it's about differentiating units of the same class.
14 melee infantry units for rome that are almost impossible to distinguished from one another
I won't say it will suck but it will probably be boring af.
If they want to make a historical tw after years of fantasy titles why not Medieval 3? I will never understand.
CA ruined old games for people to play their new games, why?
I agree with everything except your dislike of the empire settlement system.
Good vid.
UI looks like CIV 6 clone
hmm... I think you may not expect reality from fantasy game at this point.
I've watching your videos specially your essays and one thing I got from them is goddam rome 2, it destroyed the franchise.
Total war should look back at why people still play the old total war games...we love the old design of Those games like from Rome, medieval, Empire and napoleon. These new total wars aint it...they suck
Hi great vid thanks for pointing out this, if i may add something province system also sucks.
A 1 hour video in response to a 10 min one seems a lil much
Not when i stop to address every point made
takes 10 times longer to rebut an argument than to make one, which is why the opening statements in any formal debate are always shorter than the rebuttal section. thought this was known by everyone but maybe not.
@@Volound
Not necessarily. You can always just say
"No u"