Total War: Pharoah Oct 11 Release

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**nels1031**

Total War: Pharaoh, the next game in the strategy franchise coming in October 2023. Get ready to dive into the turbulent events of the Egyptian New Kingdom period where you will determine the fate of three great cultures as they fight for survival amid the cataclysmic Bronze-Age Collapse.

In Total War: Pharaoh, the Pharaoh is dead, and the people of Egypt, Canaan, and the Hittite empire cry out for a new leader. Many desire the power of the throne, but the path to becoming Pharaoh is a perilous one. As the leader of these great nations, you must overcome societal collapse, face natural disasters and fight to protect your people against invaders from far off lands. 

Total War: Pharaoh features a choice of eight faction leaders from three rich cultural hubs, with unique playstyles and diverse unit rosters. Whether you’re charming the courts as a peerless diplomat, charging into battle as an unwavering commander or causing chaos as a fearless warlord, become a leader that history will remember.

Not sure it'll entice me away from WH3, but I'll check it out.

**Voss**

Not even on their blog or home page yet.

Not sure two bugs fighting over a ball of literal crap is the best marketing approach here, but... ok. A choice was made.

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Pharoah is an interesting title choice, since Canaan is solidly in the Levant and the Hittites were mostly in Anatolia.

How many DLC until you can play as one of the invader leaders?

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https://www.pcgamer.com/conquer-egypt-and-survive-natural-disasters-in-total-war-pharaoh-this-october/

October and not a Saga game, for those that care about CA's distinction.
Built on the Troy engine with weather and environmental effects (particularly fire).

As for post launch support, three DLC faction packs are also in the works, the first of which will be included in the Deluxe Edition, while all DLC will be included in the Dynasty Edition. Creative Assembly Sofia is also planning a DLC campaign pack.

**nels1031**

Next week for a gameplay reveal.

I'm not too confident in the October release date(or any initial release date for a modern game), but we'll see.

Bronze Age Collapse is quite an inspired choice for setting a Total War game. Granted, Atilla did something similar with climate change, invading hordes and and a partial civilizational decline/death .

**Eumerin**

Here's the pre-order page on the CA site. It's not up on Steam yet (Steam updates in about an hour, IIRC, and I suspect it'll go up then). I expect this info will all be there and in the Epic site before the end of the day.

https://store.totalwar.com/en/total-war/total-war-pharaoh/total-war-pharaoh

**Lord Damocles**

Oh! I wonder how many features they'll remove from this instalment?

**Eumerin**

Here's the Steam link -

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1937780/Total_War_PHARAOH/

The pre-order bonuses are free cosmetics (skins feaders and bodyguards), and access to the game a week early.

**nels1031**

I’ll buy this if I’m super bored, I suppose.

Weird early access window. Mayhaps just a quick pre-launch bug check?

FAQ wall of text:

Spoiler:

**Eumerin**

The "early access weekend" sounds like what is otherwise known as a "demo". Seems like it would make more sense to let anyone who wants to try it out.

Hopefully it means that they have enough confidence in the product that they think the word of mouth from it will be good.

**Not Online!!!**

Why would anyone buy a Troy TW 2.0, when troy was utter trash on the battlefield mechanics wise and still is trash on the campaign side of things with a lack of individual units beeing manouverable?

**trexmeyer**

Not Online!!! wrote:
Why would anyone buy a Troy TW 2.0, when troy was utter trash on the battlefield mechanics wise and still is trash on the campaign side of things with a lack of individual units beeing manouverable?

Don't forget CA giving fans the bird with the last WH3 DLC. I don't know why anyone would give them money right now.

**Not Online!!!**

trexmeyer wrote:
Not Online!!! wrote:
Why would anyone buy a Troy TW 2.0, when troy was utter trash on the battlefield mechanics wise and still is trash on the campaign side of things with a lack of individual units beeing manouverable?

Don't forget CA giving fans the bird with the last WH3 DLC. I don't know why anyone would give them money right now.

Ca has no competition, respectivly the consumers are not aware of it, considering a certain recent ww1 game.

**nels1031**

Well, early access weekend…

Not sure how I feel about it.

Just feels cluttered and busy in the campaign screen. It might take some getting used to, like how Three Kingdoms was so ‘foreign’ to me.

Combat felt alright, though I only did a few battles as the north east egypt faction.

Honestly, this is one of the the last game franchises that I still have faith in and I’m not sure I’m feeling this game, so far. Its not knocking my socks off.

I’ll report more as I get deeper into Early Access.

Edit: Steam Community Hub lists 662 people playing lol.

Edit2: Music is pretty good.

Edit3: battle have been fun, and I like the recruit “native units” option. Armies built in different provinces can have a different look and feel.

Edit4: not really enough here for me to say its a must buy.

**Overread**

Honestly the campaign screens have felt cluttered for a long while. The Warhammer ones are beautiful but there's so much going on that actually reading them is a challenge. Are those griffins flying round the mountain a boon for that province or just decoration?

It's a long standing issue I've had with them for a while and you really feel it if you go back and play much earlier games where the maps were much more basic; however you could read them really easily.

And I should note its not that they are impossible to read in the newer games; just much more jumbled and it takes longer to learn what bits of information you can and need to read off them and what's just there to look really pretty

**nels1031**

Its not so much graphical busyness, I don't mind that and really brings the map to life. Its more being inundated with different systems, resources and such all on the screen at the same time.

I did start to get used to it, before I called it a night, but it was quite a bit to be hit with. I think I just hate change!

Can't stand the art direction with building icons, and the amount of information they give is sparse. I'm not sure if I'm looking at the wrong thing, but for example:

TW Warhams: A tier 4 Orc barracks will show you exactly what unit(s) you can build.

Here in Total War Pharoah, a barracks building doesn't seem to show me what unit can be built. Again, I could be looking in the wrong place, but as someone who has played this franchise since near the beginning (played all but the original shogun), it was weird to click on a building and not know what it does. I know it was a barracks building because it's color coded, it just didn't bring up unit icons or stats. Just some message about how I can recuit units.

edit: After typing that up, I do think that recruitment mechanics might be different in this game. It seemed like I could recruit "faction units" pretty much anywhere I went, as long as it was my territory. Which might be pretty cool.

**Overread**

You can do that in the Warhammer games too with two tiers. The local which only let you recruit units specific to that region's building tree and global which let you at everything your empire could build. However the latter were always a lot more expensive.

**nels1031**

Overread wrote:
You can do that in the Warhammer games too with two tiers. The local which only let you recruit units specific to that region's building tree and global which let you at everything your empire could build. However the latter were always a lot more expensive.

Yeah, I know. But it seemed like there was no penalties based on recruit times nor were they 2x-3x the cost like unmodified global recruitment in Warhams.

**Overread**

That's an interesting change, the ability to recruit armies of any unit the empire over anywhere within your territory would certainly open up some other playstyles. Sometimes one weakness I feel in bigger TW games is that you keep having to pause or wait to get good units from your main settlements because your moving warfront has weaker ones that don't have the building chain (and won't get it for ages). So it could be a way to make the game more aggressive and remove a stalling element.

**nels1031**

To be clear, I could very well be wrong though. The UI and all of the newness of it might've confused me.

**nels1031**

nels1031 wrote:
To be clear, I could very well be wrong though. The UI and all of the newness of it might've confused me.

Turns out I was wrong. Its traditional recruitment, with no global recruitment, coupled with your position in court allowing you to recruit certain units anywhere.

Starting to get a hang on this game and its systems. Enjoying it, but not ready to give a ringing endorsement.

**nels1031**

Looks like the 4th and final update drops tomorrow. Its a whole separate download called "Dynasties"

A much bigger map, new cultures, new +reworked units, family trees+intrigues and other features. The last hurrah for a game no one asked for.

I don't think I've played it since the week after my last post in this thread. Looking like its a proper historical title now, at least.