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: th-cam.com/video/qavY___5U4s/w-d-xo.html
@@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 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.
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 the engine (the codebase) is outdated and poorly maintained and it produces bad results.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.
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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?
As archeologists (with quite a strong interest in Egypt and near East Bronze Age), the units, 3d meshes and assets, even architecture (in battle maps, in campaign map is surprisingly good) are all but historical (obviously if not historical, accuracy is totally out of scope). Only 2d designs are historical (with some inaccuracies but historical). Returning to generic art, 3d etc. the thing resembles more to a 19th century Opera clothing than to Egypt in the period or any 14-12 century bc thing. So in that sense, the skin of the game (art, units, clothes etc.) is nothing but fantasy, poorly "orientalized" fantasy, but fantasy anyway.
@@gulli72 at least that is for gaming sake (despite they could find better solutions) any case the shape of the walls do not correspond to at least the draws and paints we have in reliefs and tombs. Neither to foundations from temple walls.
@@lolasdm6959 nope, u have really huge cities, there is a nice video in YT about population estimation in major towns in history, but in general terms most of the cities were rather small, towns and villages
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
Reminder that Andy's take also made a video responding to Victoria 3 ''hater'' and said that Victoria 3 was one of the best paradox game release at launch Oh and he also said that Total War: Troy was AMAZING... I don't know if he have really poor taste Or he is just shilling for those companies...
I mean paradox games do have shit releases mostly though, hoi4, stellaris, imperator all had terrible releases, while ck3 and vic3 did fare better in that regard.
. @karloperkovic6710 Victoria 3 did NOT fare better in that regard. I've played every Paradox game since EU4 from release, and Victoria 3 was the absolute worst out of all of them. There was 50/50 chance of any time you declared a war that the game would crash. In the modding community it was discovered that there were thousands of errors whenever ANY war was declared - at launch! It's an absolute disgrace that TH-camrs keep defending Paradox releasing not just buggy, but absolutely and fundamentally broken and unplayable titles.
@@voltairethegoldflame9280 I think you may have been blinded by rose tinted goggles when commenting this. Imperator was an awful near unplayable release that was rightfully and universally panned. Ck3 despite being lauded was empty and devoid of content comparable to Vic 3. Go back and play hoi4s release, its an awful, broken, and buggy mess. Vic 3 wasn't especially bad, it was par for paradox
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.
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!!!
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.
I think alot of people got overhyped with Total War Warhammer so much so that they ignored the bad parts, it could also just be that alot of the fans for Warhammer haven't played the older Total Wars and don't even know what was lost
I think that a lot of Warhammer fans haven't played the original games is a part of why we are seeing the problems that we do. CA can be lazy now because a large percentage of the newer fan base doesn't know any better. You make a good point
@@jojoabc100 Ive been playing since Rome 1 and even I didnt notice the downgrade, I think I just got caught up in the hype of a Warhammer TW series. Its actually sad thinking about what we could have with Warhammer, I stil "enjoy" the games but they couldve been so much better.
@@Malignard Over generalizing? Sir your number of hours are not representative of the general population who plays these games. You're number of hours are in fact an outlier compared to people who think Troy or Pharaoh will be good. It's not representative of the general population. I have thousands of hours as well but that doesn't mean I should use my experience in total hours playing to explain the casual player picking up or wanting these two games. They have very little experience with previous titles, as I was saying. We are arguing basically the same thing. Pharaoh and Troy are shit titles. But you are missing the point I was making in that these casual players do not have the past experience of past titles, like you and I do, to know what they are missing out on what CA is churning out nowadays.
@@jojoabc100 my hot take is that you can usually tell if a game is good or bad within the first hour of gameplay; anyone saying you need 20, 50, 100, 1K etc. is just trying to shield their favorite toy from criticism with some arbitrary metric.
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.
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
part of the reason I love warhammer 40k darktide so much (despite its absolutely screwed release and lack of content, to this day) is that the gameplay itself literally tells you everything thats coming at you and happening to you purely through perfectly crafted audio and visual cues
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.
"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.
historical total war games always had special place for me cuz they often use very interesting time periods in history, and Bronze Age Egypt is definitely up there in the list. this should tell folks that Egypt back in the ancient days was not a single huge nation, but multiple smaller kingdoms within its region & its fun to explore them & see what they can have in Total War series. but what held me back, will always be the gameplay...
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.
I have no problem with the UI clutter in Paradox games, because those games are pure abstraction in its rawest form. That's what they are about. They are not about getting an intuitive feel, neither are they about making split-second decisions, they are about making yourself familiar with intertwining abstract systems, how they interact with each other, in order to know which buttons to press to make numbers go up in the most efficient way. It's its own art form. It's ok if you don't like it, but that's what those games are deliberately trying to be, and they are the best in their field. I agree tho that that's not what Total War games should try to achieve. They should be the antithesis to that philosophy.
YES!!! See that's the thing too, games like Stellaris and CKIII are meant to have different historical things to buff up numbers. What do guns do? Make the numbers go up. What does having better generals do? Make the numbers go up. Now sure those games aren't just number crunchers. They're basically things to set you in a world as an individual person. YOU are the king, YOU are the leader of the Galactic Federation. It's a mixture of RPG, 4X, and number crunching.
Yeah no, I have enough experience in EU4 to know that very little meaningful decision-making is taking place. You are going to be expanding militarily all the time, forgoing any of the other methods to play the game because military expansion is by far the best way to up your score. The vast majority of the idea groups are never worth going, you will be going for a combination along the lines of Defensive, Quantity, Economic etc. in every single game, while your Admin/Diplo power will be going towards consolidating conquests and annexing vassals. I still remember that one update where they first added the Estates mechanic where you had to assign each and every province to an Estate, the worst kind of busywork, and it got panned so bad they revamped the mechanic to be a pie chart where you click certain actions that have a cool-down to get certain bonuses and watch the percentages change. Can you enjoy it? Sure. But it's still objectively trash and one-dimensional. "but that's what those games are deliberately trying to be" If someone is extremely effective at murder that does not make the murder less morally apprehensible. Likewise if a game sets itself out to achieving a terrible design model, then it's still a terrible design model. It is possible for a game to succeed at a vision--like EU4--and still be garbage. Just because it was deliberate doesn't make it any better. A lot of the problems in Rome 2 were deliberate design choices, all the same.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I completely agree with this take, when I was fifteen (I'm in my early 20's now) I was a massive fan of Crusader Kings II and thought it was the pinnacle of strategy gaming. While I think your point about EUIV is correct, and believe it does extend into Crusader Kings III, I would like to hear your take on that in this regard because it does have some differences between itself and the Europa/Stellaris games. Though I would say they are all primarily about extending military power with limited options for proper interactions between the player and the NPC characters. If I were to say what the ideal strategy/tactics games would be these days I would look to the Ultimate General and Field of Glory systems.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 But your point in the video was not that EU4 is trash because its gameplay is one-dimensional, you claimed that it's trash due to it being a "menu-simulator" and that it does not communicate its gameplay mechanics effectively nor intuitively. I would argue that that does not make a game trash per se. If a given video game is an immersive audio-visual experience first and foremost (which most video-games are nominally), then yes, the UI is a necessary evil, and the lesser it is, the better the game. But if the UI literally is the game, then you cannot complain about it communicating its mechanics through the only medium at its disposal, can you? If you are saying that any video game must be an immersive audio-visual experience in order to not be objectively considered trash, then I just have to disagree with you on a fundamental philosophical level. I am curious: Do you think that text-adventures and business management-games are inherently bad, just by virtue of belonging to those genres? And what makes a game objectively good for 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 BIGGEST change from Shogun 2 to Rome 2 is the "incert camera". In shogun 2 you get a FIRST PERSON view of the battle from your soldiers perspective, and if they fire a Projectile YOU FOLLOW the Projectile till it impacts ether the ground or the enemy (the melee animations where awkword to sure it it was pretty immersive). Meanwhile in Rome 2 when you hit the Incert key you get a "above and behind" view of the unit and can freely move the camera around (They went for a more "cinematic" experience). I feel like that is what Total War has become, it has gone from a "Simulation" of warfare, to a "Cinematic" experience. While that is not inherently a BAD THING, the things that have been changed or removed from Total War are to its detriment. As Weird as it sounds, Total Wars BIGGEST ISSUE is its lack of Immersion. The Province system could fit on a MOBILE DEVICE (probably a tablet, but hay maybe even a modern SmartPhone), Tech progression is just Bonuses and unlocking Better-er units (the better er units bit i THINK they are trying to rectify), and Individual units have lost their sense of Autonomy (because unit abilities YOU have to click rather then the unit just DOING IT THEMSELVES). "You have no faith in your units" I sure as SHIT don't anymore. Even in Rome 2 and Attila i still had faith in my men to do their jobs. In Warhammer, I expect my men to shit their pants and flee, at the sight of an angry Bretonian peasant mob with a sharp stick.
I think you’ve identified one of the biggest issues with newer total war games. The real time battles used to be realistic simulations of combat with tactics and morale and supply concerns all specific to the historical era represented. But now battles although more spectacular graphically feel very tactically shallow with no meaningful physics or morale and supply systems. They’ve become all about fast clicking and abilities and stats etc. Some people may be willing to overlook this because of the graphical enhancements but I’d rather have tactically satisfying TW battles that have worse graphics than what we’ve got at the moment.
@@EVSmith-by9no It also doesn't help the AI is WORSE then it used to be in alot of ways. You have no IDEA how mindblowing it is to see the AI RETREAT from battle in Rome Remastered and Rome 1 footage. WHY CA removed that (or forgot to add it) I do not know. Speaking of Tactics, i suspect that is why people argue for a Empire 2 or ANY kind of Gunpowder Total War, since those settings require "set up and positioning" to make effective use of your musket/rifle lines and artillery. Like, take all the battles from Rome 2 (including the naval invasions) and put it in a Gunpowder setting and everyone would LOVE IT. I know most people would prefer a MED 3, but i have to ask "What would change from what we have now?" The Answer is JACK SHIT! A new SKIN for the same old game.
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.
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.
I miss the motion capture the most, when they actually fought each other. After Warhammer they just swing in the air, very immersion breaking and it seems that they never will go back.
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.
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.
New Total war games in terms of UI, units, sounds and maps are not even form over function. No form, no function. Just sad to see. Especially sound effects and music wise. Hearing matchlocks rip through enemy lines to Taiko Shuffle will never get old.
the unholy trinity of nu-TW shilldom. imagine starting youtube channels after 2020 to cover total war as if everything is just fine LMAO. the niche-hunting must be fucking rough out there. not destiny? not fortnite? not overwatch? imagine applying the formulaic scheduled clickbait grift formula to fucking total war, of all things. jesus fucking christ.
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 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.
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
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
CA is massively "purging" Shogun 2 now and also other older titles like Empire or Napoleon. Mods without Kaedrin mod manager don't work and even with Kaedrin it's quite problematic to make them run. Steam won't even download them when you subscribe them on workshop. With my friend we needed to share some key files from data folder and the mods themself via google drive and manually put them in the folder to make them run. I hate this attitude, that they are forcing you to play their new titles by limiting their older titles (which are mostly better than the most of the new ones) and making them still harder to play properly.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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. 👍👍
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...
i’m not saying pharaoh will be a master piece but i believe it could be good. it’s needs some improvements of course. but it’s just bronze age hasn’t been used. i think they started to market the game wrong annoying the older player base with the “new” mechanic. however they are kinda changing with how they do it in their dev blog. With the weather i think it’s mostly like terrain changing. i dunno if that’s been in other games. i’ve only played medieval 2 upwards. But the game was always going to been disliked on announcement by people who only want Med 2 or Em 2 and shadowed by troy shit battles and lack of a player base
Ive seen it across so many video game titles now. The core of the fanbase do not know how to think critically and do not know enough about game mechanics in order to be able to know exactly what makes a good game and what they want. Instead surface shine is constantly analysed and people ask for things which just end up bloating and doing nothing for the gameplay itself.
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
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
@@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 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.
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.
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)
"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.
Companies these days are greedy bastards that count every coin, hence the reason why their games are so mediocre My problem with these newer games is that they haven't been able to deliver an impactful experience. I can't say they're utterly bad. It's more like they're just mediocre. There's nothing extraordinary about them. Just another high-budget game being shallow despite its overwhelming budget. I'm afraid the problem lies not in the fact that they lack any ideas. To me, it's more connected to the nature of high-end enterprise production. They count every damn dollar and won't slip anything, if it hasn't been included in the preliminary budget evaluation. Their mindset is basically as following: "We have a certain amount of money for that project and anything past it won't do. Therefore, we have to do only the bare minimum that fits the budget. Anything extra is a nuisance". Sadly, such companies respond only to boycotts, review bombing and counter-advertisement.
potential problem is that it's almost certain that Shogun 1 had a tiny budget in comparison yet still managed to be more ambitious than anything we are getting now it's not budget, it's about direction (or lack thereof)
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Yup! It is direction. That's what I wanted to point out - I believe that financial matters are tied to a direction itself, guiding it in some way and establishing production procedures typical for the market.
I appreciate your comments about the pointlessness of engine discourse in gaming criticism. Most discussion about "the engine" of a game by people who aren't personally privy to the workings of "the engine" amount to talking about witchcraft and sorcery - 99% of the time, the people pontificating have no clue what's going on under the hood. It's more important to talk about the stuff that's actually good or actually bad about a game and cut to why it's flawed from the perspective that we all have - as players of the game, rather than as programmers. I'm not a programmer. I don't know why the engine of Total War games is bad or why other engines might be good, but as a player and someone who has been playing these games for years, I can talk about aspects visible to me, and why I think some games have merit and why others are flawed.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
Pharaoh looks like a game where they tried to save as much money as possible (as always) and like they are prepping the game to go on mobile. All the vibes I'm getting from this game, the sizes of buttons, the colors, the design patterns all scream mobile game to me
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
The "toggable" UI options is not a solution, it's not even a bandaid fix. When they're all off, the game is unplayable at even a mid-competitive level because the ability to select units close together is going to be impossible. But with it on, the big circle icons overlap, blob and amalgamate into a eldritch horror beyond human comprehension. An unselectable chaos spawn. Just look at that Troy Screenshot (11:43) you have when you pause and look at the far right flank. To be frank, it's a fucken mess. It's ESPECIALLY bad on Three Kingdoms campaign, when you zoom enough of the way out to macro manage your settlements? You'd have a better chance 1v9ing a pride of lions armed with a toothpick than you do differentiating which icon represents which settlement. This point about the criticism of the engine and how it's a reskin misses the mark so much it's hard to not assume his being purposefully obtuse. There have been uncountable criticisms by volound, reynold sanity and even myself about how the physics and collision are busted. About how the combat is devoid of what you see on screen and it's just backend statistics crunching. About how units interact in the most uncanny valley of fake fighting (see; single entity units superman punching eachother with spears/swords and the opponent not even reacting, just his health going down). While shogun 2 tried to workaround with it doing 1v1 duels, this just can't work when trying to depict settings of formation fighting like rome or medieval. And we see Pharaoh exactly for what it is in this marketing. That skeleton with a bronze age egyptian skin stapled on like a frankensteins moster of churned out, factory belt, Cripple A goop. "it's a sequel! it's meant to look the same!" is something I can only take as just cope, by another total war youtuber shackled to remain in the good graces of the early access partnership program.
To clarify, Andy did make a critique video/review on the game and overall said the game was stale and bad. He also reiterated that the AI was fucking terrible.
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
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
“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”
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.
@@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
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.
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.
Yeah the whole "historical vs Phantasy" arguments REALLY STUPID. That only really applies to Warhammer. Cus if someone asked me SORT total war games, i would have 3 categories: Historical (Traditional total war games), Mythical (3Kingdoms, Troy), and Phantasy (Warhammer 1, 2 and 3).
"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.
Yup, a lot of people will bat for CA saying it's too difficult or we're being super entitled Except they seem to have put a LOT of effort into removing features, sooooo. ....
Speaking of FPS UI, if you are very good at designing a non-intrusive UI you may be able to land good paying job at the military industrial complex. Nowadays military or first responder HUDs (as much in real life as in games) need to convey more and more information, like your best exit route for a firefighter, or where the next patch of fire or object to rescue is. Or automatically track targets using a drone, etc. HUDs that convey a lot of information can be non-intrusive. There are even relevant academic papers on those.
Yea and even in real life you do know that such personnel are trained and constantly reminded to never solely rely on their instrumentation, for very good reasons. Pilots are for example trained to be able to fly visually in case their instruments fail. The fact is that humans are much faster at processing audio and visuals over text.
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.
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
@ 14:57 Heck, there's an even faster way to do it--one that was done historically: just get a big, fuck-off standard. Give one to the unit, and you'll know who is who in now time at all!
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.
Speaking of UI, that TH-cam UI is going to drive me insane. Every other minute I try to move the cursor out of frame only to realize it's not mine lol.
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.
Great video! At about 20:34 you show a screen shot that you think is the tech tree of Pharaoh. I'm pretty sure that's Pharaoh's detailed city builder view that's similar to the one found in Troy.
yea i mixed them up but it doesn't really affect the substance of the argument because the same issue has taken hold in the building systems my first time playing 3K i still remember being clueless looking at all the +12 military supplies modifiers from buildings, coming from shogun 2 when the main purpose of a building was to recruit a specific unit (decisive advantage vs accumulating numbers)
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.
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.
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
This is a good commentary on much of the state of Total War imo, but I can't help but feel like you're mostly commenting on aspects around what I'm saying, rather than the points I'm actually making. I find myself agreeing with the comments you're making without disagreeing with my own takes. Importantly, I'm using the word "hater" in the exaggerated internet sense. I am a Total War critic. You are a Total War critic. I don't consider either of us haters, because I consider your critiques valid and based for the most part in reason, not in double standards and the passions of the times. Not liking or disagreeing with the state of Total War or its mechanics is not being a hater per se - just saying "Total War Pharaoh is gonna suck because it looks like Troy", definitely IS being a hater. And yes, a LOT of people are commenting this exact thing. My video was first and foremost meant to comment on many of the points you refer to as "red herrings" or "straw men", because I find them to be bad reasons for not liking a game before it's finished - not to give a comprehensive critique or comment on every concern revolving the game. Also - as a historical Total War fan first (that's where my passions lie), I don't consider 3K a historical title really. I don't know why you made that point at all, but it's pretty clear from everything I say about 3K in any video that I consider Attila the last true historical Total War (thus far). You say these are mostly labels and don't mean much perhaps, but it does to me and a lot of people. And of course, that doesn't mean Attila is perfect just because it's a "historical" game, just that it adheres to certain rules many (if not all) of the fantasy games do not. I also say that much of Pharaoh's UI is distinctively NOT ancient looking, which you got the wrong way around. Either way, I agree with most of your opinions on the TW series. I have my fair share of criticism, but I don't have some of the same surface issues as you do - for example, "threat level" is pretty self-explanatory to me, and so is caravan power in EU4 (inland trade route vs overseas), and I mostly find the UI elements to be alright and in some ways better than ever, even though I do prefer the minimalistic style of Shogun 2 over the over-reliance on icons. We can delve so much deeper into this, but it's probably better done in a well-edited and pointed video. In the end, Pharaoh will be judged once Pharaoh is available, but until it's been played, I'm not one to doom a game down and out. Good luck with your channel! Cheers!
Andy, if you've played Troy (even the so-called historical mode) you know how similar to Warhammer it is --not only because of the overdrawn heroes, elaborate skill trees and special abilities that defy logic and physical reality. So if Pharaoh looks substantially similar to Troy this is very likely going to play a lot like Warhammer. This is the most logical take given what we've seen. While Warhammer has its audience, those of us with a longer time horizon in TW recognize many problems with its gameplay. I think for a full priced game, season's pass, etc. people were hoping for something new and different, especially given that it's being sold as a "historically authentic" game, as opposed to 3K which was marketed as "culturally authentic."
![[UNCUT] The Loyal Pin ปิ่นภักดิ์ EP.15 (2/4)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qbHbshrA1f0/mqdefault.jpg)
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: th-cam.com/video/qavY___5U4s/w-d-xo.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.
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.
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.
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?
As archeologists (with quite a strong interest in Egypt and near East Bronze Age), the units, 3d meshes and assets, even architecture (in battle maps, in campaign map is surprisingly good) are all but historical (obviously if not historical, accuracy is totally out of scope). Only 2d designs are historical (with some inaccuracies but historical). Returning to generic art, 3d etc. the thing resembles more to a 19th century Opera clothing than to Egypt in the period or any 14-12 century bc thing.
So in that sense, the skin of the game (art, units, clothes etc.) is nothing but fantasy, poorly "orientalized" fantasy, but fantasy anyway.
How does archeology comment on the huge city walls that have enough space for entire units to fight field battles on them?
@@gulli72 at least that is for gaming sake (despite they could find better solutions) any case the shape of the walls do not correspond to at least the draws and paints we have in reliefs and tombs. Neither to foundations from temple walls.
@@migueldeuna3261 Yeah weren't cities of this time super tiny? And were more similar to castles and citidels than cities.
@@lolasdm6959 nope, u have really huge cities, there is a nice video in YT about population estimation in major towns in history, but in general terms most of the cities were rather small, towns and villages
@@migueldeuna3261 Ah ok
"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
Reminder that Andy's take also made a video responding to Victoria 3 ''hater'' and said that Victoria 3 was one of the best paradox game release at launch
Oh and he also said that Total War: Troy was AMAZING...
I don't know if he have really poor taste
Or he is just shilling for those companies...
I mean paradox games do have shit releases mostly though, hoi4, stellaris, imperator all had terrible releases, while ck3 and vic3 did fare better in that regard.
. @karloperkovic6710 Victoria 3 did NOT fare better in that regard. I've played every Paradox game since EU4 from release, and Victoria 3 was the absolute worst out of all of them. There was 50/50 chance of any time you declared a war that the game would crash. In the modding community it was discovered that there were thousands of errors whenever ANY war was declared - at launch! It's an absolute disgrace that TH-camrs keep defending Paradox releasing not just buggy, but absolutely and fundamentally broken and unplayable titles.
he is shilling %100
@@voltairethegoldflame9280 I think you may have been blinded by rose tinted goggles when commenting this. Imperator was an awful near unplayable release that was rightfully and universally panned. Ck3 despite being lauded was empty and devoid of content comparable to Vic 3. Go back and play hoi4s release, its an awful, broken, and buggy mess. Vic 3 wasn't especially bad, it was par for paradox
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.
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)
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
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
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.
I think alot of people got overhyped with Total War Warhammer so much so that they ignored the bad parts, it could also just be that alot of the fans for Warhammer haven't played the older Total Wars and don't even know what was lost
I think that a lot of Warhammer fans haven't played the original games is a part of why we are seeing the problems that we do. CA can be lazy now because a large percentage of the newer fan base doesn't know any better. You make a good point
@@jojoabc100 Ive been playing since Rome 1 and even I didnt notice the downgrade, I think I just got caught up in the hype of a Warhammer TW series. Its actually sad thinking about what we could have with Warhammer, I stil "enjoy" the games but they couldve been so much better.
They are jsut tasteless people. Probably play Dota and League of legends too.
@@Malignard Over generalizing? Sir your number of hours are not representative of the general population who plays these games. You're number of hours are in fact an outlier compared to people who think Troy or Pharaoh will be good. It's not representative of the general population. I have thousands of hours as well but that doesn't mean I should use my experience in total hours playing to explain the casual player picking up or wanting these two games. They have very little experience with previous titles, as I was saying. We are arguing basically the same thing. Pharaoh and Troy are shit titles. But you are missing the point I was making in that these casual players do not have the past experience of past titles, like you and I do, to know what they are missing out on what CA is churning out nowadays.
@@jojoabc100 my hot take is that you can usually tell if a game is good or bad within the first hour of gameplay; anyone saying you need 20, 50, 100, 1K etc. is just trying to shield their favorite toy from criticism with some arbitrary metric.
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
part of the reason I love warhammer 40k darktide so much (despite its absolutely screwed release and lack of content, to this day) is that the gameplay itself literally tells you everything thats coming at you and happening to you purely through perfectly crafted audio and visual cues
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
Shogun 2 doesnt have a menu to toggle 20 different UI elements because it doesnt need it, the UI is just good lol
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.
"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.
historical total war games always had special place for me cuz they often use very interesting time periods in history, and Bronze Age Egypt is definitely up there in the list.
this should tell folks that Egypt back in the ancient days was not a single huge nation, but multiple smaller kingdoms within its region & its fun to explore them & see what they can have in Total War series.
but what held me back, will always be the gameplay...
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.
I have no problem with the UI clutter in Paradox games, because those games are pure abstraction in its rawest form. That's what they are about. They are not about getting an intuitive feel, neither are they about making split-second decisions, they are about making yourself familiar with intertwining abstract systems, how they interact with each other, in order to know which buttons to press to make numbers go up in the most efficient way. It's its own art form. It's ok if you don't like it, but that's what those games are deliberately trying to be, and they are the best in their field. I agree tho that that's not what Total War games should try to achieve. They should be the antithesis to that philosophy.
YES!!! See that's the thing too, games like Stellaris and CKIII are meant to have different historical things to buff up numbers. What do guns do? Make the numbers go up. What does having better generals do? Make the numbers go up.
Now sure those games aren't just number crunchers. They're basically things to set you in a world as an individual person. YOU are the king, YOU are the leader of the Galactic Federation. It's a mixture of RPG, 4X, and number crunching.
Yeah no, I have enough experience in EU4 to know that very little meaningful decision-making is taking place. You are going to be expanding militarily all the time, forgoing any of the other methods to play the game because military expansion is by far the best way to up your score.
The vast majority of the idea groups are never worth going, you will be going for a combination along the lines of Defensive, Quantity, Economic etc. in every single game, while your Admin/Diplo power will be going towards consolidating conquests and annexing vassals.
I still remember that one update where they first added the Estates mechanic where you had to assign each and every province to an Estate, the worst kind of busywork, and it got panned so bad they revamped the mechanic to be a pie chart where you click certain actions that have a cool-down to get certain bonuses and watch the percentages change.
Can you enjoy it? Sure. But it's still objectively trash and one-dimensional.
"but that's what those games are deliberately trying to be"
If someone is extremely effective at murder that does not make the murder less morally apprehensible. Likewise if a game sets itself out to achieving a terrible design model, then it's still a terrible design model. It is possible for a game to succeed at a vision--like EU4--and still be garbage. Just because it was deliberate doesn't make it any better.
A lot of the problems in Rome 2 were deliberate design choices, all the same.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 I completely agree with this take, when I was fifteen (I'm in my early 20's now) I was a massive fan of Crusader Kings II and thought it was the pinnacle of strategy gaming. While I think your point about EUIV is correct, and believe it does extend into Crusader Kings III, I would like to hear your take on that in this regard because it does have some differences between itself and the Europa/Stellaris games. Though I would say they are all primarily about extending military power with limited options for proper interactions between the player and the NPC characters.
If I were to say what the ideal strategy/tactics games would be these days I would look to the Ultimate General and Field of Glory systems.
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 But your point in the video was not that EU4 is trash because its gameplay is one-dimensional, you claimed that it's trash due to it being a "menu-simulator" and that it does not communicate its gameplay mechanics effectively nor intuitively. I would argue that that does not make a game trash per se. If a given video game is an immersive audio-visual experience first and foremost (which most video-games are nominally), then yes, the UI is a necessary evil, and the lesser it is, the better the game. But if the UI literally is the game, then you cannot complain about it communicating its mechanics through the only medium at its disposal, can you?
If you are saying that any video game must be an immersive audio-visual experience in order to not be objectively considered trash, then I just have to disagree with you on a fundamental philosophical level. I am curious: Do you think that text-adventures and business management-games are inherently bad, just by virtue of belonging to those genres? And what makes a game objectively good for you?
If a game has to be played primarily through menus then something is wrong with its very foundation.
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 BIGGEST change from Shogun 2 to Rome 2 is the "incert camera". In shogun 2 you get a FIRST PERSON view of the battle from your soldiers perspective, and if they fire a Projectile YOU FOLLOW the Projectile till it impacts ether the ground or the enemy (the melee animations where awkword to sure it it was pretty immersive). Meanwhile in Rome 2 when you hit the Incert key you get a "above and behind" view of the unit and can freely move the camera around (They went for a more "cinematic" experience).
I feel like that is what Total War has become, it has gone from a "Simulation" of warfare, to a "Cinematic" experience. While that is not inherently a BAD THING, the things that have been changed or removed from Total War are to its detriment. As Weird as it sounds, Total Wars BIGGEST ISSUE is its lack of Immersion. The Province system could fit on a MOBILE DEVICE (probably a tablet, but hay maybe even a modern SmartPhone), Tech progression is just Bonuses and unlocking Better-er units (the better er units bit i THINK they are trying to rectify), and Individual units have lost their sense of Autonomy (because unit abilities YOU have to click rather then the unit just DOING IT THEMSELVES).
"You have no faith in your units" I sure as SHIT don't anymore. Even in Rome 2 and Attila i still had faith in my men to do their jobs. In Warhammer, I expect my men to shit their pants and flee, at the sight of an angry Bretonian peasant mob with a sharp stick.
I think you’ve identified one of the biggest issues with newer total war games. The real time battles used to be realistic simulations of combat with tactics and morale and supply concerns all specific to the historical era represented. But now battles although more spectacular graphically feel very tactically shallow with no meaningful physics or morale and supply systems. They’ve become all about fast clicking and abilities and stats etc. Some people may be willing to overlook this because of the graphical enhancements but I’d rather have tactically satisfying TW battles that have worse graphics than what we’ve got at the moment.
@@EVSmith-by9no It also doesn't help the AI is WORSE then it used to be in alot of ways. You have no IDEA how mindblowing it is to see the AI RETREAT from battle in Rome Remastered and Rome 1 footage. WHY CA removed that (or forgot to add it) I do not know.
Speaking of Tactics, i suspect that is why people argue for a Empire 2 or ANY kind of Gunpowder Total War, since those settings require "set up and positioning" to make effective use of your musket/rifle lines and artillery. Like, take all the battles from Rome 2 (including the naval invasions) and put it in a Gunpowder setting and everyone would LOVE IT.
I know most people would prefer a MED 3, but i have to ask "What would change from what we have now?" The Answer is JACK SHIT! A new SKIN for the same old game.
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.
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
I miss the motion capture the most, when they actually fought each other. After Warhammer they just swing in the air, very immersion breaking and it seems that they never will go back.
I agree. Andy is wrong. You can't turn off the ui icons because the modern tw design is so bad that then you don't see what is going on.
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
CA has become the much beloved EA
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.
New Total war games in terms of UI, units, sounds and maps are not even form over function. No form, no function.
Just sad to see. Especially sound effects and music wise. Hearing matchlocks rip through enemy lines to Taiko Shuffle will never get old.
Terminator,andy's take,happycomptw. The unholy trinity of total war content
the unholy trinity of nu-TW shilldom.
imagine starting youtube channels after 2020 to cover total war as if everything is just fine LMAO.
the niche-hunting must be fucking rough out there. not destiny? not fortnite? not overwatch? imagine applying the formulaic scheduled clickbait grift formula to fucking total war, of all things. jesus fucking christ.
I did notice just a few day's back on HappyCompTW community page he was now warming up to TW Pharaoh.
@@IceniTotalWar didn't expect to see you here
@@Voloundi think your respond just got shadowbanned by youtube since i can't see it
damn bro, stop making me feel powerful
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 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.
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
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
CA is massively "purging" Shogun 2 now and also other older titles like Empire or Napoleon. Mods without Kaedrin mod manager don't work and even with Kaedrin it's quite problematic to make them run. Steam won't even download them when you subscribe them on workshop. With my friend we needed to share some key files from data folder and the mods themself via google drive and manually put them in the folder to make them run. I hate this attitude, that they are forcing you to play their new titles by limiting their older titles (which are mostly better than the most of the new ones) and making them still harder to play properly.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
Also, i think thrones of britannia's UI looks very fitting to the theme.
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. 👍👍
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...
i’m not saying pharaoh will be a master piece but i believe it could be good. it’s needs some improvements of course.
but it’s just bronze age hasn’t been used. i think they started to market the game wrong annoying the older player base with the “new” mechanic. however they are kinda changing with how they do it in their dev blog.
With the weather i think it’s mostly like terrain changing. i dunno if that’s been in other games. i’ve only played medieval 2 upwards.
But the game was always going to been disliked on announcement by people who only want Med 2 or Em 2 and shadowed by troy shit battles and lack of a player base
Ive seen it across so many video game titles now. The core of the fanbase do not know how to think critically and do not know enough about game mechanics in order to be able to know exactly what makes a good game and what they want. Instead surface shine is constantly analysed and people ask for things which just end up bloating and doing nothing for the gameplay itself.
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 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.
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.
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.
Companies these days are greedy bastards that count every coin, hence the reason why their games are so mediocre
My problem with these newer games is that they haven't been able to deliver an impactful experience. I can't say they're utterly bad. It's more like they're just mediocre. There's nothing extraordinary about them. Just another high-budget game being shallow despite its overwhelming budget. I'm afraid the problem lies not in the fact that they lack any ideas. To me, it's more connected to the nature of high-end enterprise production. They count every damn dollar and won't slip anything, if it hasn't been included in the preliminary budget evaluation. Their mindset is basically as following: "We have a certain amount of money for that project and anything past it won't do. Therefore, we have to do only the bare minimum that fits the budget. Anything extra is a nuisance". Sadly, such companies respond only to boycotts, review bombing and counter-advertisement.
potential problem is that it's almost certain that Shogun 1 had a tiny budget in comparison yet still managed to be more ambitious than anything we are getting now
it's not budget, it's about direction (or lack thereof)
@@dishonorable_daimyo1498 Yup! It is direction. That's what I wanted to point out - I believe that financial matters are tied to a direction itself, guiding it in some way and establishing production procedures typical for the market.
@@Farathriel a lot of the budget might really just go to marketing, that tends to happen when these companies get big
Gaming is a industry, it always has been. They have just found easier ways to make money without making a good product.
I appreciate your comments about the pointlessness of engine discourse in gaming criticism. Most discussion about "the engine" of a game by people who aren't personally privy to the workings of "the engine" amount to talking about witchcraft and sorcery - 99% of the time, the people pontificating have no clue what's going on under the hood. It's more important to talk about the stuff that's actually good or actually bad about a game and cut to why it's flawed from the perspective that we all have - as players of the game, rather than as programmers. I'm not a programmer. I don't know why the engine of Total War games is bad or why other engines might be good, but as a player and someone who has been playing these games for years, I can talk about aspects visible to me, and why I think some games have merit and why others are flawed.
Yeah i take it that The Engine is this mythological beast residing in the game's code that no one has seen beyond legends
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.
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.
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 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).
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?
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.
Pharaoh looks like a game where they tried to save as much money as possible (as always) and like they are prepping the game to go on mobile. All the vibes I'm getting from this game, the sizes of buttons, the colors, the design patterns all scream mobile game to me
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 "toggable" UI options is not a solution, it's not even a bandaid fix. When they're all off, the game is unplayable at even a mid-competitive level because the ability to select units close together is going to be impossible.
But with it on, the big circle icons overlap, blob and amalgamate into a eldritch horror beyond human comprehension. An unselectable chaos spawn. Just look at that Troy Screenshot (11:43) you have when you pause and look at the far right flank. To be frank, it's a fucken mess.
It's ESPECIALLY bad on Three Kingdoms campaign, when you zoom enough of the way out to macro manage your settlements? You'd have a better chance 1v9ing a pride of lions armed with a toothpick than you do differentiating which icon represents which settlement.
This point about the criticism of the engine and how it's a reskin misses the mark so much it's hard to not assume his being purposefully obtuse.
There have been uncountable criticisms by volound, reynold sanity and even myself about how the physics and collision are busted. About how the combat is devoid of what you see on screen and it's just backend statistics crunching. About how units interact in the most uncanny valley of fake fighting (see; single entity units superman punching eachother with spears/swords and the opponent not even reacting, just his health going down). While shogun 2 tried to workaround with it doing 1v1 duels, this just can't work when trying to depict settings of formation fighting like rome or medieval.
And we see Pharaoh exactly for what it is in this marketing. That skeleton with a bronze age egyptian skin stapled on like a frankensteins moster of churned out, factory belt, Cripple A goop.
"it's a sequel! it's meant to look the same!" is something I can only take as just cope, by another total war youtuber shackled to remain in the good graces of the early access partnership program.
On the topic of spear wall, yari wall is also more succeptible to arrow fire
Is it not always like that?
To clarify, Andy did make a critique video/review on the game and overall said the game was stale and bad. He also reiterated that the AI was fucking terrible.
Btw to further clarify. Pharaoh is dogshit and no one should buy it or play it. CA made their bed shilling to 40k tards. Let them lie in it.
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
Keep up the good work mate, even if it sometimes feels thankless. Many of us are watching :)
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.
Correction: at 0:54 i should have said rome 2, not rome 1
“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”
I simply hate him for being Norwegian
Based ngl
I can’t wait until all these TH-camrs make a total war game. 🙂
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
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.
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.
Yeah the whole "historical vs Phantasy" arguments REALLY STUPID. That only really applies to Warhammer.
Cus if someone asked me SORT total war games, i would have 3 categories: Historical (Traditional total war games), Mythical (3Kingdoms, Troy), and Phantasy (Warhammer 1, 2 and 3).
"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.
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
I’m amazed that CA managed to mess things up so much when they could’ve done well by copying a lot of what they had done before
Yup, a lot of people will bat for CA saying it's too difficult or we're being super entitled
Except they seem to have put a LOT of effort into removing features, sooooo. ....
Volund was always right.
Speaking of FPS UI, if you are very good at designing a non-intrusive UI you may be able to land good paying job at the military industrial complex. Nowadays military or first responder HUDs (as much in real life as in games) need to convey more and more information, like your best exit route for a firefighter, or where the next patch of fire or object to rescue is. Or automatically track targets using a drone, etc.
HUDs that convey a lot of information can be non-intrusive. There are even relevant academic papers on those.
Yea and even in real life you do know that such personnel are trained and constantly reminded to never solely rely on their instrumentation, for very good reasons.
Pilots are for example trained to be able to fly visually in case their instruments fail.
The fact is that humans are much faster at processing audio and visuals over text.
I wonder what CA does if Pharaoh doesn't meet expectations.
lol
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.
Bruh it's just Troy but in Egypt
Does Troy have changing weather in battles?
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
The main problem is the company, not the game
@ 14:57
Heck, there's an even faster way to do it--one that was done historically:
just get a big, fuck-off standard. Give one to the unit, and you'll know who is who in now time at all!
Andy is a big time shill.
"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.
Speaking of UI, that TH-cam UI is going to drive me insane. Every other minute I try to move the cursor out of frame only to realize it's not mine lol.
At 12:47 , there is no difference between the units graphically, they look exactly the same, no wonder they have to slap on 500 UI icons.
You say the exact same thing a minute later, yea its bad. The units actually look transparent, you can see through models.
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.
Great video! At about 20:34 you show a screen shot that you think is the tech tree of Pharaoh. I'm pretty sure that's Pharaoh's detailed city builder view that's similar to the one found in Troy.
yea i mixed them up but it doesn't really affect the substance of the argument because the same issue has taken hold in the building systems
my first time playing 3K i still remember being clueless looking at all the +12 military supplies modifiers from buildings, coming from shogun 2 when the main purpose of a building was to recruit a specific unit (decisive advantage vs accumulating numbers)
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.
the overlays thing pissed me off, the alternative to having massive UI bullshit is to have absolutely no information whatsoever
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)
This is a good commentary on much of the state of Total War imo, but I can't help but feel like you're mostly commenting on aspects around what I'm saying, rather than the points I'm actually making. I find myself agreeing with the comments you're making without disagreeing with my own takes. Importantly, I'm using the word "hater" in the exaggerated internet sense. I am a Total War critic. You are a Total War critic. I don't consider either of us haters, because I consider your critiques valid and based for the most part in reason, not in double standards and the passions of the times. Not liking or disagreeing with the state of Total War or its mechanics is not being a hater per se - just saying "Total War Pharaoh is gonna suck because it looks like Troy", definitely IS being a hater. And yes, a LOT of people are commenting this exact thing.
My video was first and foremost meant to comment on many of the points you refer to as "red herrings" or "straw men", because I find them to be bad reasons for not liking a game before it's finished - not to give a comprehensive critique or comment on every concern revolving the game.
Also - as a historical Total War fan first (that's where my passions lie), I don't consider 3K a historical title really. I don't know why you made that point at all, but it's pretty clear from everything I say about 3K in any video that I consider Attila the last true historical Total War (thus far). You say these are mostly labels and don't mean much perhaps, but it does to me and a lot of people. And of course, that doesn't mean Attila is perfect just because it's a "historical" game, just that it adheres to certain rules many (if not all) of the fantasy games do not.
I also say that much of Pharaoh's UI is distinctively NOT ancient looking, which you got the wrong way around.
Either way, I agree with most of your opinions on the TW series. I have my fair share of criticism, but I don't have some of the same surface issues as you do - for example, "threat level" is pretty self-explanatory to me, and so is caravan power in EU4 (inland trade route vs overseas), and I mostly find the UI elements to be alright and in some ways better than ever, even though I do prefer the minimalistic style of Shogun 2 over the over-reliance on icons. We can delve so much deeper into this, but it's probably better done in a well-edited and pointed video. In the end, Pharaoh will be judged once Pharaoh is available, but until it's been played, I'm not one to doom a game down and out.
Good luck with your channel! Cheers!
Andy, if you've played Troy (even the so-called historical mode) you know how similar to Warhammer it is --not only because of the overdrawn heroes, elaborate skill trees and special abilities that defy logic and physical reality. So if Pharaoh looks substantially similar to Troy this is very likely going to play a lot like Warhammer. This is the most logical take given what we've seen.
While Warhammer has its audience, those of us with a longer time horizon in TW recognize many problems with its gameplay. I think for a full priced game, season's pass, etc. people were hoping for something new and different, especially given that it's being sold as a "historically authentic" game, as opposed to 3K which was marketed as "culturally authentic."
How much does CA pay you to bootlicking them? Or did they pay you by giving free early access to you?