First off I want to say that what CA official has done in the past month or so, hell arguably longer, is not acceptable at all and we all have a right to be angry about it.

However, emotion can easily cloud anyone's outlook on something and I think that some of the comments and misinformation out there aren't very fair. I want to clear up some of that at least because I'll admit, I really like Pharaoh and I want to see what else Sofia can do. Troy was impressive but lackluster to me, truly a "mediocre game" in that it wasn't extremely good or extremely bad, it just simply was.

They have improved on many things I disliked about Troy and I recognise the effort that's been made by this 60 person team.

Another thing I want to point out is: I got this game for 35£ from a third party key seller, so I'm judging it as a game that costs 35£

So let's get right into it, tho I will probably be downvoted and all this effort put to waste, I hope I open at least one persons eye because I like this game and googling things like "how do I upload multiple images to image host etc" gets kind of depressing when I'm met with this:

News about Pharaoh

I'd ask everyone to please kindly think for a second about if Total War Pharaoh really deserves the kind of hate and bad media it's getting, but I'm not sure if people want to see it for what it is yet.

Ok so first off, I've heard people say it's a copy paste total war with barely anything in it, I've also heard that they wish it had an atilla world gone to hell mechanic (which is weird cause it does sort of have that), I've heard that it's also very boring and simple, here's my view on that:

Gods, courts, court actions, etc
Atilla like mechanic
Here we have multiple layers of stuff to do, within them are choices i've already made in this campaign run, like vying for egypt or hittities (sorry if I butched that, it's hard to remember the spelling lol), In court you try to grab a position while also gossip with people, coming up with plots and sabotaging, revealing other peoples plots and choose to take part in said revealed plots, sabotage them or straight up taking them, or well of course ignoring it.

I feel like this mechanic is one of two mechanics in this game meant to completely and utterly replace agents, making the system a hell of a lot more interesting and more than anything faster/less annoying, we all know most of us don't have much love for agents, especially agent spam.

Here is the second part of the agent replacement mechanic

Next up some people say there is a lack of variety which has made some people misunderstand what those people were probably saying and gone so far to then repeat the opinion poorly by saying straight up on youtube that there are barely any units, that's really not fair, it's just that it's not factional anymore it's court/region based. factions do have their own unique units but very few now, like the queen's guard.

This is what is roughly the amount of units a faction can discover and recruit over a game, given they are aggressive in painting the map of course, you wouldn't expect units good at fighting in a storm to be recruitable in the deserts of egypt after all

Next up is what I think is the straw that broke the camels back for a lot of people on the fence, combat AI, I won't pretend combat AI in this game is amazing, I can't even think of a single total war game where it is, but it certainly is NOT buggy and bad like warhammer 3's battle AI currently is. I've had a pleasant time and the AI has been about as basic as normal, as how I've expected it to be over the past decade and how I've come to miss it after having been exposed to the shitshow that was warhammer 3's recent battle AI.

On the subject of chariots, I'm not a fan of chariots and never probably will be, the only time I felt they were worth it was in rome 2 when I used egyptian scythed chariots, it was hilarious because they weren't really even chariots, they were time travellers who came back to temporarily give egypt the technology of the lawn mower, except instead of grass it was enemy armies. Good times.

Since then, every total war chariot has felt pointless, I like the idea of archer ones but outside that they feel like a thematic choice for players, good players will always choose infantry or ranged unit instead (or cavalry if available as a choice). On the flip side, the chariots aren't doing the slow charge I've seen in some videos and I wonder If I know why, first off my chariot working as intended:

Chariot issues or not?

This was done as a test, and well, the chariot general died pretty fast but it went in fast and hard, just like cavalry does in three kingdoms I'd say.

So why do we sometimes see chariots charge in super slowly? well... It's a long shot but it could be just that the enemy AI did this:

Say you hate chariots without saying it

I doubt they made the mistake of not knowing it was this, as I wouldn't put it past even CA sofia to have a bug or two in early access or release (tho much more confident CA sofia would fix it). But maybe some of the youtubers didn't know about this ability? It would, if it did what it says, explain a lot.

Now the part I absolute find frustrating is the contradictions our community sometimes has, we don't want super big maps because campaigns take too long, then suddenly we don't want small campaign maps as it's lazy, Then it's not about the size but which regions are covered, etc etc we want complicated mechanics for campaign that have layers to them, but then say it's too much to be bothered with and is just confusing, there's so many contradictions that I feel legit bad for the developers trying to figure out what we want, (not you CA official, you know exactly what we want, fix warhammer 3 and total war battle ai in general, make a new engine and treat us better ffs).

The games map isn't that small, the regions missing might be for future dlc, the team making this is 60 people, this isn't a game being worked on by the 800 big (I guess that's going to shrink soon) CA official so I think there has to be a point where we recognise they have limitations, tho I do wish CA official let CA sofia go wild on a proper total war historical large scale game.

This is a big enough map imo for now

Like how many of us are burning out on big campaigns and not finishing them? Do I wish we had more areas and factions? absolutely, do I think it's THAT big of a deal? no, especially at the price point I got the game for and how much I'm enjoying the game, do I hope the dlc's expand on the map? absolutely 100%. Do I NEED them to enjoy it? no.

A lot of us say things we want to see in total war games and forget about it after being said, I know I have done that a damn lot, but honestly it's wild to see a game so criticized have so many things I've seen asked for, some stuff I've asked for too.
Campaign customisation, Graphical examples, trade regions, bodyguard customisation, forts etc

And then we get to the really cool new stuff:

MUUUD, armour degradation, dynamic grass, weather specific passives, environment specific passives, new fun abilities, mud/ash build up on armour, formations that interact with enemy by push or pulling etc, BESERKING

Why are we treating Pharaoh like it's deserving of the hate it's receiving when in reality it's the first launch outside warhammer 1 that's had a ton of thought put into the little things, with tons of small additions and streamlines, and a bunch of brand new af stuff.

Sofia isn't a dev that doesn't give af about you, they really do, they listen and learn, this here is how I see it, a big gapping problem I saw not many people talk about that I had issue with was you could get a flat resource incom from the tech tree which made resources a joke and pointless, you'd be swimming in it by 1/3rd in of your troy playthrough.

This tech tree alone shows they've put a lot of thought into how they did stuff in Troy, what worked and what needed to go

I fully believe this game deserves a chance, that's why I put all this effort into this post when we all know I'm not that good at this stuff, my grammar sucks and I tend to go on about things, but like... damn it, I just can't see how this game isn't somewhere between "ok and great".

I doesn't deserve some of this hate, and I especially frown upon those going after the people making reviews about how they like the game, why ridicule them with clown emojis and shit? or breathe down their throat that it's fine because F CA.

I agree CA offical deserves so much shit right now, but I also think they already are in the shit because of what they did, what i don't agree with is F CA sofia. Reward the good, shit on the bad. If you shit on the good, you just teach a dev they shouldn't have bothered trying so hard.

Also those who have 0.3 or 0.4 hours played with a negative review, you all are just doing the game dirty in the most blatantly unfair way, it speaks of you more than CA.

Because let's be real, we absolutely can shit on CA while also keeping our heads held up high and doing right by ourselves, each other and those not in the know.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a great day, I know this will never see the light of day but I gave it my best and even if there's so much stress and anger in this community, I love you all and cherish our shared memories of playing these titles over the decades, posture check, hydrate and have a bloody brilliant day.

ps: Medieval 2 is the best total war ever made and shogun 2 fans just have to come to terms with second place not being that bad. kek.