Good find.
The pharaohs thought so too!
It goes both ways!
I’m still holding out for a Total War game that goes crazy with the trait system like the original Rome.
I actually disagree. TW has always been about pushing your borders out, and you’d basically never reconquer something (excepting the odd bit out where a rival might opportunistically grab something before you can break their power, but that was rare, or I didn’t play on hard enough difficulties). The power curve is always up, there’s nothing cyclical (let alone seasonal) about it. As long as you built the right buildings you never had to really worry about rebellions other than sometimes keeping a stack in reserve somewhere.
They certainly could do a more realistic portrayal of ancient power projection (leave behind some monuments with excessive claims about your greatness to increase the odds of the tribute continuing after your army moves on), but it would be a bit of a departure. But I’d love for them to try!
It’d be like manna from heaven!
Is this going to be like Rome Total War 2? Or a smaller subset?
Yes, previous Total War games didn’t do this. But I think it’s the perfect engine to try to tackle ancient yearly campaigns.
When your engine and main mechanic is moving an army around and fighting a series of battles, it looks like a great fit (once you change the strategic/building layer, so you are building to improve your army for the next season).
Basically take a TW game and have the attrition wear your army out until you need to end the season. It would work.
I actually don’t think they are doing this, but I would love if they did.
Didn’t Shogun 2 have pretty impactful seasons, including heavy attrition in winter outside your borders? But you’re right, the vast majority of TW games or really strategy games in general don’t have seasonality to military operations. Most of them don’t operate on timescales where it makes sense. You really need turns that are no less granular than a month per turn to allow your armies to be able to do enough to make it a “campaign season”.
Pretty much every strategy game too, because losing territory sucks. I don’t think you can really make it work without having it be a core component of the game and no matter how skilled you are you always have to manage some level of decline. Atilla probably nailed this the best of any game I can think of and, interestingly, that was a Total War game. But even in that game you eventually could stabilize enough that you’d turn things around to full expansion mode.
Those were the last ones to grab me as well. I tried to get into the Warhammers, and they have their moments, but they still end up bouncing on me.
I still go back to Empire, Napoleon and Shogun from time to time. I’m not sure if it’s the scale (of the battlefield and the units) or the way it plays, but they just feel different.
If I remember correctly Napoleon had it first (because that’s how the Rusisans win wars) and it probably carried over.
Is this a “mainline” game or a “saga” offshoot?
The whole “Total War” concept doesn’t really fit the historical reality of pre-modern warfare, when states raised armies on an ad-hoc basis and struggled to maintain them in the field for extended periods of time. The 4X derived system used in just about all TW games- of factions always being at war with at least one neighbor, using cities like WWII arms factories churning out units to keep up the strength of armies that would capture more cities to build more units- it isn’t representative of history but Creative Assembly has been doing it for over two decades and seem happy to keep doing it.
Moving to a system like the Nevsky boardgame and its derivatives would be more historical, but for a game that is more about battles than about campaigning, making field battles generally ill-advised would be a brave choice.
Looks like a mainline game. No mention of ‘saga’.
WHAT PLAYABLE FACTIONS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT LAUNCH?
The base game contains eight playable factions from three diverse cultures:
- Egyptian: Ramesses, Seti, Tausret, Amenmesse
- Canaanite: Bay and Irsu
- Hittite: Kurunta and Suppiluliuma
Sea Peoples definitely.
Surprised that the Mesopotamian cultures such as Assyria and Babylon are not included. They were big Bronze age players. Factions seem sort of limited IMO.
Yea that was my question as well. I guess I don’t understand why they’re doing Pharaoh instead of Medieval 3. Anyone have theories or insight?
It looks like the game only focuses on the near east, and a narrower time period than the whole Bronze age.
But we finally get the playable Suppiluliuma we have been asking for for so long!
I’m unironically happy they are doing a less-traveled setting, but googling those names it looks like for some of them there’s barely enough evidence to definitely say they existed. Saladin or Nobunaga they are not.
So it’s Battle of Kadesh then.
I have to believe the Saga experiment is over. The games weren’t terribly well received by fans and I assume didn’t sell to expectations.
Here’s a theory. They are doing a smaller setting for the next mainline entry to test out new tech and design ideas that they hope to fold into the next epic setting game. Medieval 3 would be my choice for that. I’d love if they tried a new take on Empire too, but I doubt they’ll ever revisit it.
I like that.