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Introducing Total War: Pharaoh
Pharaoh's campaign begins in 1205 BC, and the kingdom of Egypt is already old. When the campaign begins, the Lower and Upper Kingdoms of Egypt were unified by King Menes two thousand years ago, and the Great Pyramid of Giza is a thousand years old. Five centuries after it was founded, the kingdom of the Hittites has reached the peak of its power. 74 years ago, the Hittites and their allies fought the army of Ramesses II at the Battle of Kadesh. The Hittites might return, to test the strength of Egypt again - but now the Egyptians and the Hittites face new dangers.
the driest event throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages occurred ~1250 to 1100 BCE — at the end of the Late Bronze Age. [...] Archaeology indicates that the crisis in the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the Late Bronze Age took place during the same period —from the mid-13th century to ca. 1100 BCE. In the Levant the crisis years are represented by destruction of a large number of urban centres, shrinkage of other major sites, hoarding activities and changes in settlement patterns. Textual evidence from several places in the Ancient Near East attests to drought and famine starting in the mid-13th and continuing until the second half of the 12th century. - Dafna Langgut, Israel Finkelstein and Thomas Litt, Climate and the Late Bronze Collapse: New Evidence from the Southern Levant
Egypt is not ready for the oncoming storm: the trailer illustrates the atmosphere of the game
While the trailer shows the two main conflicts in the game - the internal conflict in in major nations such as Egypt, and the conflict between the settled nations and the invading Sea Peoples, the battle in the trailer also shows a duel between two playable Egyptian faction leaders - Ramesses and Amenmesse. However, in this game, each general has a bodyguard unit (as in previous historical Total War games), so one-on-one duels between faction leaders are not really a thing.
The Sea Peoples symbolize the last step of a long and complex spiral of decline in the ancient Mediterranean world. Cuneiform tablets from Ugarit provide an impressive glimpse of the frantic preparations which the city and her neighbours pursued, in vain, to ward off the invasions - David Kaniewski, Elise Van Campo, Karel Van Lerberghe, Tom Boiy, Klaas Vansteenhuyse, Greta Jans, Karin Nys, Harvey Weiss, Christophe Morhange, Thierry Otto, and Joachim Bretschneider, The Sea Peoples, from Cuneiform Tablets to Carbon Dating
By January 2024, Pharaoh offered factions from four cultures - the Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites and Sea Peoples - and on July 25th 2024, the free Dynasties update will add four more cultures - Babylon, Assyria, Mycenae and Troy - as well as 25 playable minor factions. This means that - after the Dynasties update - the game will offer eight major cultures and over 30 playable factions, all in the base game. Other cultures are also represented; their units can appear in the armies of attacking Sea Peoples, and some of their warriors can be recruited into the player's armies through the native units system. The price has reduced, and the number of playable cultures and factions increased - but is Total War: Pharaoh worth buying?
The campaign map
Pharaoh's campaign map covers a much smaller part of the world, compared to Rome II or Attila. The map above was created by stitching together six screenshots - it's not perfect, but it gives you an idea of the area covered by the game in after the High Tide update in January 2024. The Dynasties update will add 168 new settlements and the campaign map will be 1.8 times the size of the campaign map which was introduced in January 2024 (shown above) - the expanded map will also include the Aegean and Mesopotamia, as well as western Anatolia. Amenmesse (one of four playable Egyptian factions, shown in yellow/gold, near the southern edge the map, just above Kawa) controls four regions at the start of the campaign. As Amenmesse, after you defeat your initial enemy (Kerma, to the east of Amenmesse), you can colonise the ruined settlements of East Nubia (the unmarked brown area beyond Kerma), and the ruined settlements south of Dungal (another unmarked brown area). With this initial expansion, Amenmesse will control three provinces - but this will only be a small area, compared the whole of Egypt. While there are plenty of regions for exploration and military campaigns, it will be great to see the expanded campaign map after the Dynasties update is released. Total War: Pharaoh is rewarding for players who like to explore. Capturing regions in different parts of the map not only provides different geography and weather, there are different rosters of native units to recruit, and different gods for your population to worship at your shrines and temples, as well as factions with different cultures and styles of warfare.
A challenging game?
What do experienced players look for, in a historical Total War game? While different people prefer different things, players tend to want a challenge. It's not very engaging, if the player can simply build a full stack army, take a settlement and repeat, without great difficulty, until the map turns the colour of your faction. A Total War game can be made more challenging in artificial ways - such as giving AI factions bonuses on the campaign map and battlefield. The game can be made more challenging by factions turning against the player as your empire expands - this is somewhat realistic, as coalitions were formed historically against expansionist powers. With this game, I'm enjoying seeing AI factions acting more like a human player - taking opportunities to expand when they can, and using multiple armies for a higher chance of success.
AI factions can act aggressively, even early in the campaign: Buhen, Kawa and Napata all declared war on Amenmesse
AI factions are willing to act aggressively, sending several armies to take regions from the player. In my early campaigns as Amenmesse, I was frequently attacked by two or three factions at once. In one campaign, I sent generals to colonise unoccupied settlements to the east and west (as shown above - for example, I had colonised ruined settlements in East Nubia, south of Miam) - only to find factions to the north and south sending large armies into the heart of my territory. By the time my generals had returned, the enemy had conquered both of my province capitals! it was impressive to see AI factions act so decisively, within the first 20 turns of a campaign. In my campaigns in Total War Pharaoh, I've been re-starting more often than with most previous Total War games.
Like other factions in the early campaign, Amenmesse has several problems. Even after constructing more agricultural buildings, your food production isn't enough for the upkeep of the number of units that you need. You start at war with Kerma, a faction on your eastern border, but the Kawa and Napata to the south, and the Buhen to the north, may attack soon. The player has options - there are different ways to manage resources such as food, for example trading other resources for food, raiding enemy regions and winning battles. While the factions to the east and south of Amenmesse's starting regions use a similar roster, I learned from Iskar that Nubian mercenary archers (whose longbows have a longer range than most enemy skirmishers), can make a decisive difference, enabling Amenmesse to occupy Kerma's two cities in the first few turns. If you're looking for a Total War game which rewards strategic thinking, Total War Pharaoh has something to offer.
Total War: Pharaoh can offer a satisfying challenge. It is not as easy as in some Total War games to send an army and to keep expanding, for several reasons. Firstly, settlements tend to have larger and better-quality garrisons - and AI factions sensibly increase the number of garrison units by constructing buildings and using forts. Secondly, when the Sea People invasions begin, your provinces are likely to be attacked by some of their armies. The player is likely to need strong defences - especially if you own regions near the coast, or the borders where nomadic tribes appear - which reduces the number of units available for expansion. Thirdly, AI factions can invade the player's lands with multiple armies, including some good-quality units - this, too, requires the player to defend the lands your hold.
This doesn't mean that early expansion is a bad idea - a playable faction is normally at war at the campaign's start, and it's usually a good idea to take the settlements of your initial enemy as soon as possible. If you are slow to attack your initial enemy, they are likely to construct buildings which provide larger garrisons while also recruiting units for their armies, making it much more difficult to defeat them. Early expansion also provides more resources - the game has several main types of resources (food, wood, stone, bronze and gold), and a lack of any of them will hinder your faction's development. The player can trade for resources that you lack, but of course you'll need something to offer in exchange.
In some Total War games, players tend to find the campaign too easy after their initial expansion - the player can simply keep expanding. In Total War: Pharaoh, the campaign is likely to remain challenging for longer - and different stages of the campaign have different challenges. After the initial challenge of surviving against other small factions and acquiring enough resources, the player faces the threat of invading Sea Peoples and nomadic tribes - so you may need to play defensively for a while, or alternate between expansion and defence. Even when you can expand, AI factions try to to survive - playing as Amenmesse, I found smaller factions becoming vassals of Tausret, one of my rivals for Egypt's throne. This forced the player to either accept a peace treaty, or take on a more challenging opponent. Even when I managed to conquer most of Egypt, new threats emerged - the Aegean sea peoples began to raid my coastal regions, and Suppiluliuma (the Great King of the Hittites) had formed a kingdom of 52 regions - not bad, considering that he starts the campaign with three.
Suppiluliuma, the Hittite Great King, built a kingdom of 52 regions - a challenge for a player using an Egyptian faction in the late campaign Customisation
At the start of a new campaign, the player can select from an impressive range of customisation options. For example, you may want to reduce (or remove) the effects of the Bronze Age collapse - both the environmental disasters such as earthquakes and the waves of invaders. This makes the game more accessible for a new player, and also allows players to explore 'what if' scenarios - such as whether the Hittites could have defeated Egypt, if the events of the collapse had happened later (or not at all). In previous Total War games, making the campaign more challenging involved turning up the difficulty level (giving AI factions artificial bonuses), playing a faction with a weaker starting position or roster, or using a mod - now, the customisation menu provides a lot more options. If you'd like to play against AI factions with stronger armies, and without artificial bonuses for AI units, you can do this in Pharaoh.
You can convert a general's unit to a different weapon, if you have a suitable weapon available.
The player can also customise your faction more in previous Total War games, within the game. The in-campaign customisation options include your choice of legacy (you can choose a campaign mechanic for your faction), the ability to change individual bodyguard units to different types (for example, to change from sword infantry to bow chariots), the ability to adapt to different conditions - including building waystations to allow your armies to avoid desert attrition, recruiting native units and your choice of the gods which your faction worships.
In another Total War game, maybe you've played a faction because you liked the challenge of their starting position and their roster, but you didn't like the selection of units for their generals? In Pharaoh, you can change the weapons used by the bodyguard unit of your generals. For example, the bodyguard units for Amenmesse's generals are sword infantry and carry a shield (except for Amenmesse's own bodyguard, who wield axes). While the player is not likely to want to convert sword infantry to carry a cudgel, club or javelin (the options shown above), as your campaign progresses you will get a better collection of weapons and equipment, providing better options. If you find that you need to keep replacing your generals because they are killed in melee, you could convert them to bow infantry (so they can contribute to the fight from behind the front line). If a general's infantry bodyguards are too slow, so your general cannot reach wavering units to reinforce their morale before they break, you can put your general's bodyguard in chariots.
In Total War games which cover a long time period (such as Rome II, where a campaign can last for several hundred years), it seems strange to me that factions cannot do more to adapt to new conditions. For example, in Rome II, Iceni units will always be resistant to cold attrition, but not attrition in deserts - even if your Iceni empire has been fighting in north Africa for a century, and recruiting warriors locally. (To be fair, in Rome II, all factions can recruit mercenaries who are likely to be adapted to the conditions they live in, and some factions can recruit levy units or auxiliaries who have the same advatage). In Total War: Pharaoh, as well as recruiting native units, a faction which is not used to desert warfare can learn to adapt, for example by building a network of waystations (an outpost building which enables your armies to resist desert attrition).
Maybe you wanted to choose side missions during your campaign, rather than being given fixed goals? Now you can.
You also choose the gods which your faction worships. As you gain favour with your chosen gods by building shrines and temples, you can devote one or two generals to each deity. If you build shrines in outposts, the regions will acquire benefits and a general can pray at the shrine, providing additional temporary bonuses to the general's army. The bonuses for devoted generals, from shrines and from prayers vary. This system also provides an extra incentive to explore the campaign map - as you conquer new lands, you discover the local gods, giving you a wider selection of deities for your faction.
The combined effect of customisation options, your faction's choice of legacy, choosing outposts (such as waystations or shrines), different native units in different parts of the campaign map, and a choice of gods for your faction provide an unusually high amount of choice and variety for players. This is likely to provide greater replayability - if you prefer to play factions from a specific culture, or even a specific faction more than others, there will still be different ways to play them.
On the battlefield
Ramesses attacks with two armies against one. In this kind of battle, it's especially important to keep an eye on the terrain and the fatigue of your units. Experienced players were sometimes frustrated with the pace of battles in some recent games, wishing that they were slower to allow more time for flanking attacks, and to encourage commanders to keep some units in reserve. Pharaoh's battles occupy a satisfying middle ground - they are sufficiently slow-paced to encourage players to try different tactics, while not taking so long that the progress of your campaign is slowed down unnecessarily.
The game encourages players to keep track of how the situation evolves, for example by replacing exhausted units with fresh reserves. The terrain affects the performance of your units, and this varies depending on the type of unit - the effects of sand on light infantry are shown above (because a light infantry unit was selected) - the effects are different for heavier units. The weather can affect the terrain, for example rain leads to mud, and a sweltering heat can dry it out. The weather may change during a battle, for example a sandstorm reduces the distance that your units can see, and reduces the range and accuracy of skirmishers.
Libu spearmen arriving as reinforcements - they have a long march ahead of them, but they are lightly armoured so they will arrive in better condition than heavy infantry in the same situation
I like the way that the game encourages players to use a combination of different types of units. Different unit types have different advantages - spears are better against chariots, axes are more effective against units with shields, clubs damage the enemy's armour more quickly (as this is bronze age warfare, armour degrades during combat), and composite bows penetrate armour better. Units with two-handed weapons tend to be good damage dealers and can be devastating on the flanks, but are more vulnerable to skirmishers. Chariots with bows or javelins can be useful for disrupting enemy lines and melee chariots for attacking enemy skirmishers - but chariots generally need more mico-management than other units.
Historical Total War players have often criticised the focus on some Total War games on heroic commanders (and other legendary figures) - in Total War: Warhammer, for example, there are some legendary characters who can defeat an army. While general's bodyguard units tend to be of high quality in Pharaoh, they are not super-human. The only legendary quality is that a faction leader can be wounded, but not killed, as long as their faction survives (this has been a feature of some previous games, such as Napoleon Total War).
It's interesting to play a Total War game in an era where artillery is not used, and cavalry isn't generally available either (except for a small number of new factions added by the Dynasties update, which have cavalry). Light infantry and chariots can provide the speed and flexibility which cavalry offer in later eras. When attacking a province capital, which will have stone walls, the attacker needs to spend some turns constructing siege equipment (such as ladders and towers, or undermining the walls). This provides an opportunity for the defender to send reinforcements and (like other aspects of the game) encourages the player to plan attacks carefully. For example perhaps you will use another army to intercept reinforcements, or send another army to raid and draw enemy reinforcement away before the siege begins.
New playersoften find the battles difficult at first; you might be interested in tips on how to win battles in Total War: Pharaoh.
Areas for improvement
In Total War: Pharaoh, regions are often defended by warriors inside a fort, as well as the city garrison. Historically, it would usually make sense to attack the fort first, and then to begin a siege of the city. However, in the game, if you capture the city first, the enemy troops inside a fort disappear. This seems to create an incentive for the player to act differently (compared to the likely decisions of historical commanders) - for example, if you have a border city, this system encourages the player to put a fort further inside your territory, rather than between the city and the border. To be fair, when the AI has units in a fort (which often happens), this does encourage the player to plan ahead, for example to send a second army to the fort, to prevent its units from reinforcing the city's defenders when your main army attacks.
There is no artillery in Total War: Pharaoh, so it makes sense that army attacking a walled city must wait for at least a turn to construct siege equipment (such as ladders or towers), or to undermine the walls (to create breaches). If the player waits just one turn and plays the battle manually, they are quite likely to lose - for example, if you attack a city with only one or two siege towers, there is a good chance that the defenders will be able to set fire to the tower(s) before they reach the walls. This means that there is an incentive for the player to keep the siege going for several turns - because you can build extra siege equipment each turn - which seems realistic. However, if you lay siege to a city with an army, bring a second army as reinforcements and auto-resolve the battle after one turn, you are likely to win. This means that, unfortunately, the current system encourages the player to auto-resolve siege battles - because you can reliably take a city with two armies after a wait of one turn (and auto-resolving), while the player is likely to need to wait two or three turns to build enough siege equipment for a successful attack (if you fight the battle yourself). In my view, it would be better if the auto-resolve calculation for sieges of walled cities gave more weight to the amount of siege equipment which had been constructed. An alternative solution would be to allow a second army to also build (and use) siege equipment - this would make it more worthwhile to play a siege battle after waiting one turn, because you would be able to build more siege equipment.
There are some things which are absent from Total War: Pharaoh which I don't mind - I'll mention them here because their absence may matter to some players. The game does not include agents, but after a while I didn't miss them. In my experience of some Total War games, managing agents and levelling them up can become a chore, particularly when you have a lot of them. The game does not include naval combat - when hostile armies meet at sea, they fight on an island. While I enjoy sea battles in games such as Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail, I don't mind the absence of sea battles in the late bronze age - I imagine the tactics wouldn't be very different from land battles, apart from the fact that fire arrows would be likely to guarantee a win (which would be fun the first time, but would become repetitive). The game also does not include historical battles - while historical battles such as Kadesh and Djahy could have been included, even when Total War games have historical battles, I mostly play the campaign so I don't mind this either.
A small issue can occur when playing as the Peleset (a Sea Peoples faction, led by Walwetes). With this faction, you have the option to fight an enemy general in single combat, as an alternative to an auto-resolved or manually played battle. However, if your commander defeat the enemy general, and if your army then attacks the enemy army in the same turn, the brief post-battle animation will show your general fighting no-one (because you already killed the enemy general). This doesn't affect the battle itself and it isn't a significant problem, it simply looks a bit odd.
Overall impressions
Even though the bronze age isn't my favourite historical period for a strategy game, I'm enjoying Total War Pharaoh more than I expected. Aspects of the game can be confusing at first. I'm still learning how the Egyptian court system works. It takes time to adjust to the fact that your faction's farms and fisheries aren't likely to produce enough food for the armies you need - and learn how to manage food and other resources (such as acquiring more food through trade and taking it from defeated enemies, and by alternating between periods of expansion and consolidation).
It's satisfying to play a Total War game which provides a challenge in several ways. It's not as easy to expand without much thought, when you face stronger garrisons, when AI factions are capable of attacking with multiple armies - and when you face waves of invaders, as these kingdoms did historically. I'm enjoying the opportunity to customise my faction, in particular the opportunity to recruit different native units in different areas, which can help my armies to adapt to different conditions.
While the current map covers a much smaller area of the world than games such as Rome or Rome II, it's at a very different scale so there are plenty of regions. In fact, when I play as one of the Egyptian faction leaders, I imagine that their situation is somewhat similar to that of a powerful noble in a medieval European nation - and I wonder if a future medieval Total War game might be on a similar scale to Pharaoh, so that the player would start as a noble rather than a monarch. In May 2024, the developers revealed an expanded campaign map which will be available with a free update, from July 25th 2024. For me, it's interesting that the expanded campaign map will have a different shape, compared the rectangular campaign maps in some previoous games. Pharaoh's expanded campaign map will have a central area (Canaan) with three areas leading from it - (1) Egypt, (2) Anatolia and Greece and (2) Assyria and Babylon. This could help with making the end-game more challenging - if the player becomes dominant in one of these areas, there could be a rival dominant nation in each of the other two.
Overall, if you're looking for a historical war game which provides a challenge, rewards players for strategic thinking and which offers good opportunities to customise your faction, I highly recommend Total War: Pharaoh.
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