​it was nice to see you devs talking freely about the good and bad things. in the end it was a good game but there are some things that need fixing. i really hope you can fix everything and i would really like more content in the future...

I hope that this game and the Bronze Age setting continues to receive more love in the future.

More content would be great a d well recived by the community

Really enjoyed this interview and having the curtains pulled back a bit. Thank you for all of your hand work on Pharaoh!

It would have been interesting to know the developers' feelings about the game's initial flop and what they think were the reasons why Pharaoh wasn't received well at first. We can all form an opinion on this but it would have been interesting to hear from the inside

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toskyrun#2614 wrote:

It would have been interesting to know the developers' feelings about the game's initial flop and what they think were the reasons why Pharaoh wasn't received well at first. We can all form an opinion on this but it would have been interesting to hear from the inside

I think the problem is that the Bronze Age is a welcome theme only among a minority of total war fans. Whenever CA makes a social media post about Pharaoh the Medieval 3/Empire 2 crowd hijacks the comment section. Troy at least had the 'pop culture' appeal of the Iliad. A game based on ancient Egypt was always going to struggle in that regard, unless it were based around a well known figure such as Cleopatra. I think what hurt Pharaoh's appeal the most was the lack of a DLC announcement during last year's holiday season. That's when the fanbase at large began to suspect that CA might be abandoning this project, despite its state.

I guess the above wouldn't have been 'polite' conversation for the development team. Their silence about the lack of a playable Habiru faction was also a bit conspicuous.

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Darios#5306 wrote:

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toskyrun#2614 wrote:

It would have been interesting to know the developers' feelings about the game's initial flop and what they think were the reasons why Pharaoh wasn't received well at first. We can all form an opinion on this but it would have been interesting to hear from the inside

I think the problem is that the Bronze Age is a welcome theme only among a minority of total war fans. Whenever CA makes a social media post about Pharaoh the Medieval 3/Empire 2 crowd hijacks the comment section. Troy at least had the 'pop culture' appeal of the Iliad. A game based on ancient Egypt was always going to struggle in that regard, unless it were based around a well known figure such as Cleopatra. I think what hurt Pharaoh's appeal the most was the lack of a DLC announcement during last year's holiday season. That's when the fanbase at large began to suspect that CA might be abandoning this project, despite its state.

I guess the above wouldn't have been 'polite' conversation for the development team. Their silence about the lack of a playable Habiru faction was also a bit conspicuous.

yes, probably the idea of conceiving a game about Egypt at war was quite risky.

we are all fascinated by ancient Egypt, its civilization and monuments, the gods, in fact there are countless city builder games about it, and then there is age of mythology. but a strategy game? I remember few. maybe the idea of making men run in their underwear on a desert dune is not the best, unless the great plan was to get to the total game of the bronze age, of which dynasties collects the legacy.

what I reproach the developers and the marketing team for is not having been clear from the beginning about the final goal. it would have attracted many more players and created much more hype, knowing that one day we would have obtained the immortal empires version of a historical game.

Correct. The idea of ancient Egypt is fascinating, but in practice it is not the most engaging scenario for a Total War game. In terms of practical geography, you're fighting over a linear network of cities hugging the Nile. The Libu coming out of the desert provides a limited element of depth, but as you mentioned - ancient Egypt fits better in a city builder game.

Also agreed on CA's marketing policy. Had they been forthcoming about their intentions to combine Troy with Pharaoh, the entire narrative about this game would have been different. That in itself would have been spectacular. The Eastern Mediterranean provides a beautiful mosaic of fascinating cultures and strategic depth.

I still wish that Mesopotamia could have ultimately become its own game. I would have enjoyed seeing Elam better fleshed out and the campaign map stretching north beyond the Zagros into the Caucasus. Combining Troy + Pharaoh + a fleshed out Mesopotamian game would have been nothing short of epic. 

I'm not a fan of the minor faction concept in Dynasties. Lots of missed opportunities there to create something special.

I'm just thinking out loud, it's all water under the bridge at this point.

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Darios#5306 wrote:

Correct. The idea of ancient Egypt is fascinating, but in practice it is not the most engaging scenario for a Total War game. In terms of practical geography, you're fighting over a linear network of cities hugging the Nile. The Libu coming out of the desert provides a limited element of depth, but as you mentioned - ancient Egypt fits better in a city builder game.

Also agreed on CA's marketing policy. Had they been forthcoming about their intentions to combine Troy with Pharaoh, the entire narrative about this game would have been different. That in itself would have been spectacular. The Eastern Mediterranean provides a beautiful mosaic of fascinating cultures and strategic depth.

I still wish that Mesopotamia could have ultimately become its own game. I would have enjoyed seeing Elam better fleshed out and the campaign map stretching north beyond the Zagros into the Caucasus. Combining Troy + Pharaoh + a fleshed out Mesopotamian game would have been nothing short of epic. 

I'm not a fan of the minor faction concept in Dynasties. Lots of missed opportunities there to create something special.

I'm just thinking out loud, it's all water under the bridge at this point.

Agreed, people have gone over this many times already, but a full-scale Bronze Age game would have been considerably better received than a scaled-down game that is mostly about Egypt with the Hittites and Canaanites as side characters with half the content Egypt got.

Egypt is a fascinating civilization and its military was sophisticated enough to warrant its existence in a Total War game, something we already had a taste of way back in Rome 1, so the Bronze Age is most certainly a valid setting for a Total War game, but like any other historical setting it needs to be displayed in its full glory from the get-go, while zoomed-in periods should at best be delegated to expansion packs like Medieval 2 Kingdoms or all those Rome II campaign DLCs. 

The community has made it more than clear that they do not want small-scale historical games, ToB for example is the closest we ever got to Medieval 3 and many people disliked that game when it was new, with a lot of the arguments against it being about its scale.

​I consider this game to be the second best total war game. I like the immersion and details in the campaign with events, dilemmas like when a general of my assyrian army died in battle, an event arose, what kind of burial I wanted it to be. a scripted campaign, with immersion, nothing to do with boring, monotonous campaigns devoid of historical and immersive content of other previous games total war.

If rome II had a campaign with historical events, the historical generals, with the graphic improvements of the pharaoh that make the units look more realistic, more detailed, with more realistic animations, the faces of the soldiers look realistic, not the horrible faces of Rome II and other previous games, except for Troy and three kingdoms which are good.

that rome II, having lasted several centuries, should have had continuous expansions with historical start dates like three kingdoms and that an entire campaign could be played from its beginning, thus a historical logic could be implemented with events and dilemmas and have all the historical characters and historical situations in a campaign.

the base game of Rome II the campaign could have started with the pyrrhus war and with the campaign map limited to that war, then CA could have been releasing its successive expansions of historical start dates, in turn expanding the campaign map, the first expansion could have been based on the First Punic War, then another expansion the Second punic war and at the same time the campaign map is expanded, new units that change over time, not only military reforms of Rome and other important factions such as Carthage, but greek factions, orientals to tribes of all kinds such as celts, iberians, germans and all those that existed at that epoch.

the player who acquires all the expansions will be able to play the entire campaign from start to finish with the entire expanded map, CA could release countless expansions of historical starting points in chronological order, pyrrhic war the base game and expansions first punic war, second punic war, macedonian wars, war with the seleucids, pontus wars and many more, all in chronological order. all with events that link the expansions, a campaign full of historical events, historical figures, decisions that would make an excellent game.

i said that pharaoh is the second best Total War game, the first is without a doubt three kingdoms, even with CA  disastrous decision to leave the game halfway unfinished.tree kingdoms needs several expansions to complete the story and many new characters and customize many generals, implement many historical events, it is time for CA to take up this excellent game and continue the story where it left off with the next historical starting point with Cao Cao controlling the entire north and yuan shao defeated, with the remodeling of new mechanics for liu bei and sun jian's faction, as was done with cao cao and yuan shao in the last DLC.many players are waiting for CA to take up the game and continue the story.

and the next one, many people expect there to be gunpowder, whether it be a napoleonic game or a game from the pike and shot era, even a game just about the english civil war from that era with a well-detailed strategic map of great britain, all the characters and historical military units, historical events, it would be an excellent game.

It's time for a historical game with muskets. With all the improvements in diplomacy, graphics, and historical immersion that games like three kingdoms and pharaoh make it excellent.

Total War: Pharaoh in my mind is a attempt to look at a dangerous point in human history, the late bronze age collapse. It's a topic still in debate as to its causes but the destruction was real. Only a handful of civilizations managed to escape the destruction, the Egyptians and the Assyrians. The Assyrians retreated mainly to cut their losses, the Egyptians couldn't do that. But I do hope they return to this game and keep developing it. So much potential to expand and to grow the game. I did include some of my thoughts in another thread to help expand some ideas.