However, the court system struggles due to its lack of personality.
Getting to the top of the tech tree was a bit of a letdown when all it got me was infantry with slightly prettier swords. The monotony made me pine for the fantastical and varied units on offer in Total War: Warhammer 3. While Total War: Pharaoh offers regional unit variants, you’ll almost always be stuck with some combination of melee infantry, archers, and chariots. Unfortunately, the battle layer is held back by a lack of diversity among the units on offer. Armor degradation also helps give engagements a sense of permanency, while ensuring that elite units aren’t quite as unassailable as they were in previous Total War titles.
You may have the shiniest chariots, but, if rain has turned the desert into sludge, then you’ll be doomed to scowl at your foes from afar as your mount inches forward at a snail’s pace. Shifting weather conditions affect battlefields, changing the terrain and affecting how quickly your soldiers tire, as well as the performance of certain units. Total War: Pharaoh adds a few new features to the Total War melting pot, too. It made me feel like a sneaky political puppet master, worthy of the cutthroat courts of ancient Egypt. As Treasurer, I could embezzle money from other members of the court, which I then used to negotiate favorable deals with other factions. Gaining a court position for the first time proved to be very entertaining. If you’re outnumbered, you can attempt to hold the enemy at choke points, mitigating their advantage - a strategy that saved my poorly defended frontier settlements on more than one occasion.
However, flanking and maneuvering are just as important as unit type. To help you navigate this maze of strengths and weaknesses, when you click on an allied unit, a handy color-coded triangle will appear above potential enemy targets, alerting you as to how effective your soldiers might be against them in battle. On top of that, you have faster, more hard-hitting squads designed to outflank enemies as well as the occasional hybrid unit that can excel in multiple roles. Spears beat chariots, chariots outmaneuver shield infantry, and shield infantry outperforms spears. At their most basic, these engagements boil down to classic rock-paper-scissors mechanics - the sort you’d find in many of the best PC strategy games. The battles themselves are sophisticated affairs, boasting intuitive mechanics that gracefully unfold into complex tactical challenges.
0 kommentar(er)
