Total War: Pharaoh, the latest in a long running strategy series that includes Total War: Three Kingdoms, Total War: Warhammer 3, and Total War Saga: Troy, is a strong entry but one that was criticized when it launched last autumn by players wishing it branched out a bit further from its predecessors. The team at Creative Assembly Sofia recently announced that it’s looking to tackle these complaints head on through a massive update that looks to add in new factions — Babylon, Assyria, Troy, and Mycenae — a new ‘Dynasty’ system, unit reworks, and, as detailed today, a big change to the game’s map.
Total War: Pharaoh‘s setting is about to become substantially bigger, providing room for the new factions coming to the strategy game. In a post detailing this map update, Creative Assembly states that it wanted to expand the game’s campaign map and tweak aspects of the campaign to better incorporate the new factions.
As a result, the map will soon add in the hills and rivers of Mesopotamia on its east and, to the west, the islands and mountains of the Aegean and Troy. The post gets into the fine points of what this expansion means in numbers, explaining that the revised map will consist of 2048 x 1648 hexes, which is 1.8 times larger than the original launch’s version. It will also add in 168 settlements to manage and 94 factions to contend with — double the number of factions from before.
To accommodate this huge increase in map size and the new factions and settlements, Creative Assembly is changing numerous systems, and has added ‘Sea Travel Lanes’ to make travel (and establishing or raiding trade routes) easier to handle. It’s also added new landmarks to the map and updated victory conditions and its tutorial system.
While you’re waiting for the update to launch, check out more in Total War: Pharaoh’s wheelhouse with our picks for the top grand strategy games and 4X games on PC.
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