Total War Pharaoh had a rough start. Released back in October, Creative Assembly’s Egyptian strategy game was originally met with criticism owing to its perceived similarity to other games in the series and absence of fresh ideas. Gradually, though, its developers have turned things around. The upcoming Dynasties update revolutionizes battles with the new lethality system and improved maps – and out of nowhere, Creative Assembly has just dropped the release date.
Strategy games like Total War Pharaoh can often, in the modern era at least, take a little time to gather Steam. Cities Skylines 2 is a good example. Millennia, also published by Paradox, is another. They might launch in a rocky state, but through updates, patches, and overhauls, they eventually become the robust and in-depth experiences for which we have hoped.
The new Total War Pharaoh update makes battles feel much closer to previous TW games, where units could be killed in a single hit. Now, in Dynasties, there is a percentage chance that your soldiers can kill (or be killed) in one attack. This applies to both melee and ranged attacks, although the likelihood of this ‘lethal blow’ will be reduced against units with higher armor stats. Missile trajectories, like the arrows fired from archer chariots, have also been adjusted so that they are more realistic, and visibility has also been reworked.
Forests, buildings, and other high density terrain will reduce visibility more sharply, but standing on elevated positions in Total War Pharaoh will now improve and lengthen your line of sight. This is going to be very useful, since the Dynasties update also adds 60 new battle maps to Mesopotamia where the catchment areas have been expanded from 4×4 to 6×6 tiles – each new land battle map now has a total size of 1536 x 1536 meters.
So when’s it all happening? The Total War Pharaoh Dynasties release date is confirmed for Thursday July 25. If you think it’s time to finally give Pharaoh a try, it’s available at a 33% discount until Thursday July 11. Just head here.
Otherwise, try some of the best grand strategy games, or maybe the best 4X games available on PC.
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