Summary
Revisiting the ancient sands of Egypt,Total War: Pharaohhas caused a stir within theTotal Warcommunity. Players take on the role of aspiring claimants desiring the throne of an already fractured and waning institution. To become the Pharaoh is totread a treacherous and perilous path.
Whilst the vanilla campaign offers a solid gameplay experience in a vibrant and dynamic setting, several modders have already raised the bar and improved various aspects of the original game. From tiny adjustments designed to elevate certain quality-of-life enhancements to complete overhauls that re-imagine the campaign, players will find that these mods willimprove their overall Total War experience.
6Better Campaign Camera
Starting small, Better Campaign Camera has it in its name. The mod offers the ability to havea more dynamic viewof the campaign and battle maps. Sadly, the vanilla campaign camera only allows you to zoom in and out from a limited angle, significantly restricting your ability to experience the maps.
This mod, however, enables you tohave a wide-field view,offering better overviews of the campaign map, and showcasing the beauty of it. Meanwhile, on the battlefield, the mod gives players options tostrategically view battlestaking place, zooming in on charges or getting that much-needed top-down view to see every engagement taking place.
5Improved Unit Spacing
Whilst battles rage on the endless desert dunes and within immaculate, majestic cities can look impressive, vanilla campaign players might have noticed thatunits marching toward the front lines look strange. The vanilla gameplay experience has many units (both cheap and expensive ones) marching in clean formations that can come off as unrealistic and awkward.
Improved unit spacing changes the look byhaving unitsmarch more organicallyand slightly haphazardly whilst keeping formation. This is to simulate what an actual army may look like going into battle versus having perfectly synchronized armed clones that look identical all the way through.
4Colored Building Icons
Veterans of the Total War series will recognize how much more intricate the series has become over the years. Establishing and selecting the right building chains in various provinces required patience and skill in planning a successful long-term campaign and Total War: Pharaoh is no different.
Colored building icons simplyhelps players identify buildings that arepart of the same chain,making it easier to distinguish which is which. Echoing previous entries from the franchise such asTotal War: Three Kingdoms,agricultural buildings are green whilst military buildings are red. Overall, the mod just makestiny adjustments that help save timeallowing you to focus more elsewhere.
3Major Factions Renamed
This mod aims tostreamline the name of every factionby identifying it with its home region/province. Players of the vanilla campaign will note that some factions are named after theirrespective leaders such as Ramesseswhilst otherminor factions are simply named after their home regions. For some, this can appear strange and slightly break immersion as factions follow different naming rules.
This mod fixes that issue byreplacing the major factions' names and renaming them after places where starting factions begin, making the game more historically immersive. The modder even has plans to expand this mod by allowing those who have claimed the title of Pharaoh of Egypt to have their faction renamed as Egypt.
2More Standard Bearers
More Standard Bearers is pretty self-explanatory. The modincreases the number of standard bearersfor all melee units,giving each unit six standard bearersin the front. Historically, standard bearers played an important role in the unit, giving the unit a personal identity, and a source of pride, and could even be used to strike fear into enemies if the unit had acquired a certain level of infamy and reputation.
Therefore, with some large units deployed in the Egyptian theater of war, those units should have multiple standards charging into the fray. Additional details within the mod include havingEgyptian standards different from those that belong tothe Hittite factions.
1Agony
Like its predecessor featured in Total War: Troy, the Agony mod is an overhaul mod thatre-imagines the vanilla campaignin a new way. Firstly, the mod introduces somegraphical changes, muting several faction colors whilst introducingadjustments to battle maps and building icons, not to mention the campaign map itself.
Moreover,battles now have increased sizesas well as some major adjustments to weapon and unit stats. TheAI is also significantly improved, especially in the realm of diplomatic decision-making. AI factions will now more often single out attractive and vulnerable targets to conquer as well as work together with other factions to take down major threats within their respective regions.
However, the biggest overhaul aspect would have to be the introduction of thepopulation/ migration mechanic.A three-tier population mechanic broken down into different sections (peasants, commoners, and nobles) that now dramatically affects province growth and the type of military recruitment available to players.
This affects workforce effects and bonuses and populations will begin to migrate elsewhere if happiness is low, affecting player economy incomes and recruitment. This overhaul aspect alone introduces an additional layer of strategy and complexity that is perfect for those looking for an extra challenge to their campaigns.
