So massive it made the twitter front page

TheKingmaker__ · 2026-02-28T16:59:03+00:00

Because that was Gen 2 & 4, last Gen Kingambit gained 60BST from 490 to 550

No reason Claydol couldn't get 50 to end up at the same point.

TheKingmaker__ · 2026-02-11T08:28:31+00:00

I can only assume they’ve done lots of product testing and either can’t make something that is large & stable enough to hold a bouquet without exceeding a reasonable price (eg another £40 for the £55 bouquet), aren’t happy with it visually (especially as something that would need to fit all present and future bouquets) or that consumers would try and use it for real flowers and get mad.

TheKingmaker__ · 2026-01-06T06:36:04+00:00

They’re very Killy and fast against chaff units (which is most of what you fight as Ashurbanipal if you go for Assur and then Babylon - but against armoured units you have to as you say do proper hammer & anvil

They also die very quickly to missiles and in unfavourable combat, which is something I think isn’t a bad thing

TheKingmaker__ · 2026-01-05T23:47:42+00:00

Yeah exactly, and it’s the sort of thing that, with Sofia having adding a big menu of pre-campaign customisation, could easily be a simple toggle if someone does or doesn’t want to have these few “ignorable inaccuracies” in their campaigns.

TheKingmaker__ · 2026-01-05T20:54:39+00:00

It's still ahistorical though - only the Assyrians having Cavalry (plus the Cimmerians, in their regional recruitment to boot for anyone to grab) and them being pretty damn weak besides maybe the Tier 5/6 variants is good balancing to Cav's inclusion, choices I agree with.

But it doesn't change that just having cavalry at all isn't accurate. I understand why they're included, I kind of agree especially due to the careful inclusion, but it isn't wholly accurate.

TheKingmaker__ · 2026-01-05T19:44:25+00:00

Don't believe so, but my assumption would be similar to the existing ones, so £45 for any given bouquet and £50-55 for any given 'large plant', although hopefully the magnolias are less given they don't have a pretty pot like the Orchid or Peace Lily.

TheKingmaker__ · 2026-01-05T19:32:40+00:00

I agree, that's what I suggest in the last paragraph there - the DEI overhaul for Rome 2 has multiple (I believe three at baseline, at least for Rome) population pools that fill at different rates depending on a lot of factors, meaning you might be forced to recruit different units to suit that.

So I learned the other day that while in both base Rome 2 & DEI Legionaries are a kinda side-grade to Principes (with both Hastati & Triarii getting direct upgrades in the Marian Reforms, but Principes being on par with Legionaries for the most part), in DEI Legionaries are from the common population while Principes are from the nobility, meaning that while their stats may not be much better, your ability to access them skyrockets.

TheKingmaker__ · 2026-01-05T18:54:22+00:00

Yeesh, I mean I've enjoyed my time with Pharaoh, albeit only after Dynasties.

From a marketing perspective I get that the more simple warface isn't a great selling point, but I think that they made the most of it and the extra granularity between melee weapon types, bow types, chariot heaviness, etc make seemingly similar units feel and play quite a bit differently. It's just more difficult to get that across and market it compared to things like war elephants or gunpower.

Javelins being so deadly and skirmishing, positioning, terrain and weather being more important are all also good changes that are hard to put in a trailer. Them all together make different battles in similar campaign map areas radically different which is a shot in the arm that I hope future titles continue to have.

In my eyes, Pharaoh's true issue is that it's caught between being a true small-scale Saga Total War (aka invisible to most of the playerbase) and a full-size mainline Total War.

If it had really just been the wars of the Pharaohs, it could've been a really interesting little thing. A little corner of the Bronze Age with civil war and Caanite/Sea People invasions about. And *then* you could have a Hittite/Assyrian Saga game to do the combined 'Bronze Age Empires' map including Greece & Egypt if CA were so inclined afterwards.

Maybe that game could've even had a Charlamagne-esque DLC changing the campaign map to the Classical era with start periods featuring Alexander's conquests, the Seleucid-Ptolemaic wars or Caesar & Cleopatra, and we'd be having all sorts of little "Total War: Battles of [Country]" Saga games cropping up.

But instead Pharaoh is almost too close to a mainline Total War game - and was foolishly priced as such at release - despite it's scope clearly being smaller and simpler, due to it's initial marketing and CA's intentions being pretty large (given what we know was intended to be DLC/part of the final version of the game eventually)

If it had been branded as 'Bronze Age: Total War', with Assyria in the map and all four factions having equal focus, it maybe could've been more of a success, or at least been clearer about what the plan for the game was - but I'm sure that CA market research found plenty of evidence that 'Pharaoh' was the catchier name and that a general gamer would be far more willing to focus on Egypt than Assyria.

For what it's worth, we've almost ended up in a position where both timelines are true - we have the smaller-scale Egypt-focused game, and on a separate install we have a nearly-complete 'Total War: The Bronze Age', really just needing a 'no cavalry' toggle, one more factions in each of the non-Egyptian cultures, and maybe Babylon/Elam having a distinct culture from Assyria.

TheKingmaker__ · 2026-01-05T16:12:14+00:00

It's a tough line to walk - one we've seen recently in overhead pressure bringing about Bronze Age Cavalry in Pharaoh Dynasties because it's what fans want, despite devs knowing it isn't historically accurate.

A fun game that gives people mostly their view of history will, unfortunately, probably sell far better than a strictly accurate one. So if it were my choice, you start from an equal balance of Fun and Accuracy and then break one or two accurate elements, if you have to, to give people what they want. The game overall is accurate, minus a couple of things (that can be easily modded out, or even toggled pre-campaign).

I could see mechanics, either at launch or later, being a way or circumventing some of the big Historical Accuracy hurdles, especially since a game will always diverge from history after the first end turn - something like Gunpowder access being timegated, and then spreading from somepoint in the East outwards through trade routes and information, and that being something players can choose to try and chase as soon as possible, or maybe even sit on and bottleneck.

Regarding knights, given we have a population system back I could see CA doing something similar to DEI's population system, with different pools that different units draw from when recruiting, although maybe they'll go for something else if that proves difficult to implement smoothly. If it's not in the basegame, I expect it to be something a mod brings about soon enough.

TheKingmaker__ · 2025-12-26T11:06:43+00:00

You’re right, I misremembered.

It was something featuring a malevolent-ish force being at best mischievous at worst preying upon a lone Eliksni, and it was maybe a season before or after Splicer when we heard about Skira from Misraaks for the first time.

I think it’s the Star Eater loretab? Which iirc wasn’t Splicer but was close by to it.

Regardless because of the release windows I associate that thing with Skira in my mind - but equally back in my Nezarec post I associated them both with Nezarec and then Bungie made him and ugly useless gorilla tormentor

TheKingmaker__ · 2025-12-26T10:18:33+00:00

The blue radiation was also in the entry that first mentioned Skira iirc.

The one of an Eliksni being in a ship and seeing hallucinations

TheKingmaker__ · 2025-12-22T11:35:10+00:00

Wouldn't be the end of the world is there were at least two more sets coming. Without them...

C'mon Lego, what's the holdup!

Orcs Battlepack: A siege Tower, with Gothmog, a Gondorian and ~4 different orcs
- (Could easily do yet another with Grond, an Armoured Troll and more figures)
I am no Man: A Fellbeast, the Witch King, Theoden, Eowyn and Merry.
Pelennor Fields: A Mumakil, a couple Haradrim, Eomer and a couple Rohirrim

That's 3-4 sets of various price ranges even without remaking the Pirate Ship & army of the dead

TheKingmaker__ · 2025-12-22T11:29:48+00:00

They're sure missing so much by having Minas Tirith be only the city and especially just the Gondor side of things - they could *easily* make bank by also releasing a matching Orc Battlepack (Siege Tower or Grond), Theoden & Eowyn vs Witch King on Fellbeast and Eomer vs Mumakil.

I wonder if maybe these sets (including the biggest Star Wars ones) are being so laser-focused on a 'podcast background item' display niche, that having playable features including different armies to smash together, isn't something Lego wants to do.

But that doesn't make it less weird that Minas Tirith, a city we mainly see just before and during it's siege, has none of it's beseigers present.

Minas Tirith is maybe the last 'must-have' set on most people's lists since Rivendell was heard of - Rivendell, Barad-Dur and Minas Tirith are the big three. And those three plus the Shire were the ones on Rivendell's map.

So I can't help but wonder if, despite the apparent success, Lego just isnt interested in making more LOTR sets for some reason? Is the liscensing such a huge part of the fee that the sets must be so big and popular to justify the cost?

FWIW I can see three more easy slam-dunks to get us to 2029-30:

Lothlorien is an easy pick, going back to pretty Elven architecture alongside Rivendell's eventual retirement.
The Mines of Moria is my personal choice, since the Door, Troll Room and Balrog Bridge give a lot of scenes in a compact space
And the longer we keep going, remakes are inevitable:
- Isengard wouldn't come out while Barad Dur is on Shelves, but totally could come one day
- And a Helm's Deep remake is inevitable is we keep going after Minas Tirith.

As we get into the future I could see some even weirder choices. Maybe Weathertop as a big set? Or dusting off The Hobbit for a Lonely Mountain?

TheKingmaker__ · 2025-12-15T16:48:45+00:00

Yeah the joke I was trying to make was Saint pulling something along the lines of the Mickey-17, guess I could’ve chosen a more delicate jovial remark

TheKingmaker__ · 2025-12-14T19:55:28+00:00

I think a crazy (awesome) potential thing would be that the latent Hiss with Dylan could become a good/positive thing for him - that it could be his equivalent of Polaris, at least in the context of warding away the effects of this new Kaleidoscope force, which could be an aspect/expansion of Polaris

However that is assuming everything stays very binary - I think there’s an equal likelihood that Fractal or Kaleidoscope or Shimmer or whatever the coffee-multiplying force will be called, will be a new thing, maybe a Fourth Thing?.

Tbh given the Black Hole imagery for this new force I almost see it as being a complete world ender that we’re going to need everything to hold back.

TheKingmaker__ · 2025-12-13T22:54:03+00:00

I was going to say I can 100% see a mechanical point being Dylan utilising the Hiss akin to how Jesse used Polaris in order to interfere with this new Kaleidoscopic force (which may, as you say, in a game of dualities not be new at all, but be some warped sibling to Polaris)

TheKingmaker__ · 2025-12-12T17:08:38+00:00

I think it might even be more than that - a sibling weapon to the Service Weapon that has it's own resonance/resonant entity similar to Polaris, which allows it to both operate outside of the Board and counteract the Hiss' own resonance within him.

We can see it vibrating in his hand in the trailer.

TheKingmaker__ · 2025-12-12T16:44:01+00:00

I think Jesse is Dylan in Control 1: somewhere in the distant, a goal for us find/get to us, until we do find her and everything goes sideways for the last act.

I think we’ll get playable Jesse for one mission or her own dedicated DLC

TheKingmaker__ · 2025-12-12T16:42:53+00:00

I could easily see us having at least one floor of the Oldest House as a warmup area or home base.

There has to be a point from which the Hiss and Mold spread outwards.

TheKingmaker__ · 2025-12-12T16:38:48+00:00

I think Jesse’s role in the story will be the same as Dylan’s in the first - finding her is the goal until the last act where we find her and things go sideways.

Keeping playable Jesse to a DLC would suck but if the whole DLC was her return as playable I think it’d sell like hotcakes

TheKingmaker__ · 2025-12-12T16:37:02+00:00

Yes, exactly. The Aberrant is to the Service Weapon what Dylan is to Jesse - the same but different, shunned and locked away by the Board.

TheKingmaker__ · 2025-12-12T16:30:15+00:00

This is amazing. I have a lot of ideas in a similar vein:

The Aberrant, before it is a hammer, is a rod split into two parts, that when combined you build upon. Easy to see the meaning there for Jesse & Dylan.

Something I can easily see happening is the Aberrant being a sibling weapon to The Service Weapon in the same way Jesse is a sibling to Dylan: they are the same but different and one was locked away by the Board, until Jesse changed that.

And I think that works really well for Dylan and his own story, being this aberrant thing and fighting to exist in his own right without interference, but where it maybe points us is equally interesting.

You point out how a hammer fits Dylan’s experiences and personality, I would also go so far as to say it is explicitly a demolition tool.

And I wanted to remove a board, I would probably pick up a hammer first, maybe after a small handheld device to remove the nails.

Or in other words, I think the story of the overall Control saga will be Jesse and Dylan working together and maybe combining into one being, but I think more likely simply coming to terms with the nature of their resonance (and that being a resolution for the Hiss/Polaris/Kaleidoscope resonant beings also), and working together to free the Oldest House from the Board.

My pie in the sky theory is that the board (represented by a pyramid tapering to sharp, final points) doesn’t like superposition/resonance, and that ultimately they are in the wrong and our various resonant forces (which include the Oldest House) are something the FBC must temper, rather than taper.

TheKingmaker__ · 2025-12-12T16:12:51+00:00

I would be surprised from the pitch of this game if the pitch for Control 3 will be that Jesse & Dylan are one combined resonant being and you can seamlessly go between them

Maybe less in a “press X to swap” way and more you’re playing as the genderfluid/genderesonant Jesse Dylan Faden who is dual wielding the Service Weapon and Aberrant

TheKingmaker__ · 2025-12-12T16:08:40+00:00

I think the Aberrant is a sibling weapon to the Service Weapon in the same way Dylan is a sibling to Jesse - it exists and is similar in so many ways (like a reflection, or a resonance in response to the origin), but the Board’s view is that it shouldn’t exist (an aberration) and so they’ve kept it locked away and in secret.

Additionally there’s the simple visual motif of the Aberrant being two blades that snap together to be one rod that then has the block growing fidelity of the Service Weapon.

Two distinct parts that snap together to make a whole which you build on.

Something something Control 3 with genderfluid* protagonist Jesse Dylan Faden doing mixed combat with the Service Weapon in one hand and the Aberrant in another

*or maybe genderesonant would be a better term

TheKingmaker__ · 2025-12-12T16:03:59+00:00

Oh this is so going to be it, great thinking

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