Total War: Pharaoh campaign customization settings set new series standard

Total War: Warhammer 3 could do with some of these

Total War: Pharaoh, which will be released later in 2023, is going to set a new standard for Creative Assembly’s strategy game series in at least one aspect: campaign customization. A recent video shows some of the available options, which players will be able to tune campaigns with, and even this little glimpse of what will be possible is enough to make the community drool.

Creative Assembly seems to have taken a page out of Paradox Interactive’s book, adding tons of options users can play around with. Iron Man mode is confirmed to be available for any difficulty, allowing players to hinder themselves from using manual saves to get themselves out of tricky situations. Users can customize things like character movement ranges, trading, diplomatic penalties for violating borders, attrition damage, replenishments, and many other things.

You can even disallow your own army from retreating in battles, making each combat into a high-stakes do or die affair. We haven’t seen any of the AI or general customization settings yet, so this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The menu also delivers very clear explanations for what each of the options does, which is great to see and will help players find exactly the settings they want – we’ll get very clear and concise options instead of vague pre-set difficulties, allowing us to create cheats or handicaps for our own forces as needed.

Look at all those lovely settings / Creative Assembly

This is a great addition to Pharaoh and will hopefully be the new standard for any other new entries into the series.

It’d be even better if Total War: Warhammer 3 could get as many of these settings as possible as well – and campaign customization is certainly something Rich Aldridge and his team have on the radar, as they’ve previously stated in an interview with us.