I really like the lack of cavalry + slowness of battles in Pharaoh. It slows the pace of battles down to where I can actually enjoy making tactical decisions in real-time
I downloaded the mod that removes the Ahistorical cavalry from Total War Pharaoh (I really dont know why historical fans complained so much about the lack of cavalry to peer pressure CA into adding in them; they ruin the feel of the game). But I've been doing a Thrace playthrough, using my few chariot units (theyre expensive as hell) as shock units to the rest of my army. However, theyre super fragile to basically anything, so are only specialty units.
The feel of battles is frankly amazing; I feel encouraged to pick out terrain and weather that is favorable to my army composition, use battle tactics to encourage the enemy to attack where I have the favorable circumstances, and then engage. The battle lines actually last for a while, too, and dont fall apart within a minute of contact, which is awesome! It makes a well-timed chariot charge feel even more rewarding as well, as it feels like im turning the tides of the battle when my weaker Thracian Spearmen slowly fall apart to the superior Greek infantry.
One of the things about Warhammer battles is that they can get overwhelming. I'll play as Cathay and set up a defensive position on a hill, only for flying units to just fly over my battle lines and kill all my archers. Then cavalry in Warhammer is sometimes quite frankly OP: a Bretonnian Questing Knight unit would just blow straight through my spear formation. It just kind of ruined the tactical setup to battles I like and made it feel more like pairing units with the highest stats against the most favorable unit type.
But tl;dr, I really like the battles in Pharaoh being slower paced, largely due to the lack of fast moving