Overview
A walkthrough for Pre-Civilization Egypt detailing how to achieve a victory on the the highest difficulty. It focuses on the impact of events, timings and technologies the player must focus to pass all challenges with gold and manage to win the game before turn 220 on the highest difficulty.
Bad Events by order of their impact on your civilization
Floods – Highly impactful early and mid-game if they hit farms. Farms cannot be repaired by building over them and during the early game sources of food are limited. Causes a loss of 1 to 3 pop and 2 to 4 regions need repair.
hAngry Hippos – pun intended, highly impactful. It reduced gathering tiles ( including flax fields ) yield by 1 food for 8 turns or you can chose to lose 1 worker. If you have spare sources of food that provide more food you can pick to wait 8 hours. My personal suggestion is, go for the worker.
The Remorse – late game event. Automatic loss of 2-4 people and a choice between losing food over 5 turns, getting attacked and losing some authority over 5 turns or losing 90% authority for 5 turns. The only reason it’s not that impactful is that at this point you should be sitting on 45-50 workers and an excess of food. Annoying though.
Drought – early game it can have a serious impact because it just eats away your base food yield on tiles. Late game it’s nothing really. 20% decrease in food is not going to put a dent in your bonus to food yield even if it lasts for 8 turns.
The hidden taxes – a loss of either 40% of food yield or 10% of all yield. Go for the 40% as this is a late game event and you can stomach a bit less food but not less culture or production and authority. Lasts 8 turns
Compensation payment – a loss of 10 to 25% of your production and food yield, it’s dire mostly early game. It lasts for 8 turns. I usually decide to ruin my relations with the tribe early game and raid them. Late game it’s a lot less straightforward so it depends on if you need the town to ally you for a challenge or not.
Rebellion – not really an event but it can creep up on you when it’s at only 3 percent chance. At that percentage if it hits your first colony in the wadi it could be table flip inducing. Moderately impactful as you want to fight on only 4 turns prior turn 184.
The Growing Threat – an incoming attack in 9 turns. Usually it’s not a big problem simply because it comes at a smaller size than your force and you will be working at least 2 barracks tiles at full staffing at most times. However if you roll poorly during the attack it can become devastating.
Solar Eclipse – it can really only ever slow you down if you just bought workers the previous term or are on a clock to build a building and have no reserves. It lasts 1 turn.
Sand Storm – Not that impactful Early game it causes 1 production and one 1 food loss on all tiles for two turns. The simplest way to mitigate it early game is move the workers to trade positions. Even without upgrades basic trade yields a net 2 resource points for cities close by and 6 resource points for cities far away. Late game it removes a percentage of your production. between 20 and 40, however by then your bonuses from tech and colonies and fields are higher to offset it and because base yield is not affected it’s not that big an issue.
Sanctuary of the Falcon challenge
As this guide focuses on the timings you need to make the sanctuary work it’s not going to be so heavily based on turn by turn instructions. Mostly because at this difficulty they are subject to change due to impact of events and random city spawns.
Step 1 Turn 4.
This is how turn 4 looks for all of us. But what is important at this point is what do you want to go for to get your goals? There are two main things you want to reach. The +3 production yield region on the other side of the Nile and a nearby city as seen in the pic from turn 23. The city is important, it should have as a base yield either food or culture or authority. Relations can be in case of food but for all the others you prefer good relations initially.
Food means you can raid it for food 2 times prior to the Shrine of the falcon deadline if you find it by turn 21.
Culture is just an overall goodness as it ensures faster technology reveal leading earlier flat bonuses for yields. It might strain your early game a bit but it’s worth it.
Authority is rather straightforward. It helps rushing the Sanctuary of the Falcon.
Step 2 Turn 8.
Here is where you get to choose the first tech you want to research. You can get experimental breeding for 1 food per turn and get your third worker next turn. I suggest you do that.
Step 3 Turn 9.
Place the worker on the spot on the other side of the river. This way you can scout and move towards the valuable 3 production tile. Place the other worker whose tile now yields a bit less on the farm next to the 2 food tile.
Step 4 turn 11
Move the worker to the other farm to scout the other area on the map on the right hand side.
This way when you get 5 culture next turn, you can discover the domestication of the dog and reveal all areas. When the humidification of the Sahara hits next turn you should keep the worker that’s searching for the 3 production tile on his spot and move the others back to farm a bit.
Step 5
By turn 21-23 you should have discovered 1 town near you and you should have built the 2 farms at the start. If you got lucky and found a worker you would have around 25-30 food in the bank.
At this point I usually place on worker on the spot that takes 7 turns to reveal and I discover early rituals.
Now, this way you have 1 Falcon Horus +2 food ritual you can use to wildly boost your food yields for a few turns which you save for when you get the hunting event ( usually around this time you get one ) and stack it with it and then I can also raid a town for food ( if you didn’t get lucky with the food from revealing areas and you didn’t find a worker you can raid 2 towns ). The aim is to build the housing by turn 30 and have 80 food in the bank.
That way you can build the housing by turn 30 and have 8 workers. Do not buy workers over your limit early and do not spend authority more than once prior to the Sanctuary of the Falcon challenge, both cause your authority to take a hit. Workers over the limit cause your yield growth to diminish.
Step 6 Turn 35.
Now you should have 7 turns to finish the challenge and 2 rituals to Horus to do so. One will be given to you at turn 33 and it will be free to use. The other will be from having 9 or more authority. You will also should have worked 3 turns on the sanctuary trying to build it and you should have an excess of 80 food and production combined. So you will be able to rush the sanctuary and get a gold reward at turn 35.
The exodus from Sahara
The exodus of Sahara has three sides to it. Gather 120 food 3 turns into the challenge. Have a worker limit of 15-20 at the end of it, getting lucky with finding worker limit increases helps and work towards discovering most if not all zones on the starting map.
The additional goal is to backfill the farming area and the flax area.
Step 1 Turn 35.
Skip discovering flax for now. Yes I am not joking. Skip Flax for now as in the next 6 turns you will be building housing and the farm that’s required to advance to it. You’re bee-lining primitive housing are 2. As to the workers you would put on flax, have them explore. However keep working all tiles that give more than 1 resource. The authority goes without saying. You can add a single worker above your limit but that’s mostly flavor based. Whether it’s worth it depends on how much food and production you find while exploring. However it will slow you down a bit because it will lower your authority intake. That’s important for the rushing of the housing.
Step 2 Turn 40-42
You should have completed the housing by now. Now you can research flax and add workers to get to your new limit. If you can trade with a new town, do so. Raiding is not strictly required for this challenge and you also should have an existing raiding target for that. When you complete a flax field, start the next one and add a worker to the field. However do not rush the fields. They are not as important a bottleneck as the hosing. Work only 2 yield or higher fields and scout with the rest of the workers ( minus the one builder ). As a final note, try to explore the coast quickly. It unlocks a lot of areas hence greater chance for resources.
When you run out of area to discover move to the Egypt map and keep 2 workers going up and down the Nile. The rest should now work to deliver you food.
As for research, when you get the culture from revealing the region, go for Pastures and then Classes. That way you get an event a family rises. It increases your growth by a lot.
Step 3 Turn 49-52.
Rush the next primitive dwelling and build it for a turn. Now you should have 20-60 food 11-13 workers, based on random chance and maybe one damaged building. If it’s a flax field or a farm you will have to address it at this point. Now you need to add 2 more workers and then start saving food. Build the cheapest farm and continue gathering and scouting. You should have only 2-4 regions left to scout on this map by now.
Step 4 Turn 55
Now you can start saving food and if you want build the 2 remaining early farms. You don’t have to be overly quick about building them so don’t use a ritual to rush them. If you’re missing a bit of food, remember you can get 10 more from researching fishing and then there’s raiding( but you have to start it early) and you should have one ritual to use on your farms and flax. Do not use more than one ritual however as you might be tight for time getting the 20 authority for the challenge which you need by turn 63 to increase your pop limit.
When you discover all the regions focus on teching pastures and then classes as that can give you the new family rises event.
Step 5 Turn 61
The event will hit you at this point. The first turn the cost to decrease by food is 40 food. Do not do that. That figure goes down each turn. You can however use the 20 authority to increase your limit if your workers are at their limit.
Step 6 Turn 63
You will permanently lose 2 production and 2 food income. You should accept that. You
Turn 7 64
You will get 2 free workers. See it’s easier accepting now right ? Now it costs only 20 food per single tick to complete the trial and you need to use the food option 6 times. So that is why I advised saving 120 food.
The most dangerous thing in this trial are the events that cause floods or drought or the angry hippos. They set you back too much. However even with them you should come out of this trial with at least 14 workers if you follow the guide. if only one of them hits you and or it’s just the drought you should be fine.
The Heirakonpolis chiefdom
If you have followed the guide so far you should have 14-19 workers and the population limit to support 16 to 19 workers. Again this is dependent on luck as some events help with the limit and if you don’t get your workers killed in events it tends to be useful. Also you should have constructed most of your farms and you should have discovered 3-4 regions in Egypt.
One option in this case is to stop discovering. I tend to keep one scout looking for the regions because the yields from a successful exploration are much higher than 4 turns of work but again it depends. This is mostly about flavor. Now you need to get your pre-civilization to 20-24 workers and 500 warriors.
Step 1 Turn 64-66
Because you have classes, research the primitive army right away and remove any weak tribes on the map. You need the high yield tiles they are hogging. Next you should research Rectangular houses. It should be the last tech in that three that’s left. Do not attack the stronger 3 pips or lightning rod tribes yet. You should only have 120-150 warriors this early. They can crush 60 warriors easily but not more.
Next you should build primitive housing as soon as possible and continue towards simple barracks. Do not rush the first rectangular house with a ritual. It’s not worth it. If you want you can rush the second and the simple barracks. However use rituals sparingly. There’s a reason for this.
Step 2 Turn 72-75
You should now have your barracks ready. Fill up the 4 workers in the one barracks slot that also gives food. Now you have to focus your build order to complete first the cemetery of the commoners in area 1 and then via the pasture to cemetery of the commoners area 2. If you have an unbuilt farm on a tile that used to be a city you can squeeze that in because it can become a +4 or + 5 farm.
Again you can rush a bit but use it sparingly and for high production buildings. As far as tech goes we need to get to Craftsmanship and the Double of the Soul. The 5% lower production cost could be of use but not too much at this point.
Step 3 Turn 85-7
At Turn 87 the challenge itself will trigger but given that you have positioned your workers in such a way you should have 500 warriors by now. If not you can switch a few to the other barracks zones for a few turns. With 600 warriors once you get the bonus 100 for the mission the chiefdom is not a problem. Also you will get the scripted 300 culture event on turn 86. That should help you with the Double of the Soul tech. You need that to turn one more zone with a barracks a viable spot to farm culture.
The fight itself is straightforward. What is not as straightforward is lining up your troops in advance to strike the remaining settlement in your starting area. Usually that’s the tribe of the frog. You have to do that to get the bonus yield you are given for subduing your staring area. The sooner the better.
When this is done you continue with the rest of the building queue that I outlined earlier and you can now explore the rest of the Nile delta much faster. When you get to the coast start trading with Palestine immediately.