DevBlog: Population, Floods and the power of knowledge

Last week, we’ve given you a first look at Aegyptus, the new province releasing as part of the “Dawn of the Delta” expansion on November 5^th this year. We recommend checking our the full DevBlog here to learn more about the different zones in Aegyptus and to gain insights into the work of the Level Art and 3D Programming team.

Today, we’re walking you through the different population tiers, the topic of Romanization, various production chains and the flooding mechanic.

We’ll also take a look at the new technologies you can research, including new land units and ships.

The population of Aegyptus

With our small settlement from last time and the basic needs of the first population Tier, the Threshers, fulfilled, further progression is gated by a decision: do you upgrade along the traditional, Aegyptian path, or choose to Romanize them?

The local ways

The Aegyptian path means upgrading your Threshers to Potters, artisans deeply rooted in traditional working methods with little desire to innovate or change.

They will come with an increased number of needs like stuffed goose and beer as food needs and the newly unlocked household needs category, asking for talismans for protection (bonuses to income and belief) and oil lamps for their workshops (improves belief and knowledge but hurts your fire safety).

Make them happy, and one more upgrade becomes available to you: the third population tier are called the Chanters. These Priestesses are embodying Aegyptian culture and expand their set of needs with e.g. Blue Lotus Tea, Perfumed Oils and instruments (Sistrums) which make them very happy despite paying good money for it, and it even adds to your prestige.

Alongside these needed goods, you’ll require space for new public works:

Build the Apothecary with its own large herbal garden to improve both health and knowledge of your population.

Take care of your population’s spiritual needs with a sanctuary or temple and worship local deities – resulting in unique Aegpytian designs for both buildings – or build a Rock Tomb (requiring a mountain slot) for the upper class.

And finally, find a good spot for the Observatory to gaze into the stars  – be it to communicate with the gods or to divine measurements for your largest building projects (adding +5 belief and +3 knowledge).

The Roman way

The Roman way is almost more of a hybrid culture: strong Greek influences in Aegyptus rather make it a Graeco-Roman path when you’re upgrading your Threshers to Scribes.

The Scribes are scholars and administrators and are, to some degree, looking down on the Aegyptians, being rather protective of Greek culture instead. They’ll ask for bread and cheese, want soap and olive oil – and scribing sets to be able to get their work done in the most efficient way possible (+4 knowledge but –1 fire safety). We’re sure, they’d love Excel.

The third Romanized population tier in Aegyptus are the Gymnasiarchs: the educated elite focused on mercantile ventures and enjoying the good life with the profits they earned.

Expect decadent requests for rare meat platters, bird tongues in aspic, jewelry and bath milk, greatly boosting your prestige and providing plenty of extra income.

Your Graeco-Roman population will ask for many typically Roman public works, like a theatre, bath house (requiring an aqueduct) and a library (be careful with those oil lamps!). The aqueduct can also help with irrigation – more on that in a moment.

Building the breadbasket – production chains and granaries

Knowing you all, you’ll want some more details on which goods you’ll be able to produce and how the production chains look like. Let’s look at three examples:

Talismans (Potters)

From copper and sand you produce a vibrant blue dye with which the talismans created from local clay can be dyed.

Scribing Sets (Scribes)

No scribe without their scribing set made from papyrus (requires reeds) and pigments produced from minerals, which can also be found in Aegyptus.

Sistrums (Chanters)

Here we need both local copper and tin to produce bronze, but also beads (found in the Floodplains) to ultimately produce these percussion instruments.

One design goal for Aegyptus was to have this province offer alternative ways to produce goods and increase your options, especially if you’re playing with all three provinces: produce bread in Latium, Albion or Aegyptus? Where is the best place to brew beer? Should you import soap to Aegyptus or is it easier to just produce it locally?

When combined with the Flooding mechanic and the possibility to store large quantities of agricultural produce via granaries, this allows for new strategies and we’re looking forward to hearing your feedback.

An Aeygptus-specific feature for your agricultural dreams is the Granary building we just mentioned. It serves two purposes:

• Within its range, it increases productivity (+15%) and gives a population bonus (+1) for all farms.
• It provides additional 100t storage space each, specifically for agricultural product, either for export or to get you through the flooding season.

Both aspects can be further improved by upgrading the Granary, which requires you to do some additional research first.

There is a little downside connected to it all as well, however: the overflow mechanic and – potentially – rats!

Storing more than the regular storage limit allows slowly leads to your granaries overflowing which risks attracting rats. The higher the overflow and the lower the level of your granaries, the higher the risk. Active rat infestations reduce the health on your island and can trigger further Governor Decisions.

Upgrading your granaries and employing dedicated specialists (like Catfriend Cattulus) can help mitigating this risk. Can you spot the cats?

Flooding & Irrigation

Let’s go back to a topic we have alluded to a few times already: Floodings!

The mighty river has a mind of its own and in certain intervals will carry more water, flooding the aptly named Floodplains zone of each island. Each “season”, the flooding season and the following harvest season, have each an impact on your economy:

• Flooding Season: it’s much harder to get anything done when everything’s flooded! Accordingly, productivity of all buildings in the Floodplains zone is reduced by 75%. Additionally, health is reduced by -2 and firesafety increased by +2 across the entire province on all buildings.
• Harvest Season: increases the production of all production buildings in the Floodplains zone by 1t per cycle.

There are also some more… controlled methods of irrigation, however.

The Aegyptians long have mastered irrigation techniques to get the most out of the regions lifeline which is the river. Build Basins at the coast and then construct canals further inland. In a radius of 8 fields on each side of the canal the land is watered and turned into Farmland, ready for your agricultural plans. This way you can transform parts of your Arid Zone, at the cost of building space for your city, of course. It may be worth building dedicated Farmland islands.

Connecting a Water Channel Sump to any part of the canal and providing a road connection provides +1 Health and +3 Fire Safety within its range.

Romanizing your population and reaching Tier 3 (Gymnasiarchs) unlocks another potential irrigation method: aqueducts. A giant Noria sweeps up water from the river and transports it inland via aqueducts to wherever you need it. Cisterns then not only act as water sources for your bath houses, but also water a circular area around them, creating additional Farmland.

Research

It wouldn’t be a new province without a dedicated research tree. There’s a variety of wisdoms you can discover to make your life as a governor in Aegyptus easier and unlock new potential strategies.

• Unlock the option to grow a wider variety of goods in the Floodplains and profit from the production boost
• Further improve the irrigation systems and make production buildings use less water while building longer canals
• Unlock the producton of e.g. soap in Aegyptus
• And several more improvements

Also discoverable are new, local deities. Worshipping them can bring great advantages for your economy, agriculture and research. We’ll leave the topic for Religion for next week’s blog, however, and instead talk about new units you can recruit in Aegyptus.

New units

Aegyptus can also supply your army with new unit types, expanding your roster and potentially giving you an edge over your rivals and any raiders. Dawn of the Delta adds one of each to the game – but more on that in the next blog.

The two new military land units first have to be researched via the Discovery Tree:

• Dromedarii: this cavalry unit is especially strong against other units on horseback and is slightly cheaper, but can’t keep up with much nimbler horses in a chase.
• Kumatic Archers: this elite formation deals more damage, is more accurate and shoots further than your regular ranged units. This quality comes with a price tag, however, namely higher recruitment and maintenance costs.

One new technology furthermore allows you to recruit legionaries outside of Latium – is this the way to make Aegyptus yours?

The new ships we did mention before, but let’s have another look: two new (non-modifiable) ship types can be built in Aegyptus via a dedicated shipyard. The smaller of the two vessels, the Skiff (Epholkion), is buildable right away. It’s unarmed with three cargo slots.

Via research you can then unlock the bigger Galley (Aba) with five cargo slots. It has a military variant with several archers on board but… if you’re expecting larger fleet action, your Roman ships with stronger hulls and more potent weapons are likely the better choice.

Why pick the Aegyptian ships at all then? The heavy Roman ships are great for the open sea, but struggle on the shallower waters of the river delta. The light Aegyptian ships, on the other hand, are perfectly suited for this environment and travel quite a bit faster.

Of course we’ll let you try that for yourself, but we recommend largely relying on local ships for transports on the river and then transferring goods onto the heavier Roman ships for transports between regions. A sort of “cargo hub” near the ocean could come in handy here.

Outro

Population, production, research, … we covered all this today but what about the spiritual needs of your people?

Accordingly, in our next blog we’re walking you through the three new deities “Dawn of the Delta” is adding to the game and also give you a small glimpse at the story of this expansion – the rest we’ll let you discover yourselves. We also still have to cover the new characters you’ll meet as part of this expansion AND we haven’t yet talked about the elephant in the room, pardon, in Aegyptus: the pyramids!

Stay tuned, our next DevBlog will release on October 29^th.

Do you have any questions on the topics we talked about today? Leave them in the comments or reach out to us via Discord or Reddit!