Do you recall when you first found out about pyramids? I think every children encyclopedia has an article about it. That's how I found out about them, among the others 7 world wonders. It's a pity that now we only have one world wonder preserved, but at the same time, it's unbelievable! They are around 4500 years old!

Pyramides is a very important element for Egyptians and for Egyptian history. The format of our game would not let us do this topic a justice, so at first, we didn't plan to delve into it. But when in the Predynastic Kingdom it was possible to just briefly mention the pyramids, without much information, it's a whole another story for the Old Kingdom period. At this time, pyramids were tightly woven in the net of governmental systems; almost every side of Egyptian life was somehow connected to them.

Burial ritual was simple at first. During the predynastic period, it was just a wooden sarcophagus. It was placed in a burial chamber in the earth, chamber's walls were worked up with brick. After a while, people started to make an earthen hill on top of the chamber. Earthen hill gradually became a mastaba - flat-roofed rectangular structure, like a truncated pyramid. Eventually, famous Egyptian architect Imhotep, who was a counselor to the pharaoh Djoser, invented something new. Originally he was just going to build a standard mastaba for the king but ended up building six more mastabas on top of the biggest one. The result was the first pyramid, which became a prototype for all of the following pyramids.

Real Djoser Pyramid, our concept-art, the pyramid in the construction menu, the pyramid on the city map

The higher and complex pyramids got, the more sources they demanded construction, maintenance, and sacrifices. Lion's share of all sources was used for construction. Workshops created an endless amount of art objects only to bury them underground. Egypt sent expeditions to nearby countries when it needed more sources. Pharaohs built at least one pyramid for himself, and some of them built several. For example, Pharaoh Sneferu built at least 12 of them! However, not all of them preserved until now. After Sneferu's pyramids, the most famous Hufu pyramid was built. Then the decentralization slowly began, not allowing pharaohs to collect enough power and sources to build something like majestic Hufu's pyramids, but they still built smaller ones.

In short, the history of pyramids reflects the history of rising and fall of the first Egyptian Kingdom. And since our game is all about this history, the menu of pyramids construction almost made itself.

Our menu covers the most basic knowledge necessary for better understanding of Old Kingdom's history. It has four main features: height, shape, finishing and the type and size of a burial chamber. The player will be able to select any combination; the price of construction will change accordingly. At the beginning though not every option will be available. To open them all, the player will have to learn all necessary technologies first.
In some cases, the option of selecting the architect will be available. They will influence the construction basing on their unique professional qualities.

Sometimes during the construction, good or bad events may happen, such as a technological breakthrough, which will boost the bonuses for construction. On the other hand, something bad may happen, such as walls destruction, which will entail higher construction fees.

Construction or pyramids are not an obligatory rule for winning the game. You can try and completely avoid this process, but in this case, it will be really difficult to win the game. As you remember, we mentioned before that pyramids were built to please the gods and ancestors. Without pyramids, many unhappy events will start to happen. But you still can try :)

For Egyptians, pyramids were something like a guarantee of stability and they feared to lose ancestors' protection. Often pyramids were left unfinished - when there were not enough sources or when the pharaoh who started to build them died. Egyptians considered it as a bad omen; it meant the dead pharaoh lost the protection of gods.

Construction of pyramids lasts until the end of the game and generally follows historical events. But the player may also learn all technologies and build all of the pyramids ahead of historical time. In case if technologies will not be learned in time, the player will only be able to build the simplest forms of pyramids.

Despite our original unwillingness to delve into the pyramids construction, we came up with this unexpectedly interesting construction menu. We hope it will help a player to understand how Egyptian society worked. We like this new element of the game and can't wait to hear your thoughts about it.

Do you recall when you first found out about pyramids? I think every children encyclopedia has an article about it. That's how I found out about them, among the others 7 world wonders. It's a pity that now we only have one world wonder preserved, but at the same time, it's unbelievable! They are around 4500 years old!

Pyramides is a very important element for Egyptians and for Egyptian history. The format of our game would not let us do this topic a justice, so at first, we didn't plan to delve into it. But when in the Predynastic Kingdom it was possible to just briefly mention the pyramids, without much information, it's a whole another story for the Old Kingdom period. At this time, pyramids were tightly woven in the net of governmental systems; almost every side of Egyptian life was somehow connected to them.

Burial ritual was simple at first. During the predynastic period, it was just a wooden sarcophagus. It was placed in a burial chamber in the earth, chamber's walls were worked up with brick. After a while, people started to make an earthen hill on top of the chamber. Earthen hill gradually became a mastaba - flat-roofed rectangular structure, like a truncated pyramid. Eventually, famous Egyptian architect Imhotep, who was a counselor to the pharaoh Djoser, invented something new. Originally he was just going to build a standard mastaba for the king but ended up building six more mastabas on top of the biggest one. The result was the first pyramid, which became a prototype for all of the following pyramids.

Real Djoser Pyramid, our concept-art, the pyramid in the construction menu, the pyramid on the city map

The higher and complex pyramids got, the more sources they demanded construction, maintenance, and sacrifices. Lion's share of all sources was used for construction. Workshops created an endless amount of art objects only to bury them underground. Egypt sent expeditions to nearby countries when it needed more sources. Pharaohs built at least one pyramid for himself, and some of them built several. For example, Pharaoh Sneferu built at least 12 of them! However, not all of them preserved until now. After Sneferu's pyramids, the most famous Hufu pyramid was built. Then the decentralization slowly began, not allowing pharaohs to collect enough power and sources to build something like majestic Hufu's pyramids, but they still built smaller ones.

In short, the history of pyramids reflects the history of rising and fall of the first Egyptian Kingdom. And since our game is all about this history, the menu of pyramids construction almost made itself.

Our menu covers the most basic knowledge necessary for better understanding of Old Kingdom's history. It has four main features: height, shape, finishing and the type and size of a burial chamber. The player will be able to select any combination; the price of construction will change accordingly. At the beginning though not every option will be available. To open them all, the player will have to learn all necessary technologies first.
In some cases, the option of selecting the architect will be available. They will influence the construction basing on their unique professional qualities.

Sometimes during the construction, good or bad events may happen, such as a technological breakthrough, which will boost the bonuses for construction. On the other hand, something bad may happen, such as walls destruction, which will entail higher construction fees.

Construction or pyramids are not an obligatory rule for winning the game. You can try and completely avoid this process, but in this case, it will be really difficult to win the game. As you remember, we mentioned before that pyramids were built to please the gods and ancestors. Without pyramids, many unhappy events will start to happen. But you still can try :)

For Egyptians, pyramids were something like a guarantee of stability and they feared to lose ancestors' protection. Often pyramids were left unfinished - when there were not enough sources or when the pharaoh who started to build them died. Egyptians considered it as a bad omen; it meant the dead pharaoh lost the protection of gods.

Construction of pyramids lasts until the end of the game and generally follows historical events. But the player may also learn all technologies and build all of the pyramids ahead of historical time. In case if technologies will not be learned in time, the player will only be able to build the simplest forms of pyramids.

Despite our original unwillingness to delve into the pyramids construction, we came up with this unexpectedly interesting construction menu. We hope it will help a player to understand how Egyptian society worked. We like this new element of the game and can't wait to hear your thoughts about it.

Construction

After the menu of cults and the discoveries menu, it would be obvious to talk about the menu of construction... but we don't have it. Instead, we decided to make a new construction system, which will comply with the following criteria:

• To be more diverse in comparison to Predynastic Egypt;
  
• To be historically correct.

As much as we wish to make our games more diverse, we still can't do it at the cost of its historical accuracy. We're trying to keep this balance in every system of the game. New construction system is based on the geography of Memphis area, on several types of buildings and its materials. s we mentioned before in the second issue, Memphis is divided into 51 area. Each area has one of six types of landscape: semi-desert, river, wadi, shore, floodplains, and hills. The type of constructed facility will depend on the type of landscape. It's a simple connection! Because you wouldn't build a house on a floodplain, would you? Or to grow grains in the desert. It's all the same in our system - you can build houses in every area with a suitable landscape. On the screenshot below, you can see buildings are located on a hill, and fields are below on a floodplain.



The process of constructions goes from simple to complex. Egyptians in the game came to a new land, and as they explore it, they constantly meet different obstacles, which can disrupt construction. For example, wild animals, there will be quite a lot of them. The player will have to decide how to deal with them - tame them, pray to them or exterminate them. Each action will have different consequences and bonuses. If there are no wild animals in the area, there can be bushes or swamps, and those need to be exterminated or drained before the construction. On the screenshot below, you can see several icons. Two icons below represent bonuses of the area. The upper row of icons represent tasks available for the player. Tree means fertile lands, cabin - abandoned village, white stones - flints, a useful mineral. At last, a hammer represents improvements which player can do in this area. Here nothing endanger the construction, so we can just go ahead and build whatever we want. Be there lions of crocodiles, we would have to deal with them first; otherwise, our construction workers could be killed.





On the floodplains, you can build a vegetable garden or a pasture. Vegetable gardens can be upgraded to the grain field or a flax field. On the hills, you can build houses. Houses can be upgraded to workshops or barracks. The last level of the upgrade is temples and palaces. Graveyards can be built on the hills or in semi-deserts. In the rest of areas, players can hunt, gather berries or fruits or do a stockbreeding.

Upgrades are available as soon as the player will have all necessary knowledge and sources. By "knowledge», we mean the discovery of certain technologies. While it's not enough, the icon of the upgrade is visible but inactive. By clicking on it the player can find out what else he needs to upgrade the area. The price of the upgrade will rise with each upgrade, besides player will have to keep in mind that there will be maintenance fee for each building. However, not everything is so expensive; bonuses will also rise and sum up with each new upgrade.

Talking about the appearance of the buildings, we have to go back in a virtual history classroom and let you know that there is not much information left about the appearance of Memphis buildings. Unfortunately, it was built on a very unstable land and eventually all the buildings were destroyed or flooded. Memphis in our game is some kind of interpolation. For a reference, we used Hierakonpolis buildings, some buildings from the later historical period and the drawings of Memphis buildings that were found inside of tombs and pyramids. Basing on these things, we made a suggestion about Memphis buildings look, and this is what you will see in the game.



Oh, but what about pyramids, right? We didn't mention anything about pyramids construction! Right. Of course, pyramids are very important. So much that we will make a separate issue about them because we prepared a great surprise for our player regarding pyramids and we really hope you'll like it.
Besides pyramids, we also didn't mention anything about construction on the bigger map, the map of Egypt. Here we also added several new features, enough to make another issue. So please, stay with us and discover more about the game!

Construction

After the menu of cults and the discoveries menu, it would be obvious to talk about the menu of construction... but we don't have it. Instead, we decided to make a new construction system, which will comply with the following criteria:

• To be more diverse in comparison to Predynastic Egypt;
  
• To be historically correct.

As much as we wish to make our games more diverse, we still can't do it at the cost of its historical accuracy. We're trying to keep this balance in every system of the game. New construction system is based on the geography of Memphis area, on several types of buildings and its materials. s we mentioned before in the second issue, Memphis is divided into 51 area. Each area has one of six types of landscape: semi-desert, river, wadi, shore, floodplains, and hills. The type of constructed facility will depend on the type of landscape. It's a simple connection! Because you wouldn't build a house on a floodplain, would you? Or to grow grains in the desert. It's all the same in our system - you can build houses in every area with a suitable landscape. On the screenshot below, you can see buildings are located on a hill, and fields are below on a floodplain.



The process of constructions goes from simple to complex. Egyptians in the game came to a new land, and as they explore it, they constantly meet different obstacles, which can disrupt construction. For example, wild animals, there will be quite a lot of them. The player will have to decide how to deal with them - tame them, pray to them or exterminate them. Each action will have different consequences and bonuses. If there are no wild animals in the area, there can be bushes or swamps, and those need to be exterminated or drained before the construction. On the screenshot below, you can see several icons. Two icons below represent bonuses of the area. The upper row of icons represent tasks available for the player. Tree means fertile lands, cabin - abandoned village, white stones - flints, a useful mineral. At last, a hammer represents improvements which player can do in this area. Here nothing endanger the construction, so we can just go ahead and build whatever we want. Be there lions of crocodiles, we would have to deal with them first; otherwise, our construction workers could be killed.





On the floodplains, you can build a vegetable garden or a pasture. Vegetable gardens can be upgraded to the grain field or a flax field. On the hills, you can build houses. Houses can be upgraded to workshops or barracks. The last level of the upgrade is temples and palaces. Graveyards can be built on the hills or in semi-deserts. In the rest of areas, players can hunt, gather berries or fruits or do a stockbreeding.

Upgrades are available as soon as the player will have all necessary knowledge and sources. By "knowledge», we mean the discovery of certain technologies. While it's not enough, the icon of the upgrade is visible but inactive. By clicking on it the player can find out what else he needs to upgrade the area. The price of the upgrade will rise with each upgrade, besides player will have to keep in mind that there will be maintenance fee for each building. However, not everything is so expensive; bonuses will also rise and sum up with each new upgrade.

Talking about the appearance of the buildings, we have to go back in a virtual history classroom and let you know that there is not much information left about the appearance of Memphis buildings. Unfortunately, it was built on a very unstable land and eventually all the buildings were destroyed or flooded. Memphis in our game is some kind of interpolation. For a reference, we used Hierakonpolis buildings, some buildings from the later historical period and the drawings of Memphis buildings that were found inside of tombs and pyramids. Basing on these things, we made a suggestion about Memphis buildings look, and this is what you will see in the game.



Oh, but what about pyramids, right? We didn't mention anything about pyramids construction! Right. Of course, pyramids are very important. So much that we will make a separate issue about them because we prepared a great surprise for our player regarding pyramids and we really hope you'll like it.
Besides pyramids, we also didn't mention anything about construction on the bigger map, the map of Egypt. Here we also added several new features, enough to make another issue. So please, stay with us and discover more about the game!

Рады приветстовать всех в новом сообществе по игре Египет: Древнее Царство!


Отныне здесь мы будем постить все новости, дневники разработчиков и многое другое. Приглашаем всех вступать в сообщество и добавлять игру в вишлисты!

Предыдущие выпуски дневников уже в сообществе, и вскоре выйдут новые!

We're happy to greet you in the new community for the Egypt Old Kingdom!


From now on here we will post our news, Dev Diaries and other interesting stuff, so we encourage everybody to follow us and add the game to your wishlist!

As you can see, we have already uploaded the old issues on Steam. It's available in Russian, English, and Chinese. We would really appreciate and encourage the translation to other languages as well. Please let us know if you're up to translating the Diary to your language, and we'll upload the text to Crowdin. No pressure though :) Only free will. Thank you and enjoy your time in our community!

Discoveries menu

Now, let's continue to talk about game menus. Same as in Predynastic Egypt it's called "Discoveries", but this time it will include more than just technological breakthroughs.



Before and during the construction of pyramids Egypt developed very actively, and people made a lot of new discoveries. But starting from the III dynasty the pace of development slowed down so much that during next 400 years or so there were almost no changes at all. For our game, it meant we need to find a filling for about hundreds of turns. On the other hand, there were a lot of important things happening in different spheres of Egypt. For example, Pharaoh, how always considered to be a god and couldn't be seen by mere mortals, becomes a public figure. For Egyptians, it was an extraordinary event! Or another example, in the sphere of religion a new concept of souls multiplicity was born. These and others processes were as important as technological discoveries, so we decided to unify them in one menu. There are some more examples of technologies and discoveries from the new menu:
Traditional technologies:
Marine expeditions


Glass treatment technology


New discoveries:
Pharaoh publicity


Concept of souls multiplicity


The most difficult part of the menu development was to sort out all event from game designers' database. They had to be divided into three groups: challenges, game events and finally discoveries. Each group had to contain comparable events, so that, for example, a creation of writing wouldn't be compared to some less significant event. As a result, we selected 69 discoveries, and almost all of them already complete, except the last three. This number of discoveries allowed us to perfectly spread them from the beginning to the end of the game. After the selection was over, next step is to create a description of the discovery and then to draw an art. And when it's done, it's time to define the bonuses for each discovery.

Concerning the appearance of the menu, we decided to use the same concept as it was in Predynastic Egypt because everybody seems to like it and we got many positive reviews about it. All of the discoveries are presented as a long strip divided into three rows. In Predynastic Egypt, we used papyrus as the background, as if all of the events from the menu were just a long list of Ancient Egyptians deeds. This time we decided to change the background. Memphis was a big settlement, so now all characters from the pictures are living in houses and working in workshops.




Each little picture should clearly represent the essence of discovery, and this task wasn't simple. We even had to refuse a few ideas, simply because we couldn't get the image right. In other cases, the images our artist created didn't fit the historical truth and he had to change it. This happened with the "taming of cats" discovery. As the most of us do, the artist imagined ancient Egyptian cats to be no different from the modern cats so he drew the First Version of the picture. After consulting the scientists we found out that ancient cats were still half-wild animals who only lived near humans because they found it convenient for themselves. So the Second Version of the picture present cats in the right way.

Taming of cats:
Ver.1

Ver.2 (historical)


On the opposite, people on our pictures are drawn in the historically accurate way, when even the size of a pictured person matters - the bigger this person pictured, the higher position in the society it has. So from our pictures, it'll be easy to understand, who is who.
The new menu has one more new feature. The first three discoveries are already made for the player by default. These discoveries are "Tribe", "Permanent Settlements" and "Agriculture". We decided upon it because we wanted to let the player better understand the situation at the beginning of the game.
In general, don't you think that discovery menu resembles a comic a bit? Our artist worked hard to picture various situations and characters with vivid mimic. How about we play a game? I'll give you a few images, and you try to guess which discovery they represent? They will not be the most obvious, but also not the most difficult. Let's try! Write your suggestions in the comments! Those who already know the answer, please let others guess! ;)

Discoveries menu

Now, let's continue to talk about game menus. Same as in Predynastic Egypt it's called "Discoveries", but this time it will include more than just technological breakthroughs.



Before and during the construction of pyramids Egypt developed very actively, and people made a lot of new discoveries. But starting from the III dynasty the pace of development slowed down so much that during next 400 years or so there were almost no changes at all. For our game, it meant we need to find a filling for about hundreds of turns. On the other hand, there were a lot of important things happening in different spheres of Egypt. For example, Pharaoh, how always considered to be a god and couldn't be seen by mere mortals, becomes a public figure. For Egyptians, it was an extraordinary event! Or another example, in the sphere of religion a new concept of souls multiplicity was born. These and others processes were as important as technological discoveries, so we decided to unify them in one menu. There are some more examples of technologies and discoveries from the new menu:
Traditional technologies:
Marine expeditions


Glass treatment technology


New discoveries:
Pharaoh publicity


Concept of souls multiplicity


The most difficult part of the menu development was to sort out all event from game designers' database. They had to be divided into three groups: challenges, game events and finally discoveries. Each group had to contain comparable events, so that, for example, a creation of writing wouldn't be compared to some less significant event. As a result, we selected 69 discoveries, and almost all of them already complete, except the last three. This number of discoveries allowed us to perfectly spread them from the beginning to the end of the game. After the selection was over, next step is to create a description of the discovery and then to draw an art. And when it's done, it's time to define the bonuses for each discovery.

Concerning the appearance of the menu, we decided to use the same concept as it was in Predynastic Egypt because everybody seems to like it and we got many positive reviews about it. All of the discoveries are presented as a long strip divided into three rows. In Predynastic Egypt, we used papyrus as the background, as if all of the events from the menu were just a long list of Ancient Egyptians deeds. This time we decided to change the background. Memphis was a big settlement, so now all characters from the pictures are living in houses and working in workshops.




Each little picture should clearly represent the essence of discovery, and this task wasn't simple. We even had to refuse a few ideas, simply because we couldn't get the image right. In other cases, the images our artist created didn't fit the historical truth and he had to change it. This happened with the "taming of cats" discovery. As the most of us do, the artist imagined ancient Egyptian cats to be no different from the modern cats so he drew the First Version of the picture. After consulting the scientists we found out that ancient cats were still half-wild animals who only lived near humans because they found it convenient for themselves. So the Second Version of the picture present cats in the right way.

Taming of cats:
Ver.1

Ver.2 (historical)


On the opposite, people on our pictures are drawn in the historically accurate way, when even the size of a pictured person matters - the bigger this person pictured, the higher position in the society it has. So from our pictures, it'll be easy to understand, who is who.
The new menu has one more new feature. The first three discoveries are already made for the player by default. These discoveries are "Tribe", "Permanent Settlements" and "Agriculture". We decided upon it because we wanted to let the player better understand the situation at the beginning of the game.
In general, don't you think that discovery menu resembles a comic a bit? Our artist worked hard to picture various situations and characters with vivid mimic. How about we play a game? I'll give you a few images, and you try to guess which discovery they represent? They will not be the most obvious, but also not the most difficult. Let's try! Write your suggestions in the comments! Those who already know the answer, please let others guess! ;)

Cults

In the previous issue, we were talking about the difficulty of turning historical events into a game. But back then we purposely avoided talking about religions, because there is enough information to create a separate issue. Here we go!
In the Egypt Old Kingdom, we will present a new cults menu with 12 Egyptian deities: Horus, Seth, Hapi, Sokar, Ptah, Bastet, Seshat, Neith, Hathor, Ra, Thoth, and Osiris (see the picture below). They are divided into two equal groups: worshipping the first group of gods will supplies player with some quick bonuses for a short period, and worshipping the second groups will instead provide a steady growth of all stats. From the start of the game, only 3 gods will be available for worshipping: Horus, Seth, and Hapi. The rest of them will gradually appear later, after discovering the new technologies or after certain historical events.

It took only a few minutes to describe, but the actual R&D (so to speak) process tool quite a lot of time and efforts. The problem was to choose those gods, who were mostly worshipped in Memphis during the Old Kingdom period and then determine their functions in the game so that we could adjust the balance.
Existing historical sources gives us some idea about Egyptian gods, but at the same time, there are lots of spaces which don't let us to exactly determine the relationships between some gods, their functions, their position. Besides their functions often overlapped. Most gods had several forms and names, acted illogically, could be good and bad at the same time... to put it short, were quite unpredictable and complex. Some gods were more popular in certain areas, some less... One example will explain it better than tons of explanations. We had to choose between Bastet and Sekhmet, who were often identified as each other. But it's not until the New Kingdom that their images will finally gain more difference: Bastet will become a kind cat-goddess of home and hearth, and Sekhmet will stay a fierce lioness, exterminator of king's enemies. During the Old Kingdom, period cats were not associated with home yet, they were half-wild, and Bastet was also pictured with the lioness' head and was considered to be the "light" side of Sekhmet. In order to avoid unnecessary complexity, we decided to feature Bastet in the cults menu and to give the player a chance to "tame" wayward goddess from time to time. Worshipping this goddess will lower a number of disasters cast by the evil Seth.
Sekhmet:

Bastet as a lioness:

There are some other gods whos complexity made it difficult for us to define their place and functions. Sokar, for example. He's a patron god of Memphis' necropolis, and also had other functions, he was a very important deity for Memphis. But due to his diversity, it was difficult to fully reflect his nature in the game, so we had to limit his abilities in order to adjust the balance of cults menu. Worshipping Sokar will give the player +0.2 points of "Loved by gods" stat per each turn.
Here we will also speak a word or two about the rest of the gods from the menu so that their names would not sound completely meaningless :)


Worshipping cults not only will help the player to engage in the world of the Ancient Egypt and to realize the meaning of the religion in their lives, but also will make the game more diverse. Depending on the strategy, the gamer can choose to worship the gods with quick bonuses, in order to swiftly solve problems. On the other hands, if the player prefers a stable and sure growth, he might prefer to worship the gods who give long-term bonuses. In this case, he will have a steady growth of all stats regardless the circumstances.
Besides the direct worshipping of gods, there will also be a possibility to choose one patron god of Memphis. This function is available at the beginning of the game in the prologue menu. The player can choose among three gods: Horus, Seth, and Ptah (this would be the historical choice). This choice will greatly influence the style of a game - each god has his own tasks and bonuses.

Horus:

Ptah:

Seth:


Choosing Ptah, the player will be able to speed up the construction of buildings. Horus will enable the player to swiftly mobilize the army to keep the country safe. Seth will show the player all treasures hidden in the dunes. Each god, being the patron of Memphis, also has his own unique features and options. Imagine, there is a caravan of merchants came to your city. They are hoping for good deals, but poor merchants have no idea that god Seth is the patron of your city, so over next few days they find their merchandise is stolen and you have no shame for doing so Bwahaha! >:] So if you choose Seth as the patron, you'll get the chance to rob merchants or even curse people, but we'll hold more cards close for now! (wink) But honestly, I can't wait to play for Seth! Maybe it has something to do with me watching Thor: Ragnarok a couple days ago and falling hopelessly in love with Loki yet another time XD But I guess I can summon some patience and wait till the first playable version which should be out soon for a beta-test!

Cults

In the previous issue, we were talking about the difficulty of turning historical events into a game. But back then we purposely avoided talking about religions, because there is enough information to create a separate issue. Here we go!
In the Egypt Old Kingdom, we will present a new cults menu with 12 Egyptian deities: Horus, Seth, Hapi, Sokar, Ptah, Bastet, Seshat, Neith, Hathor, Ra, Thoth, and Osiris (see the picture below). They are divided into two equal groups: worshipping the first group of gods will supplies player with some quick bonuses for a short period, and worshipping the second groups will instead provide a steady growth of all stats. From the start of the game, only 3 gods will be available for worshipping: Horus, Seth, and Hapi. The rest of them will gradually appear later, after discovering the new technologies or after certain historical events.

It took only a few minutes to describe, but the actual R&D (so to speak) process tool quite a lot of time and efforts. The problem was to choose those gods, who were mostly worshipped in Memphis during the Old Kingdom period and then determine their functions in the game so that we could adjust the balance.
Existing historical sources gives us some idea about Egyptian gods, but at the same time, there are lots of spaces which don't let us to exactly determine the relationships between some gods, their functions, their position. Besides their functions often overlapped. Most gods had several forms and names, acted illogically, could be good and bad at the same time... to put it short, were quite unpredictable and complex. Some gods were more popular in certain areas, some less... One example will explain it better than tons of explanations. We had to choose between Bastet and Sekhmet, who were often identified as each other. But it's not until the New Kingdom that their images will finally gain more difference: Bastet will become a kind cat-goddess of home and hearth, and Sekhmet will stay a fierce lioness, exterminator of king's enemies. During the Old Kingdom, period cats were not associated with home yet, they were half-wild, and Bastet was also pictured with the lioness' head and was considered to be the "light" side of Sekhmet. In order to avoid unnecessary complexity, we decided to feature Bastet in the cults menu and to give the player a chance to "tame" wayward goddess from time to time. Worshipping this goddess will lower a number of disasters cast by the evil Seth.
Sekhmet:

Bastet as a lioness:

There are some other gods whos complexity made it difficult for us to define their place and functions. Sokar, for example. He's a patron god of Memphis' necropolis, and also had other functions, he was a very important deity for Memphis. But due to his diversity, it was difficult to fully reflect his nature in the game, so we had to limit his abilities in order to adjust the balance of cults menu. Worshipping Sokar will give the player +0.2 points of "Loved by gods" stat per each turn.
Here we will also speak a word or two about the rest of the gods from the menu so that their names would not sound completely meaningless :)


Worshipping cults not only will help the player to engage in the world of the Ancient Egypt and to realize the meaning of the religion in their lives, but also will make the game more diverse. Depending on the strategy, the gamer can choose to worship the gods with quick bonuses, in order to swiftly solve problems. On the other hands, if the player prefers a stable and sure growth, he might prefer to worship the gods who give long-term bonuses. In this case, he will have a steady growth of all stats regardless the circumstances.
Besides the direct worshipping of gods, there will also be a possibility to choose one patron god of Memphis. This function is available at the beginning of the game in the prologue menu. The player can choose among three gods: Horus, Seth, and Ptah (this would be the historical choice). This choice will greatly influence the style of a game - each god has his own tasks and bonuses.

Horus:

Ptah:

Seth:


Choosing Ptah, the player will be able to speed up the construction of buildings. Horus will enable the player to swiftly mobilize the army to keep the country safe. Seth will show the player all treasures hidden in the dunes. Each god, being the patron of Memphis, also has his own unique features and options. Imagine, there is a caravan of merchants came to your city. They are hoping for good deals, but poor merchants have no idea that god Seth is the patron of your city, so over next few days they find their merchandise is stolen and you have no shame for doing so Bwahaha! >:] So if you choose Seth as the patron, you'll get the chance to rob merchants or even curse people, but we'll hold more cards close for now! (wink) But honestly, I can't wait to play for Seth! Maybe it has something to do with me watching Thor: Ragnarok a couple days ago and falling hopelessly in love with Loki yet another time XD But I guess I can summon some patience and wait till the first playable version which should be out soon for a beta-test!