1077 BC: The End of the Ramessides v1.0
Welcome to the first released new start date campaign mod for ‘Total War: Pharaoh – Dynasties’! Tired of the same ‘ol 1205BC campaign? Look no further (so far) than this baby here I worked off-and-on for like ten months now.
[WHAT’S THE MOD ABOUT?]
1077 is the year the 20th Dynasty of Egypt, the dynasty started during the Bronze Age collapse by Ramesses III’s father Setnakhte which lead Egypt to survive the collapse, would finally be overthrown. After an elderly pharaoh Ramesses III in 1155 BC was assassinated in what we call "The Harem Conspiracy", Egypt would be lead by consecutive pharaohs each named Ramesses, but all too weak to keep Egypt from decaying. By 1077, a series of events surrounding Waset would lead the current pharaoh Ramesses XI to lose all but Lower Egypt. The court’s First Commander decides to use his position and mass reserves of food from the Delta to raise several armies and either wait for the pharaoh to die or strike immediately and create a new dynasty to keep Egypt strong.
At this time many other events are taking place, such as the native Babylonians ruling themselves under the 2nd Dynasty of Isin after throwing off Elamite occupation. But now the Elamites want independence from Babylon, and war is imminent. Assyria has abandoned all gains made by Ninurta during the collapse, owning only its core territories in order to ensure its survival surrounded by enemies ready to burn Ashur to the ground. Carchemish leads a small number of "Neo-Hittie" states and wants to revive the dead title of Great King. Another dead title, that of Wanax, last held by Agamemnon of Mycenae is coveted by the Spartans. They find themselves in the strongest position during Greece’s dark age, and wish in vain to revive the dead title to increase the legitimacy of their dominion over the Peloponnese. Lastly, the fractured Phrygian tribes which migrated to Anatolia during the collapse have established kingdoms and vassals, potentially being as powerful as Egypt or Babylon.
A century after the collapse and the world is still in chaos. A faction could rise from the smoldering ashes if lead by a capable ruler, or dynasty.
Map overview of the mod here[imgur.com]
The mod incorporates my Cimmerian Cav mod and much of my Historical Rename mod.
[DISCLAIMER]
While this is a genuine new start date campaign, it is not a full overhaul of the campaign map like you’d be used to. It overhauls a lot, but since it’s my very first time making a mod of such scale, it’s more a reskin of vanilla. There are no custom buildings, custom units, and all factions own the regions they own in vanilla; I was literally learning/ being taught this stuff as I went. But half the weapons are textured for iron and horde factions and several starting armies have been moved (and Babylon’s faction units now have facial hair).
I want to make clear because this was basically a training run for me, I chose a start date that isn’t that well known. I may also make a higher-quality start date mod in the future (and I hope this mod inspires others to try making start dates for this game), so here are five maps of mod ideas set during much more popular/ well known time periods I’ve made previously:
– 810 BC Rise of Neo-Assyria and Kushite Egypt [imgur.com]
– 950 BC Rise of Lybian Egypt and the Iron Age Levant [imgur.com]
– 1600 BC Rise of the Mitanni and fall of the Hyksos and Amorites [imgur.com]
– 1793 BC Hammurabi + the first foreign Pharaohs [imgur.com]
– 2340 BC Akkad: The first empire + Egypt’s first intermediate period [imgur.com]
Just some ideas I had in the bank that might help out as blueprints for myself or anyone who wishes to try something like these. This game needs more love and more start dates. 🙂
[KNOWN ISSUES]
1) 1/4 to 1/3 of iron weapons have some texture issues. 2) For some reason the Assembly Kit is overwritting my RPFM text changing the currency "Bronze" to "Iron". 3) Main menu I intentionally made Sherden by default and with no 3D models of 1205 characters like Seti, Irsu, Adad, etc., but for some reason just as I’m about the release the mod, the menu stopped changing from Sherden unless it’s another faction that’s a major faction from vanilla (aka an original faction from the Legacy version of the game). 4) Some loading screens missing their loading image and faction leader quote. 5) And some other stuff I can’t remember at the moment but have written down. Planning to fix in future updates.
FYI this mod is built around 6TPY but you can obviously do any TPY, I just made it with 6 in mind. The seasons are labeled differently and if you want to manually save every turn, I recommend putting a hyphen and then the season like so. [imgur.com]
[SPECIAL THANKS TO] those who taught me how to do stuff or is letting me borrow assets from their mods:
Ulter – Weapon textures
Seti – banners from historical local gods as factions’ crest
Ewajos – script adding gods mechanic to vanilla non-playable factions from his Faction Unlocker
Cybermat47 – main menu edits
Kelly – I may have put in 95% of the work for this mod, but he taught me 95% of what to do in the first place from his experience working on the first (currently shelved) start date mod: ‘1275 Kadesh’
