Total War: Pharaoh Ramesses

Total War: Pharaoh Ramesses
Name:	Ramesses
From Game:	Total War: Pharaoh
Culture:	Egyptian
Playable:	Yes

Ramesses one of the Egyptian playable factions and faction leaders in Total War Pharaoh.

Overview

Ramesses

Ramesses is a decisive young commander who hopes to exceed the achievements of his namesake, Ramesses II (known as Ramesses the Great).

His roster includes skilled Medjay swordsmen, well-armoured javelin infantry and Habiru axeman with vanguard deployment (they can deploy outside the usual deployment zone).

Starting Position

At the campaign's start, Ramesses owns two of the four regions of the province of North Sinai, in the area of Egypt's nother-eastern border with Canaan. This province provides food and bronze, which are important for your army upkeep. There is also a small supply of wood, but the starting province lacks a stone quarry. The lack of a supply of stone could slow down the development of your regions.

As the North Sinai province is near Egypt's northern coast, you are likely to see incursions by migratory factions from the early campaign onwards, and you are also at war with a faction to your east. Holding back the invaders can provide useful experience for your units and additional resources.

Strategies for Ramesses

Initially, Ramesses is likely to want to expand east, to defeat your initial foes and to occupy the whole of the North Sinai province. After that, if you go further to the east, you gain access to Canaanite native units, such as Canaanite Sellswords (who have better armour than your Medjay swordsmen, and have less upkeep, although the Sellswords are less skilled in melee). Expanding east also provides Legitimacy when you defeat Canaanite armies (helping you to compete for the throne). However, because Canaan's regions have a different culture, your influence will be low initially, so the resources produced of your newly consequered regions will be reduced until you improve your influence. If you expland south or west, the regions are more likely to be Egyptian, giving you higher influence in those regions (with advantages such as better resource production), however you will be fighting other Egyptian factions which would have been more willing to trade with you.

The quick wits and decisiveness of Ramesses allow him to use two actions per turn in Egypt's royal court. Using the free Gossip action can enable him to quickly build up enough Regard with court officials to make requests. For example, Ramesses can ask the Viceroy of Kush for gold - and you can trade gold for stone and wood, to develop your regions more quickly. If you build up Regard with the First Commander, you can recruit elite Royal Egyptian units which provide a useful advantage, especially in early battles. When Ramesses and his generals level up, they can choose the Sand Walker title, which gives the commander's army immunity to desert attrition (and allows light infantry to ignore the effects of sweltering heat in battle) - this can be very useful when expanding southwards, or when pursuing marauding armies which destroyed waystations in your desert regions.

Like many factions, Ramesses will probably struggle to have enough food to sustain the armies that you need. Trading for food and winning battles will help, and you may need to alternate between expansion (when you have a large food deficit) and consolidation (when you disband units or put them in forts so that you can replenish your food stores, ready for the next period of expansion). When you have high-tier port cities, you will be able to build smugglers' markets - and they provide increasing amounts of food as bronze age societies enter a stage of Crisis and Collapse (as part of the bronze age collapse mechanic). If you would like to know more, you may be interested in the guide to managing resources.

Iskar, an experienced player, recommended this strategy for the early campaign as Ramasses:

"Beat the welcome-battle, then march right onto their town Sukkot and storm it. Your initial army should be well able to handle the garrison with a bit of tactical sugar sprinkled on top. With the town taken recruit two more units, preferrably Medjay. Then march onto their last town Azzati the next turn and take it without further siege. After that you should be in control of all of your starting province and have no current enemies. At this point you can start building up your economy and decide whom to attack next. Juicy targets are Bersheba (bit harder, but has gold mines), or Timna and then colonising Deshret Reitu before other people do it, then gathering your forces to starve out Hetch-Pa. When you are done taking Sinai it is usually around turn 31 and the sea peoples arrive, so it is best to send your troops to your coastal towns Azzati and Sukkot to defend them against the first wave. Pay attention to your neighbouring coastal towns as sometimes the sea peoples manage to raze Per-Amun or Ashkelon that you can then cheaply colonise without declaring war on anyone."

As civilization declines from Prosperity to Crisis to Collapse, the armies of invading marauders will get larger and there will be more of them. For example, in a Ramasses campaign on Normal difficulty, after the Collapse began, Ramasses was attacked by a marauding army from the north-east (overland, from Canaan), and - as soon as these invaders were defeated - faced an attack from six Tjeker Kinfolk armies approaching from the west (across the sea). The Tjeker Kinfolk had high-tier units, providing a very challenging stage of the campaign. Unlike some previous Total War games (such as Shogun 2, with the Realm Divide mechanic), the Collapse is not a late-campaign mechanic - it can happen in the mid-campaign, when the player has fairly limited resources, and cannot afford six high-tier armies.

Legacy

After a few turns, you will be invited to choose a legacy. Egyptian factions can choose from Akhenaten the Heretic (combine two gods into one - your shrines and devoted generals will enjoy a combination of their benefits), Khufu the Builder (construct great monuments), Thutmose the Conqueror (gaining extra abilities when attacking settlements), or Hatshepsut the Merchant (send trade caravans to boost your economy and provide better weapons and equipment for your generals). The obvious legacy for Ramesses, as a bold military leader, could be Thutmose - howver Iskar recommended Hatshepsut for Ramesses. As Ramesses, your starting regions are on the historical trade route across the Sinai, so you can trade in both directions without having to wait a long time for your trade caravans to return.