Pyramids construction

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.