Someone has to explain 12th century B.C. politics to me.

[Green Raven]

The game kind of treats Egypt as a series of city-states, rather than a unified realm. Im playing as an Egyptian prince, invading Egyptian holy ground, which is held by other Egyptians, and everyone seems cool with it.

[Hori]

Two words: civil war. Think Sengoku but everyone is wearing kohl. Three Kingdoms but with khopeshes. What you are seeing on the screen is not normal for Egyptian history, it is a time of troubles, with every governor taking sides and so on. What is going on on the screen is like if American states all started declaring war on each other, where Merneptah is the like the president in Washington DC. By the way amusing how in real life the capital province was called Ineb-hedj which literally translates to White Fortress. Literally Egyptian White House.

[Kendji]

The period was in a sense similar to a lot of periods while also different. For example. the Hittite Empire was essentially an confederation or federation in a modern sense. Where the things that politically bound the thing together being personal oaths. Ppl in a city, would've identified themselves with that region or city, despite being of different ethnic, religious or cultural backgrounds by our terms, then they might of been led by a king/vice-roy/ruler etc. Who then as a person would've sworn fielty to the Great King Suppiluliuma. Similar to medieval feudalism, but also classical city-states from later periods. The thing here is. Many of the wars in Anatolia started when a ruler died, not all of the wars ofc, but several. Bc technically, the vassalship had to be renegotiated or stopped being valid if one party died, say Suppiluliuma dying, then every state may become independent. Thus one of the most important things for a Great King that had just become so, would've been to spam letters to every notable to affirm their loyalty. If a vassal went the technical route and didn't swear fielty, it usually meant war. It would've been seen as a challenge to the new sitting Great King.

While down in Egypt you had nomarchs, rulers of nomes. Though how centralized the power of the Pharaoh was varied through time, with these nomarch at times being in practise only nominal vassals, while at the peak of Pharaonic power they where more like bureaucrats executing the Pharaoh's orders and will. In contrast to Hatti, Egyptians probably had an local identity, but there was also an Egyptian identity. The Pharaoh wouldn't during this period marry a royal female to an non-Egyptian as an example.

While Canaan had an sense of an common origin, same language etc. but identity and politics where often very local with city-state like small statelets.

Some wiki reading if your interested;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_the_19th_Dynasty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaan#Late_Bronze_Age_(1550%E2%80%931200_BC)

[Sir Ballgor]

Great answers so far. I love Ancient Egypt and I'll give a tl;dr bullet point explanation but will leave the in-depth explaining to experts.

Kingship and Religion:
* Ancient Egypt and religion are tied together completely, the pharaoh is considered a living god (generally Horus);
* The balance becomes awry when the priesthood (Amun in this case) takes too much power and land compared to the Pharaoh;
* Kingship (Pharaoh) was on shaky grounds for the previous monarch was manipulated by the priesthood, big time;

Governance and stability:
* Ancient Egypt was a large empire (in Bronze Age standards), which needed viziers and other high-level officials to maintain governance;
* High-level officials were often priests that led a "nomarch" which is like a state or province;
* Ramses II ruled for a very long time, which leads to an academic theory that for Ancient Egypt, the length of the ruler denotes instability after the death of the ruler (i.e., Ramses II);
* The inter-connectivity of the Bronze Age world is quite akin to our modern world, everyone traded and no one place had all the necessary resources;
* Food shortages, there was the first recorded worker's riot around this time;
* (Academic theory) the earth's climate was changing, so the bronze-age collapse was around the corner, stressing the Ancient Egyptian Empire even more (e.g., food, migration (but migration is very much argued about and not set in stone); and
* (past the time period of the game but shows instability) Sacrilege, Ramses III (a god in Egyptian religion) was assassinated by a second-wife, Tiye (pharaohs had many wives to produce royal offspring).

Hope this helps! If you want to dive deeper, there are plenty of online resources.