Any tips for Amenmesse?

[Alwyn]

Playing as Amenmesse, I'm under attack from two or three factions in the early campaign. I'm trading gold for food to pay for the upkeep of more units, and I tried trading with the two factions to the south, but they still attacked, along with a faction to the north.

If you play as Amenmesse, what's your strategy for the early campaign?

[Kendji]

Recruit a general at Her-hetem, which you then send to colonize Thes. Kill the initial rebel army. Try to conquer Musha and Ti-Neb quickly. Build up your economy as quickly as possible while building Amenmesse to a full stack.
The Nubian AI is opportunistic. If you leave Kerma unprotected for too long they may attack.
I would maybe start to build a second stack at Kerma and then go take out one of the southern Nubian factions. If you manage to do this your situation improves significantly. You get valuable food from there, plus strategically you anchor yourself into the map edge. You have one less 'front' to worry about. To manage this a balance between enough force and speed is key. The western desert settlements may need fortifying in the medium term and may get attacked by Libu. If you decided to go with Akhenaten, go colonize Akhetaten asap. Akhetaten has good food resources. Plus you can make it a fortified place, so that the city takes some of the enemy armies, that might otherwise sail south to Kerma. If you go Khufu legacy, I would recomend you prep for war with your northern factions sooner and start advancing up the nile and take Waset (Thebes) province, there you can build one of your Khufu monuments.

That's my two cents. You probably really want Iskar's opinion on this. He's an Amenmesse fanboy and can thus tell you all the tricks with Amenmesse ;)

[Iskar]

Originally posted by Kendji:

That's my two cents. You probably really want Iskar's opinion on this. He's an Amenmesse fanboy

You're understating it ;)

For the start:
- As Kendji said, recruit a general in your western most settlement first and send him to colonise the ruined gold settlement in the west. That also completes the Peri-Ramesses province and allows you to issue edicts there.
- After the welcome battle, camp on the border with Amenmesse and recruit two units of Nubian Mercenary archers. These guys will win you the next two siege battles against Kerma with no further troops needed. Just march on their towns one after the other and use your superior archers to whittle them down and finally make them sally out at which point you can easily crush them.
- After defeating your initial enemy faction don't pause, but march right on to Ti-Neb and colonise all of eastern Nubia. If you did not dawdle before you will get there before Napata or Nubt.
- Ignore Dungul Oasis and Buhen for now. If you get the chance, make Non Aggression Pacts with them until you have defeated Kawa and Napata south of you.
- Now move Amenmesse back towards Kerma and recruit more troops. Also recruit some auxiliary troops for your other general. That will give you manoeuverability to tear down watch towers or block forts for a siege of the main settlement.
- Attack first Kawa and then Napata. Use your gold to trade for food (for upkeep) and stone (to build up your three(!) already complete provinces). You can also try some raiding if Kawa or Napata prove obstinate.
- When attacking Napata, make sure to cover the path north through the desert into Kerma. They like to try and attack you in the rear there when you attack them via the Nile from Kawa.

In general:
- I found Akhenaten to be super strong with Amenmesse. You have Isis and Horus from the very start and combined their atenshrine gives happiness, influence, recruitment rank bonuses and movement points on prayer. A shrine in every region basically solves all your happiness/influence problems.
- Use your gold abundance offensively to trade yourself insane amounts of stone and wood in early game allowing you to build up your provinces much quicker than your neighbours.
- the Kushite delegate chain is your friend. It gives production bonuses as well as workforce growth, further helping with quick development, and the -2 influence is easily overcompensated by an Aten shrine.
- Invest into garrisons and forts or warrior refuges in the western regions of Peri-Ramesses, Kerma and Kawa early on. Libu invasions will start around turn 30, but are no problem if you have decent garrisons.
- Once you have secured the south, I would try to take Dungul and then Buhen for their bronze mines so you can afford more high tier troops. The rest is deciding whom to attack next :)

[Kendji]

I actually sometimes go Napata first, cross the desert and replenish on enemy territory and then start taking them a village at a time before the actual city. Though it's really high risk since you need to cross the desert and hope their armies aren't there waiting. If you succeed however you may get a quicker rise in the food income than going Kawa.

[Alwyn]

Thanks, Kendji and Iskar, for the excellent advice! I'm really enjoying my Amenmesse campaign now.

In my previous campaigns, I was waiting too long to take the last Kerma city. The Nubian Mercenary archers made a decisive difference. I took the ruined gold settlement to the west, as you suggested. While Amenmesse was completing the colonisation of eastern Nubia, Kawa attacked.

A non-aggression pact with Buhen is securing the northern border for now, and Amenmesse returned from eastern Nubia just in time to defeat the invading Kawa. (The quality of the Kawa units is noticeable different - in previous campaigns, they were using more high-tier units, but not I'm fighting them earlier, their units are of lower quality.)

[Iskar]

Originally posted by Alwyn:

Thanks, Kendji and Iskar, for the excellent advice! I'm really enjoying my Amenmesse campaign now.

In my previous campaigns, I was waiting too long to take the last Kerma city. The Nubian Mercenary archers made a decisive difference. I took the ruined gold settlement to the west, as you suggested. While Amenmesse was completing the colonisation of eastern Nubia, Kawa attacked.

A non-aggression pact with Buhen is securing the northern border for now, and Amenmesse returned from eastern Nubia just in time to defeat the invading Kawa. (The quality of the Kawa units is noticeable different - in previous campaigns, they were using more high-tier units, but not I'm fighting them earlier, their units are of lower quality.)

Glad you're enjoying it. Did you go with Akhenaten or choose a different legacy?

[Alwyn]

Yes, I took your advice and went for Akhenaten. I don't have much experience of the religion system yet, I'm looking forward to seeing how it works. The main features seem to be dedicating generals to a god, and building shrines and temples to get to a higher tier - but I may be missing things.

The last Kawa settlement is well-defended (a fort and a large garrison), and Kawa sent a raiding force to distract me - it's good to see an AI faction using a strategy that I imagine a human player would use, in that situation.

[Kendji]

Akhenaten legacy is great in the sense that it's mostly passive. Meaning you build temples and they constantly gives you benefits. While the other legacies requires you to build, trade or bribe enemy garrisons every turn

[Iskar]

Originally posted by Kendji:

Akhenaten legacy is great in the sense that it's mostly passive. Meaning you build temples and they constantly gives you benefits. While the other legacies requires you to build, trade or bribe enemy garrisons every turn

It could actually need some spicing-up. E.g. the high priest of Aten giving you missions every now and then, or the ability to build Aten versions of the other great temples in the cult centres. I like it in the other legacies that you get something else to do every few turns. Especially Hatshepsut is pretty entertaining (and the mechanic should actually be how all trading in the game works...).

[Aluminum Elite Master]

My quick list:

Renowned Nubian Longbows are excellent and can help to whittle down enemy forces you'd otherwise struggle to defeat. Even just the Merc Nubian Longbows are good though, too, so trying to bee-line to them is a good early strat.

Akhenaten Legacy is good for Amenmesse. The Akhentanopolis city site (or whatever the name is) is up the river not too far, and you can settle it and get benefits rolling pretty early. The other option I usually take is Hatshepsut's Legacy for the trading for bronze, wood, and food you may need early on to build up your gold economy.

Gold is king. You have factional stuff to earn more gold, and start in a gold rich area. Trade it away for other stuff you don't have like bronze and build up your armies.

Finally, you are a long ways from Sea Peoples. If you expand west, you do run into Libu invasions, but other than that, it's a fairly protected start as long as you keep some vision on the river. The river is where pretty much most attackers will come from, and it grants extra speed (compared to regular open water), so it's vital to have some vision on the river somehow. But beyond that, you can feasibly expand however you like.

I like Amenmesse. It's a good campaign that doesn't put you immediately on the backfoot (like some campaigns where you are almost instantly seeing Sea Peoples rove through your lands near the coast). Longbows get you pretty far in the early game, too.