Historical difficulty is absurdly hard compared to the first playthrough

[Smartacus]

After what must be at least 15 tries at a campaign in normal difficulty, I have to conclude that it is far far too punishing to be fun and extremely reliant on RNG. Building tombs is simply too expensive, and when it has to be done alongside trials (especially civil wars) it's vritually impossible.

In my most recent attempt I managed to get a bronze victory in the Second Dynasty civil war, but just didn't have nearly enough resources to manage the Fourth Dynasty tombs, despite sending expeditions to every available place. I just about finished Sneferu's monuments (two step pyramids, one of them encased in limestone, and a red granite medium pyramid) but only had the time and resources to complete one of the Giza pyramids. All the first dynasty tombs I built at the cheapest possible level, and I stopped building them after I finished Den's mastaba. I only built one tomb for Hotepsekhemwy in the Second Dynasty, but I was still badly straining for resources.

Honestly, I am not convinced that it is even possible to build a tomb for all the kings and get a silver or higher victory on the trials unless you are playing on easy mode, there doesn't seem to be enough income available (especially production and luxuries) to cover the costs of the tasks and the trials. The challenges all seem to come very quickly too, there is virtually no period of respite between tomb building and civil wars and such to allow the player to accumulate resources. I think maybe decreasing the number of years that pass per turn might make it more manageable.

God knows how punishing the hardest difficulty is. If anyone has been able to do it, is it possible to find a walkthrough anywhere?

[Alexander]

Hey, it IS possible to build all the tombs for all the kings with the default building settings and get all the Gold victories in the normal difficulty. I managed to do it a couple of times :)
But it took many, many attempts, and I can't say I know the trick.
A few tips:
Ptah as the patron is your choice if you want to build pyramids. However, he is the weakest in the Civil War trial, the hardest one in the game.
Build only grain fields, unless there's a bonus for production on a certain tile. Expeditions are better for getting production, and they require food.
Scouting should be your priority once you unlocked the Egypt map. Don't bother yourself with the diplomacy or conquest before the Civil War, just grab all the lands with primitive tribes. There will be a certain period when you have more food than housing, so make the most of it.
Carefully managing the divine power is the key. Above all, keep your anti-Seth shield going. Don't spend divine favor early, every time you worship, your next ancestral duty is increased, so worship only if you are sure this will make a really big difference. When you unlocked Osiris and built some tombs, start worship him to strengthen other gods. There will be a period when you will practically live off the Hapi's blessing, because the support of the tombs will consume more food than you can produce, so Hapi's strength has to grow to keep with your ongoing pyramid building. It will get easier after the Pyramid trial. Also you'll need Ptah's and Horus's blessings to win the Civil war. Also don't forget about the Seker, because the tomb maintenance is your bane. I don't have a solid strategy here, I play by heart every time, and most of times something goes wrong.

There was even a guy who managed to get all the Golds on the hardest level. Here's his guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1464820476
It might be outdated, since it was written before the last major update.

There's also another thing...
Developers really messed up the tomb mechanics, so the tombs are not worth building from the economical point of view. They are, basically, notches on a difficulty slider: every time you build one, the game becomes more difficult. So if you just don't build them, except for the first one, that gives a nice housing bonus, and the ones during the Pyramid trial, the game becomes much, much easier.
Devs tried to adjust the balance several times, but every time something went wrong. In a certain version of the game the tombs were even quite useful in the midgame. But it also meant that in the endgame they became a superpower. So they were nerfed again and became useless. Devs already moved on to their next game, so we'll have to live with what we have, unfortunately.
On the bright side, we have a quite nice extra challenge goal in these tombs.

[Smartacus]

Thanks for the response, I'll try some of your suggestions and see how far I get :) So it is possible to build default level tombs and still win? I guess I'd have to be perssistent and get lucky.

Originally posted by Alexander:

Developers really messed up the tomb mechanics, so the tombs are not worth building from the economical point of view. They are, basically, notches on a difficulty slider: every time you build one, the game becomes more difficult. So if you just don't build them, except for the first one, that gives a nice housing bonus, and the ones during the Pyramid trial, the game becomes much, much easier.
Devs tried to adjust the balance several times, but every time something went wrong. In a certain version of the game the tombs were even quite useful in the midgame. But it also meant that in the endgame they became a superpower. So they were nerfed again and became useless. Devs already moved on to their next game, so we'll have to live with what we have, unfortunately.
On the bright side, we have a quite nice extra challenge goal in these tombs.

Oh, really? That explains why tombs are a bit of a weird part of the game that seem to serve only to screw over the player. Have the devs announced that they aren't going to be making any more changes to this game? That's a shame, there are plenty of ways that the tomb-building issue could be made more engaging, I just hope that if they make another game in the Egypt series they will impletment something that incentivises tomb building more.

[Alexander]

In the first version the Osiris cult just reduced the ancestral duty by 0.3 or something like that. Players complained that the tombs are useless and devs invented the current Osiris mechanics. This didn't quite solve the problem, as Osiris's help does not scale fast enough to keep up with the growing expenses until the Pyramid trial. So devs changed the Seker's cult as well (previously it increased your divine favor income by 0.4 at the base). That were good days when you could get 99000 of divine favor income at the end of the game
Naturally, Seker was nerfed, Ptah's superpower in the last trial was nerfed too, and we get what we get now.

The ones who bought this game early got a nice bonus: after each update it felt like a slightly different game.

I wrote an article here about the pyramidonomics aspect of the game at some point (it is in Russian, sorry, but you already know the key points), and I also described some ideas how to make the tombs worth their price. For example, could the effect of the Pharaon's actions during the trials depend on how many tombs have been built? I suppose, one of the functions of those monuments actually was to give the rulers some extra authority. A dev responded, thanked me and said that it is to late for changes that fundamental, because they are already started on their next game.

Still we can dream about how the pyramids might have worked :)

[Alexander]

One more thing I have just found out myself. Bastet seems to reduce the separatist spawn rate during the trial of Civil war. I honored Bastet at the beginning of the trial and during the battle the army of separatists matched mine about 1:1 instead 3:1 as it usually did.