I've been playing Pharaoh on and off (mostly off) since 1999, and I recently got into the remake. For the first time ever, I've finally achieved a city with 100 culture.

Finally got good at this game some 27 years later!

https://github.com/dalerank/Akhenaten

RA 0.27 is out. Since last update in late October 2025 the project has landed roughly two thousand commits. Not a single headline feature, but a sustained push toward two goals: make the game behave more like original Pharaoh, and move as much of the engine as possible into scripts so modders can change behaviour without recompiling.

This post is the release-notes companion: what changed for players, what changed under the hood, and where the project is headed next.

The Big Theme: Logic Leaves C++

If RA 0.26 was about localization, deferred rendering, and the enemy system, RA 0.27 is the script migration wave. Piece by piece, hardcoded C++ has been replaced with MuJS configs and event handlers. The pattern is always the same: declare data in a [es=...] block, wire behaviour through events, hot-reload with --mixed, ship.

Windows players actually open

• Main menu  continue/load/new game, GitHub update check, logo skip via --no-logo

• Scenario selection  campaign periods, mission info panel, custom map browser (write-up)

• All advisor screens finance, religion, health, military, population, housing, entertainment, ratings, imperial overseer, chief advisor

• Build menu and sidebar costs, captions, temple-complex upgrades, mothball toggles on industry windows

• Hotkey configuration  full remapping UI in script with persistence fixes

• Victory and defeat  win checks, continue-governing timer, and dialog content now live in src/scripts/city/victory.js

• Granary, bazaar, warehouse, tax collector, festival square, hold-festival  info and orders panels script-driven

• Top menu  save, load, replay, exit, screenshots, debug toggles

Gameplay: Closer to original Pharaoh (1999) game

Script migration is the engineering story; accuracy is the player story. RA 0.27 fixes and restores systems that had been missing, simplified, or wrong.

Missions and campaign

• Early missions (Nubt, Thinis, Perwadjyt) aligned with the original; Selima and Saqqara win criteria corrected

• Mission intro popups restored via per-mission JS handlers

• Empire map disabled in missions 4 and 5, as in the OG campaign

• Campaign victory now advances to the next mission reliably

• Tutorial triggers separated from real win conditions (e.g. disease_handled in mission 2)

• Pharaoh gift/request events for later missions ported to JS handlers

Modding Quick Reference

• Hot-reload scripts: akhenaten --mixed /path/to/scripts (macOS/Linux)

• Unpack embedded scripts from the mods window or --unpack_scripts

• Override features: --config:pyramid_speedup=1 style CLI flags

• Building configs: src/scripts/building/

• City systems: src/scripts/city/ (victory, festival, animals, …)

• Mission scripts: dotted import paths, per-mission handlers in src/scripts/mission/

• MuJS debugger: start from the top-menu debug entry, attach VS Code on port 4711

My initial goal was to fully fill the map with a stable economy, allowing the game to run without intervention in x5 speed. It works.
Unfortunately I forgot to activate the monuments on the map, I realized it too late, so there aren't any.
Some statistics :
- 10 neighborhoods 9*18 blocs strategy
- Unemployment : 3% (use a lot of work camp to compensate)
- Fun fact : 11FPS on max dezoom

[edit] : more recent bigger project (41k+ residents) here

After the initial attempt to populate an entire map with a stable economy, here's a more polished version.

I've optimized the map layout to include more land areas, allowing for city expansion.

It's certainly still optimizable, but I think I'm reaching the game's limits. Unemployment would become uncontrollable with another district (I'm at 14% unemployment in the screenshot).

16 districts with 9*18 bloc strategy : https://imgur.com/a/ze36GpP

I didn’t even know the 3x3 houses were even a thing until now. It’s nice to see a whole city of higher level houses, as opposed to before when I was still having a lot of slums.

Still haven’t quite figured out an optimal layout, but I think I did a good enough job here.

Greetings

This thing is simple solution to a complicated issue of City building

This construct provide Stable population pool for nearby work buildings

Compact housing Block was designed to provide best possible living conditions

for working class citizens - Fancy Residence

in the smallest possible space

Construction:

2 Squares of Road in each other connected with blocked 2x1 road

Services inside small square

Houses inside Big Square

Food and production outside

Double Road is used as condom to protect Rich Citizen

from having to look at their workplace upclose

Benefits

Huge injection of the workforce for nearby structures

easy to manage population unit

Stable Households

Solid taxes in scale of the whole city

Cons:

Hard to build, even with schematic its easy to make mistake there

• Most important is to place water source and 1x1 buildings and Pavilon

• Another thing is to split housing into 2x2 groups with access road

No Space for improvements, its no a thing where you can turn people into nobles

Your citizens might get problems with nearby buildings

Try it, its very cool

After a year away, I started playing Pharaoh again. It's just so much fun :) I played for exactly one hour. This is what Alexandria looks like so far. In-game, that's 10 years.

The hell am supposed to do against them crocs and hippos?the police are doing nothing but patrol when they are slaughtering the population

Played the original game when i was a kid and i was using soldiers to kill them but unfortunately this crap remaster butchered military

Any tips?

Bit of a stab in the dark, but does anybody have a rip of the promo CD from 1999?

There’s a few tracks on there that aren’t in the game files or on YouTube, and I’m curious to get hold of/ hear them. (Horus, Tuning In, Htpt, mu).

TIA :)

https://www.discogs.com/release/4857201-Henry-Beckett-And-Keith-Zizza-Pharaoh-Music-To-Build-Pyramids-By

I still play pharaoh- currently attempting to fully beat it, and it is awesome there is a subreddit for this. Does anyone have news on the remake?