Welcome, everyone, to the grand AI Battle for the Nile! 21 Civilizations, from Aksum to the Hyksos, duke it out on a partially forested Nile Valley map, which should make it all the more interesting. We start in the reaches of the Upper Nile, where we find Makuria, under the pious Merkurios, a modified vanilla Egypt under the one and only Ramesses the Great, and Early Dynastic Egypt, under Narmer, the first pharaoh of the Nile.

Narmer (red) and Ramesses are relatively close together, but only time can tell what these two rivals will do.

Moving north (or south, if you're following the Egyptian worldview) we find Egypt under the sun-worshipping Akhenaten, in orange. Above, we find Egypt under Hatshepsut, in yellow. Expect some contentious rivalry here.

Towards the fertile Nile Delta, Saladin of the Abbuyids, and Djoser of the Old Kingdom of Egypt settle their respective cities, Cairo and Memphis. Saladin is the only medieval civilization residing in the Nile valley, which might put him at a disadvantage in Early-game warfare.

In the glory of the Delta, we find Thutmose III of the New Kingdom of Egypt (a rare LastSword mod), in purple, Apophis of the Hyksos, in dark red, the Ancient Libu/Libyan Dynasts under Tefnakt in green (one of the less well known Gedemods), and the Ptolemaic Dynasty under Cleo, to the left in blue.

Populated by helpful shrubbery and sparse hills, the southern Levant has four civilizations vying for power: the Philistines in yellow under Achish-Abimelech, Israel with the 3D David as ruler, the Amalek under Agag in light red, and the Nabataean Civilization, under Aretas III in dark red.

We drift towards the savannah of western Arabia, where we find the Rashidun Caliphate, commanded by Umar, and Hejaz, led by Hussein Bin Ali. I haven't seen any tests of the Rashidun's AI, so this should be fun to watch.

In the deep-south west of the Nile Valley map, located in an unrealistic position solely for the purpose of me wanting to get one of DMS's civs in, we find Aksum. I expect them to snowball a bit, considering they have no close neighbors, but Nubia/Hejaz or the Rashidun could keep them in check.

Finally, below the Christian Kingdom of Makuria we find Nubia under Piye. Can they push back Makuria and take on the rest of the Valley?

Thank you for reading Part Zero, and I will be back roughly next week for part one, where you can anticipate lots of mayhem and madness. In the meantime, enjoy this map of each's civs current fledgling empires. I'm too lazy to hold a strawpoll, so preict who you think's going to win in the comments!