EU4: How To Form Egypt (The Prince of Egypt Achievement)

To form Egypt, you must first have Egyptian as your primary culture. The Mamluks are the only nation with that culture at the 1444 start. They also own all the target provinces.

So it’s natural for them to transition to Egypt once they reach the required tech level. They simply have to defeat the Ottomans and prevent their southern expansion.

But if you want something more fun, Florence has a special achievement for forming Egypt (The Prince of Egypt). They’re not Egyptian, nor are they anywhere near the region. So with Florence you’d need to get creative to get the target provinces – which is why this guide will focus on forming Egypt as Florence.

Achievement	Requirement
The Prince of Egypt	Starting as Florence, form Egypt.

Fun Fact: The dude in the icon is Niccolo Machiavelli. He’s a Florentine diplomat who wrote The Prince — a book on political theory. The achievement “The Prince of Egypt” is a play on that title and on the 1998 Disney musical with the same name.

Requirements

To form Egypt, you must meet these requirements:

• Has at least Admin Tech 20
• Own the following core provinces:
• Cairo
• Rosetta
• Damietta
• Alexandria
• Faiyum
• Cairo must be your capital
• Not a subject, nomad, nor an end-game nation

Complete Strategy as Florence

Note: You’ll get Admin Tech 20 around the 1660s. That’s at least 200 years from the start date. So there’s no rush in doing any of these steps. You only have to beat the Ottomans from getting the Egyptian provinces.

Step 1: Expand in Italy

You’re a small nation with big ambitions.

You must grow larger if you’re to seize Egypt from the Mamluks or the Ottomans.

The good thing is that you start in one of the richest regions in the game. Italy has a lot of development and two lucrative trade nodes — Genoa and Venice.

To dominate Italy, follow your missions. They’ll give you permanent claims on most of North Italy. Your initial missions can even be done in the first two days.

But the gist is to have 12 monthly diplo power and 2 Italian allies to get the claims.

After that, you should immediately conquer your neighbors. Most are easy to beat.

Only Venice presents a problem, but also an opportunity. They’ll be important in the next step, so try not to take their provinces yet.

As for Tuscany, they aren’t an end-game tag, so you can still form Egypt with them. Their national ideas are also an upgrade to Florence’s.

So if you haven’t gotten to Egypt yet but can already form Tuscany, then go ahead and do so. You can still get the achievement as Tuscany.

Step 2: Acquire Crete from Venice

You’re too far away from the Egyptian provinces to make claims on them.

You’ll need a province that’s next to the region or is one sea-tile away.

Crete fits the latter criteria, and it’s rather easy to get.

Venice owns it, and you’ve a claim on their Italian provinces. When you declare war on them, you can annex Crete as part of your peace terms.

Taking Crete this way will be an unjustified demand. This means it’ll cost you a few diplo power. Making it a core will also need extra admin power as you won’t have a claim on it. But that’s okay.

You need it as a springboard to your goal.

Its strategic location’s worth more than the monarch points you’ve spent.

Step 3: Fabricate claims on Cyrenaica and/or Egypt

Once you’ve cored Crete, you can start fabricating claims on the Mamluks. There will only be three Egyptian provinces within your range.

But if you’re still in the Age of Discovery, you can unlock the “Transfer Subject” Age ability.

This costs 800 splendor, which you earn every month for completing any Age objectives. It allows you to create claims next to provinces that you’ve already claimed.

Step 4: Build up your Navy

You need a navy to ferry and escort your troops to Egypt.

So you should build around 10–20 transports, while the rest are heavies and galleys.

Since the Mediterranean is an inland sea, galleys have a +100% combat ability. But you’ll still want a few heavy ships, as they can tank the first rounds of engagement.

A good ratio would be 1:3 heavies to galleys.

Be sure to build a flagship as well. Unlike regular ships, you can fit in up to three mods on your flagship. Those mods can apply useful buffs to your fleet. The ones should go for are:

• +1 Fleet blockade impact on siege
• +33% Movement speed on and off ships
• +3 Fleet engagement width

If you’ve also reached Diplo Tech 8, then you should build shipyards on your coastal and island provinces. Each one gives you these benefits:

• +2 naval force limit
• -25% provincial ship-building time
• +25% faster repairs to ships docked in the province

Be sure to have a shipyard on Crete too. It can be your main naval base throughout your Mediterranean campaign.

You can have your fleet hide and repair there if there are stronger navies around.

Speaking of which, the Mamluks start with only 8 galleys. The rest of their boats are light ships and transports. But they’ll likely build more ships as the game progresses.

You can check what they currently own by opening the ledger (hotkey: L).

The real threat in the Mediterranean is the Ottoman fleet.

In the early years, you don’t have to worry about them. But later on you’ll want to fight them to contain their expansion.

You don’t want an Ottoman blob as your neighbor.

You can form a united front against them by allying with Hungary, Poland, and/or Austria. Your role in this team’s to control the seas. So keep building up to your naval force limit.

But you don’t necessarily have to match the size of the Ottoman navy.

That’s because the AI rarely upgrades their ships. They’ll only build the latest available ships, but neglect to retrofit their old ones. Thus, you can outgun the Ottomans at Diplo Techs 8–9, then again at Diplo Techs 14–15.

Step 5: Invade Egypt

Before you do your E-Day, there are two things you should know:

• Your European allies won’t join your war against the Mamluks as they’re too far away.
• The Mamluks have better land units than you in the early game.

As such, fighting the Mamluks (or worse, the Ottomans) head-on isn’t recommended.

Instead, you’ll want to time your invasion for when the Ottomans attack the Mamluks.

They’ll usually do that sometime after they’ve conquered Kurdistan from Aq Qoyunlu and/or Bitlis.

During their war, the Mamlukean army will get mauled by the Ottomans.

Then you can sneak in and occupy your claims easily.

But you must be quick about it, or the Ottomans will beat you to Egypt.

Usually, they’ll only take Aleppo, Syria, and Palestine in their first war.

Once they have those, that’s when they’ll get their claims on the entire Egypt region.

The provinces that may slow you down are Alexandria and Cairo — the Mamluks’ capital.

Those have forts.

So you’ll want to use an artillery barrage or a naval bombardment when sieging them.

You should also make full use of your fleet. Ferrying is faster than marching. Your ships can maintain vision along the Palestinian coast too.

Doing this gives you an idea of the location of the Mamluks’ forces.

Tip: Hold CTRL then right-click to force your army to use transports to get to their destination.

After both forts fall, the Mamluks will be willing to give you your claims. However, you may want to annex as many Egyptian provinces as your war score allows.

It’ll be an unjustified demand, so it’ll cost diplomatic power. The amount depends on the total development of your demands. Provinces without claims also need extra admin power to turn into cores.

Handling Overextension

Not only that, but you’ll have around 112–125% overextension (OE) from annexing the five targets.

You do not want your OE to go over 99%.

If it does, you’ll get OE events, which punish you with random destabilizing maluses. They’ll happen more frequently the higher your OE is over 99%.

So don’t get too greedy. Instead, prioritize getting Alexandria, Rosetta, Damietta, and Buhaira.

That last one is adjacent to Cairo and Fayyum. So you’ll be able to create claims on those two later on.

After that, you’ll have around a 10-year truce with the Mamluks. During this, continue making claims on provinces around Egypt.

Then once the truce ends, resume your campaign against the Mamluks. This time, annex Cairo and Fayyum, as well as any other Egyptian provinces you can get.

Step 6: Culture-shift to Egyptian

In order to make the “Form Egypt” decision appear, you need to have Egyptian as your primary culture.

This is called culture shifting.

To do that, 50% of your state provinces’ development must be Egyptian.

It may not be enough to turn all your Egyptian provinces into states. You may need to do any of these things:

#1: Spend monarch power to dev up your Egyptian provinces

#2: Spend diplo power to change the culture of nearby provinces to Egyptian

#3: Revert your Italian states into territories

Reverting is the easiest and fastest. It’s the opposite of adding more dev to Egyptian states.

Instead, you’re removing non-Egyptian states from the statistics.

Do note that you’ll lose a fair bit of income from your former states.

However, you’ll be able to add them to trade companies (TC) later. Moving your capital to Cairo lets you do this. It’ll make your Italian provinces eligible to become TC provinces.

This boosts your trade power in the Genoa and Venice trade nodes.

You can also get two extra merchants (one per node) if you keep improving your TC provinces.

Anyways, once you’ve altered your demographics, open your Government tab. If you haven’t yet, you’ll need to promote Egyptian as an accepted culture first. Then you can press the “Culture Shift” button to make Egyptian your primary culture.

These actions cost 100 diplo power each.

Step 7: Move Your Capital to Cairo

The last requirement for forming Egypt is to move your capital to Cairo.

To do this, press the crown button at the top-left corner of Cairo’s Province screen. This will cost 244 admin power.

However, if you haven’t gotten Admin Tech 20 yet, then you may want to hold off on this until you do. Cairo is too vulnerable, especially if the Ottomans are still nearby.

You’ll want to pick them apart first with the help of your allies.

But if you do have Admin Tech 20, go ahead and move your capital. You can then enact the “Form Egypt” decision.