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https://github.com/unclebob/pharaoh

My old Mac game from the '80s. Rewritten in Clojure by Claude.
https://github.com/unclebob/pharaoh

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My old Mac game from the '80s. Rewritten in Clojure by Claude.

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README 

          
# Pharaoh



Originally written in C for the classic Macintosh by Robert C. Martin

(circa 1988), this is a ground-up rewrite in Clojure, guided by the

original source code and a detailed specification extracted from it.



What follows is an updated version of the original Pharaoh Manual 1.0.



---



## User Manual



You are the offspring of a famous noble. Your father is revered

throughout the land for his financial and military prowess. He is very

wealthy. But he doesn't think much of you. As far as he is concerned

you are never going to amount to much. One day, in a fit of

frustration, he throws you out of his house with nothing but your

clothing. He has written you off as a certain failure. Is he right?



Welcome to the game of Pharaoh. Pharaoh is a simulation game which

gives you a chance to become the Pharaoh of all Egypt (and possibly

the whole world). By applying common sense and experience, you attempt

to make a vast agricultural community thrive and grow. You make and

break deals with other kingdoms, fight wars, manage revolts, and

monitor the day to day operation of your farming communities.



You start with nothing, but the banks remember your heritage and are

willing to extend you a small loan. You use the money they lend you to

build the seeds of a huge empire. Over the years you expand your

empire, gaining land, wealth, and power. And when your empire has

reached the size and power which you deem necessary, you attempt to

erect a monument of such vast enormity that you will be remembered for

thousands of years to come.



The going is never easy. There are many obstacles in your way.

Famines, floods, aggressive neighbors, even terrorists. But with

skillful management, and some clever strategies, you can prevail and

grow. And if you do, you will become the greatest ruler of all time.



### Overview



**Scenario.** You begin the game as a disinherited noble. Your father,

a man of great wealth and power, has deemed you to be a ne'er do

well, and has thrown you out into the inhospitalities of the world,

without a shekel to your name. But the bank knows your heritage, and

is willing to extend to you a small, unsecured, loan.



**Object.** With the money you are able to borrow from the bank, you

must build a kingdom of great power. You must buy land, slaves, oxen

and horses. You must hire mercenaries and overseers to guard your

kingdom, and manage your slaves. You must plant your fields, and reap

your harvests, and make a profit. You must grow.



And when you have grown to the size you deem enough, you invest your

money, property, and strength into the construction of a vast pyramid.



Your goal is to complete this pyramid within 40 years. It's not easy.



**Obstacles.** You will face many obstacles along the way towards

building your pyramid. Famines, floods, wars, and rumours of wars,

plagues, pestilence, and even fire from heaven.



Still, if you are careful, and clever, you can overcome these foes,

and grow your kingdom to cover the planet if you wish.



### Commodities



As pharaoh, you make your kingdom grow by wisely managing the

commodities that you own. You buy them, sell them, and produce them.

Many of the commodities can be used as cash crops, depending on the

type of business that you, as pharaoh, wish to invest in.



**Wheat.** This is the product of your land. Your slaves and oxen must

plant wheat, fertilize the fields, cultivate and harvest the crop.

Then you can use the resulting wheat as further seed, and food for

your oxen, horses, and slaves. Wheat is bought and sold by the

bushel. Wheat is the most common cash crop. The traditional way to

play pharaoh is to produce and sell wheat on the open market.



**Slaves.** Slaves represent your primary motive force. Slaves do the

work! It is your slaves which plant your seed, and spread your

fertilizer. They feed and tend your oxen and horses. They cultivate

and harvest your fields. And they build your pyramid. Without them,

nothing can be done. Slaves are also a common cash crop. Under the

right circumstances, slaves reproduce at an alarming rate, and can

therefore become a lucrative trading business.



**Oxen.** As beasts of burden, oxen help the slaves immensely. Slaves

can do many times as much work if they are assisted by oxen. But oxen

eat a lot, and don't reproduce quickly. You must find the best ratio

of slaves to oxen.



**Horses.** Horses are the vehicles for your overseers. They make the

overseers' jobs much easier by allowing them to get around quickly

and efficiently. But does every overseer need a horse? Horses eat a

lot, and reproduce slowly.



**Manure.** Manure is produced by your slaves and livestock in

proportion to the amount of food that they eat. It is bought and sold

by the ton and is the fertilizer that you spread on your fields. You

must decide how much to spread on the acres that you plant each month.



**Land.** Land is listed by the acre. This is where you plant your

seed, and where your crops grow. Each acre of land can support the

planting of only about 20 bushels of seed, and no more. How much

wheat that seed will produce depends on the fertilizer, weather, and

the efficiency of your slaves.



### Planting and Reaping



In order to grow wheat, you must plant it. Your land starts out

fallow, which means that it has lain unplanted for a month or more.

You must specify the total number of acres that you intend to plant

each month. Every time a new month passes, you will see the land that

you planted move into the *planted* category. The month after, it

will move into the *growing* category. Then it will move into the

*ripe* category. The next month, it will be harvested, and will move

back into the *fallow* category.



You must also specify the total number of tons of manure you want the

slaves to spread each month on the land you intend to plant. Too

little fertilizer will cause very poor crops, but too much will

completely kill the wheat. It is up to you to figure out the proper

amount to spread.



June and July are the best months for planting wheat. The harvest of

this crop will be the biggest. By the same token, January plantings

will often be very bad. (Make hay while the sun shines.)



### Feeding Livestock



You must specify how many bushels of wheat you want to feed each of

your slaves, oxen and horses each month. If you feed them too little,

they will sicken and die. If you feed them too much, they can get

lazy. In general, the more work you make your slaves do, the more

food they will require.



Remember, the food you feed your living inventories is deducted from

your store of wheat. Make sure you keep enough wheat around, both for

food and for planting.



### Overseers



Overseers are the managers of your slaves, and the mercenaries which

protect your grounds. They represent both your middle management, and

your military. They are employees, and as such you must pay them a

monthly salary in gold. (And occasionally deal with their unions.)



Without overseers to drive them on, your slaves will do little if any

work. Also, if you don't have enough overseers, enemy armies will

plunder and pillage you into bankruptcy.



You must carefully manage the stress level of your overseers. If you

make unreasonable requests of them, or have exaggerated expectations

of what they can drive the slaves to do, you will find that they get

quite nervous about their jobs. Nervous overseers tend to take their

frustrations out on the slaves, usually with a whip.



### Loans



Probably your first action in the game will be to approach the bank

for a loan. The bank is an enigmatic institution (what bank isn't?)

which seems to have an infinite supply of money. However it is quite

stingy about loaning any of that money to you.



At first you will find that the bank trusts you for a "fairly

substantial" loan. As you grow, the bank will allow you to borrow

more and more money. But you will find that the bank is very concerned

about your debt to asset ratio. In fact, they will foreclose on you

if you let it get too bad.



### Market Prices



You will notice that the prices for the various commodities change

from month to month. Although this may seem like a random fluctuation,

there is in fact an underlying cause. Although the market prices are

indeed subject to random, month to month variations, they are also

subject to the classical laws of supply and demand. If you produce a

lot of a certain commodity, you will be increasing the world supply,

and that will in turn cause the price to drop.



Of course to have a visible effect on the price, you will have to be

dealing with fairly large quantities.



### Work



All activity on your estate requires work. There are 4 monthly work

quotas which you must specify. They are: the number of acres to plant

each month, the number of tons of manure to spread each month, the

number of stones to add to your pyramid each month, and the amount of

food to be distributed to the livestock each month. You must manage

these quotas, making sure that the goals you set are both ambitious

enough to assure your growth, and conservative enough to be realistic.



Your overseers are paid to make sure that the quotas you have

specified get met. If they fail to meet these quotas, they get nervous

about their jobs and will beat the slaves. This will increase the

motivation of the slaves and they will work even harder. But beatings

take a health toll.



It is possible to get the overseers to the point that they are

beating the slaves to great excess. This will cause the slaves to do

a tremendous amount of work for a month or two, while they sicken and

suddenly die on you. It is very easy for this to get out of control,

and you must watch it very closely.



When your slaves fail to get all their work done, it is assumed that

they did all the work proportionally. i.e. if they did 90% of the

required work, then they only planted 90% of the wheat, harvested 90%

of the crops, fed 90% of the wheat to the oxen, etc.



### Running the Simulation



The game consists of a set of one month turns. At the beginning of

each month, you buy and sell commodities, hire or fire overseers, and

adjust planting, spreading, and feeding quotas. Then you *run* for a

month.



The simulation then figures out what happened that month, and displays

the results on the screen.



### Events



Most months are uneventful. Your slaves reap, sow, and have babies.

Your oxen and horses produce lots of manure. And your land grows

wheat. But every once in a while, something happens to disturb the

serenity of the scene.



There are all kinds of events that can occur. Acts of God, acts of

mobs, plagues, wars, uprisings, etc. Each event will challenge the

security of your estate and the wisdom of your strategies. Never

trust your life to the status quo.



### Contracts



There are contracts being offered by other kings in the area. These

contracts fall outside of the usual laws of supply and demand. So even

if you would not be able to buy 1000 acres from the market, you can

contract to buy them from a neighboring king.



Sometimes these contracts can be real bargains, and sometimes they are

horrible rip-offs. You must be the judge. Also, there are penalties

involved. If you fail to meet your contracts, you will be assessed a

percentage of the value of the contract each month until your

commitment is fulfilled.



In general, contracts are an interesting way to make money, and to

influence the market prices. It is possible to procure large amounts

of a commodity from a neighboring king, and then dump it into your

economy, creating a glut.



### Your Neighbors



Like all good pharaohs, you have some neighbors. These are people

just like you, trying to run their estates. You have 4 such

neighbors. You will get to know their distinctive faces and voices.



During the course of any particular game, the personalities of these

players remains constant. But at the beginning of each new game they

are shuffled. It therefore becomes one of the puzzles of the game to

figure out which face belongs to which personality.



**The Good Guy.** The good guy is pretty reliable. He always tries to

give you good advice. If he sees that your slaves are underfed, he

will tell you that they look bad. If he notices that your crops are

poor, he will suggest that you spread more manure.



**The Bad Guy.** The bad guy is working against you all the time.

Practically all the advice he gives you is bad. He will tell you how

wonderful your slaves look, just before they keel over and die from

overwork. He will commend you on your great standing at the bank,

just as they foreclose.



**The Village Idiot.** This guy's advice is completely undependable.

Sometimes it's right, and sometimes it's wrong. There is no telling.



**The Banker.** The banker is the stooge that the bank sends around

to bother you about making loan payments. The more worried the bank

is, the more often he comes.



**Idle messages.** Your neighbors will try to wake you up if you go

to sleep while playing the game. Any time there is a period of

significant inactivity, these helpful little guys will barge right in

with encouraging little slogans or pep talks.



**Chats.** Sometimes your neighbors just pop in for a talk. It is

these particular chats which often contain advice or hints as to your

status. But remember, don't believe everything they tell you. One of

those guys is an idiot, and the other is out to get you.



### Building the Pyramid



You build the pyramid by setting the monthly stone quota. This

specifies the number of stones to be laid per month. The slaves lay

the stones, and the activity requires work. Just how many slaves it

takes to lay stones is a variable you will have to discover.



Pyramid stones are cubes of granite 6 feet on a side. They are carved

from a nearby quarry and carted to the pyramid site. From there they

must be fitted into the pyramid structure itself. It takes a lot of

work and equipment to do all this. Work is provided by the slaves,

and the cost is automatically deducted from your treasury. Make sure

you keep a close eye on these variables, they can easily surprise you.



As the pyramid grows, you will see it grow on the screen. Piece by

piece you will see it being assembled.



### What You Can't See Can Hurt You



There are quite a few invisible processes which go on behind the

screen. It is not possible to directly observe the state of these

processes, so it must be inferred. It is very important to keep close

track of them, because if they get out of control you can rapidly

lose the game.



**Health.** The health of all your livestock is monitored. If they are

overworked, underfed, or mistreated, their health is adversely

affected. If a sick slave or horse is left to recuperate, with little

work to do, and plenty of food to eat, it will heal quite rapidly.

Bad health affects work output, reproduction rate, and the final

selling price (the buyers aren't dummies).



**Stress.** When work gets done on time, the overseers feel confident

in their jobs. But when the work schedule starts to slip, they get

nervous. This will cause them to beat the slaves, which has the

rewarding effect of getting them to do more work.



It is very important to manage the stress level of your overseers,

otherwise they will quickly kill all your slaves. This is very tricky

to manage, since there is no direct indicator of their stress (except

for an occasional chat from a neighbor).



Just remember, whenever a month goes by where all the work did not

get done, the overseers will be a bit nervous that month. If two or

three such months go by, then the overseers will be that much more

nervous. The more nervous they are, the more they will mistreat the

slaves, and the sicker the slaves will become. It takes several good

productive months for overseers to completely relax and regain their

composure.



**Economy.** There are interesting processes underlying the market

prices. Behind the scenes there are other estate owners producing and

consuming a global supply of commodities.



When you become a major producer of a commodity, you start to compete

with these other producers. An oversupply will result, and the price

will begin to fall. Now it's a race. The longer you can maintain your

production in the face of falling prices, the more of your

competition you will displace, until you have carved yourself out a

nice little niche.



On the other hand, if you become a major consumer of a certain

commodity, you will add to the demand for the commodity. This will

result in an under-supply, and the price will begin to rise. Rising

prices attract new competitors to the arena, and they will begin to

produce more and more of the commodity until your demand has been

satisfied. Then the price will stabilize at its new higher level.



The market can only bear so much stress. If you attempt to sell a

large enough quantity of a commodity, the market will refuse to take

it. The same goes for attempting to buy too much -- the market can

run out.



The only cue you have to these economic factors of supply, demand,

and current global production capacity, is the price of the

commodity, and the comments made by the market keepers when you try

to buy or sell. If you are good, you will be able to predict

fluctuations, and finally even control them to your benefit.



**Credit rating.** The bank has a varying opinion of your ability to

repay any outstanding debts. As long as you make frequent payments,

the bank will love you. But if you forget to pay for a few months, or

worse: run out of money at the end of a month, the bank will change

its opinion.



This all has to do with your credit rating. You can never see your

credit rating, but it is there.



If your credit rating is high, then the bank will feel good about

giving you big loans, and will allow relatively severe debt to asset

ratios. But if your credit rating is poor, they will charge you

outlandish interest rates, and refuse to give you even tiny little

loans. They will also yell at you an awful lot, and may even close

you down if your debt gets too out of line.



### The Screen



The pharaoh screen is divided into sections. Each section displays

the data for a certain category of information. The sections are

surrounded by rectangles and titled. Many of the cells are sensitive

to mouse clicks.



**Date.** Each game starts in January of Year 1.



**Gold.** Current gold, last month's gold, and the percentage change.

Click to borrow or repay a loan.



**Loan.** Outstanding balance, monthly interest rate, and credit

limit. Click to borrow or repay.



**Commodities.** Current holdings, last month's holdings, and delta

percent for wheat, manure, slaves, horses, and oxen. Click to buy or

sell.



**Land.** Acres in each state: fallow, planted, growing, ripe, and

total. Selling planted, growing, or ripe land destroys the crops on

it.



**Prices.** Current market prices. These represent how much you must

pay to purchase, and the maximum you will receive if you sell. The

selling price can be less than the market price if the quality of the

merchandise is low (e.g. diseased horses).



**Feed Rates.** How many bushels of wheat you are feeding each slave,

ox, and horse per month. Click to adjust.



**Spread & Plant.** How many acres you are planting and how many tons

of manure you are spreading. Click to adjust.



**Overseers.** How many overseers are employed and the monthly salary

per overseer. Click to hire, fire, or obtain.



**Pending Contracts.** The contracts you are committed to.



**Pyramid.** A picture of the pyramid, its stone count, height, and

the monthly stone quota. Click to adjust the quota.



### Controls



#### Keyboard



| Key | Action             | Key | Action             |

|-----|--------------------|-----|--------------------|

| `w` | Buy/sell wheat     | `S` | Set slave feed rate |

| `s` | Buy/sell slaves    | `O` | Set oxen feed rate  |

| `o` | Buy/sell oxen      | `H` | Set horse feed rate |

| `h` | Buy/sell horses    | `p` | Set acres to plant  |

| `m` | Buy/sell manure    | `f` | Set manure to spread|

| `l` | Buy/sell land      | `q` | Set pyramid quota   |

| `L` | Borrow/repay loan  | `g` | Hire/fire overseers |

| `c` | Contract offers    | `r` | Run one month       |

| Esc | Close dialog       |     |                     |



#### Mouse



The game can be driven almost entirely by the mouse. To adjust a

parameter, simply click on its current value -- to buy wheat, click

on the current amount of wheat. Click the Run button to advance a

month, or Quit to exit.



#### Buying and Selling



When you select a commodity to buy or sell, a dialog box appears.

Select the function by clicking the appropriate radio button, or type

the respective character: `b` = buy, `s` = sell, `k` = keep/acquire.

Then enter the amount and click OK.



Keep and Acquire mean that you want the system to buy or sell whatever

is necessary so that when the transaction is over you will own the

specified amount. i.e., if you think you need 534 slaves total, then

acquire 534.



#### Hiring and Firing



When you select the overseer function, you must specify whether you

want to hire, fire, or obtain overseers. Click the appropriate radio

button, or type: `h` = hire, `f` = fire, `o` = obtain.



Obtain means that you wish to hire or fire the appropriate number in

order to get your current head count to the specified number.



#### Contracts



To browse the currently offered contracts, press `c` or click on the

contracts section. If you see one you like, select it and confirm

your commitment. The contract will appear in your list of pending

contracts.



There is no way to escape from a contract once you have committed it.



Save and load are available from the File menu. Games are saved to

the `saves/` directory by default.



### Skill Levels



**Easy:** You win by building a pyramid 100 ft tall. The bank will

never reduce your credit limit lower than 5,000,000 gold pieces, and

the market prices start out in your overwhelming favor. The game

starts with commodities, overseers, feed rates, and planting already

configured. This does not mean the easy level is easy to play. It

should take you some time to get the hang of how to win. But winning

is possible if you develop the proper business strategy, and are

careful. At this level, your wheat production will most likely never

get high enough to have serious economic effects.



**Moderate:** Your pyramid must reach 300 ft. The bank can reduce

your credit limit all the way to 500,000, and the market prices start

out weak at best. Great care must be taken at this level; it is very

easy to get the business out of balance. Towards the end of the game,

you will probably find that you have to make a transition in the way

you do business. Your wheat production will be so high that the price

of wheat will come crashing down and make your farming business

unprofitable. You can solve this problem by dealing in other

commodities, or relying on external contracts.



**Hard:** You must complete a pyramid of 1,000 ft. This is hard! The

bank may deign to give you a piddling 50,000 gold pieces, and the

market prices are decidedly poor. The rule of this game is flexibility

and changability. You will no doubt be forced to change the

composition of your business several times. Your production levels

and purchasing powers will have to get so high that they can exert

overwhelming effects on the local economy. You will be able to exert

vast control over the market prices. The hard part is keeping your

business in balance, and keeping the bank happy.



### Ownership Costs



Every month you pay a maintenance cost for your holdings. If your

gold goes negative before the emergency loan tops it up, your

overseers quit and demand a raise.



| Asset  | Cost per unit per month |

|--------|------------------------|

| Land   | 100 gold / acre        |

| Slaves | 10 gold / slave        |

| Horses | 5 gold / horse         |

| Oxen   | 3 gold / ox            |



These costs are multiplied by a random factor averaging ~1.0 each

month. In addition you pay overseer salaries (default 300 gold each

per month) and loan interest (0.5% of outstanding loan per month).



### Hints



- Be aware of the workload of your slaves. It depends upon a lot of

  factors, among them: the amount of livestock you have, the amount of

  land you are planting, the amount of fertilizer you are spreading,

  the number of pyramid stones you are laying, random events such as

  wars and revolts, and the amount of wheat that needs harvesting.



- You will know if your slaves are not meeting their workload quota if

  they fail to plant everything you asked for, and you know you had

  enough land and wheat for the planting. In this case, the slaves'

  work will be spread evenly over all their activities. If they only

  managed to plant half the wheat you demanded, then they were only

  able to feed the livestock half their food, harvest half the wheat,

  and lay half the pyramid stones.



- If your slaves are working fine through the winter, spring, and

  summer, but fail to meet quota during the fall, it may be that the

  fall harvests of the summer plantings (the really big harvests) are

  too much for the slaves.



- Watch the prices. Especially watch the price of your cash crop. If

  you see it falling rapidly, you are probably overproducing. The

  demand for products in your local economy increases with time. If

  you produce at a rate which is in excess of this demand, then the

  price will plummet as the inventories grow. If this happens to you,

  then consider changing your cash crop, or selling outside your local

  economy. Don't let the prices get out of control -- you may find

  that you have devalued the worth of your estate to the point that

  the bank will not be able to find sufficient collateral for a loan.



---



## Running



Requires Java 11+ and [Clojure CLI tools](https://clojure.org/guides/install_clojure).



```bash

clojure -M:run

```



Or use the shell script:



```bash

./run.sh

```



## Testing



```bash

clojure -M:test

```



The test suite includes:



- **Unit tests** covering trading, loans, overseers, health, planting,

  contracts, persistence, input handling, dialog execution, and more.

- **Gherkin acceptance tests** -- 15 feature files with 370 scenarios,

  executed by a custom Gherkin parser and runner.



```bash

# Coverage report

clojure -M:coverage -o target/coverage

```



## Project Structure



```

src/pharaoh/           Clojure source

  core.clj             Main game loop and rendering (Quil)

  state.clj            Initial state and defaults

  simulation.clj       Monthly simulation tick

  trading.clj          Buy/sell market operations

  overseers.clj        Hire/fire/obtain, stress, lashing

  contracts.clj        Contract negotiation and settlement

  loans.clj            Borrowing, repayment, credit checks

  health.clj           Livestock and slave health model

  feeding.clj          Feed rate calculations

  planting.clj         Crop cycle and harvest

  economy.clj          Market price and supply/demand simulation

  events.clj           Random hazards

  messages.clj         All message pools (~500 strings)

  random.clj           Coveyou PRNG with uniform/gaussian/exponential

  tables.clj           Piecewise-linear interpolation tables

  ui/                  Input handling, layout, dialogs, menus

  gherkin/             Custom Gherkin parser and step definitions



features/              Gherkin feature files

resources/             Icons, face portraits, logo

test/                  Unit and acceptance tests

```



## History



Pharaoh was originally written in C for the Macintosh around 1988. The

game's resource fork contained bitmap portraits, icons, and hundreds of

humorous message strings -- all of which have been extracted and

preserved in this port.



The Clojure rewrite began in February 2026 as an experiment in using

Claude Code to translate a legacy C codebase into modern Clojure. The

original C source (in `Pharaoh src/c/`) served as the reference. A

detailed specification (`initial-spec.md`) was reverse-engineered from

the C code, and the Clojure implementation was built from that spec

using test-driven development.



The port uses [Quil](http://quil.info) (a Clojure wrapper around

Processing) for rendering, matching the original's grid-based layout

with clickable sections, dialog overlays, and animated face portraits.



Key milestones in the rewrite:



- Core economic simulation (trading, planting, feeding, health)

- Overseer stress and lashing mechanics

- Loan system with credit checks and foreclosure

- Contract negotiation with four AI neighbors

- Random events (locusts, plagues, wars, revolts, acts of God)

- Neighbor visit system with text-to-speech

- Difficulty selection screen

- Save/load with dirty-flag prompting

- 632 unit tests and 370 Gherkin acceptance scenarios