I do understand and agree with much of the arguments presented here and have to say that initially I was also leaning against a coastal Thebes. But, honestly, the cost of avoiding it seem a bit excessive in my mind: the problem with the westward shift is not particularly another shrink of Sahara, but how we changed the almost entirety of Nile position to a more inaccurate place – affecting particularly the delta area and the distance between Alexandria and Cyrenaica – because of a single extra row of desert to ensure an inland Thebes. Honestly, seems like we are little bit of Königsberging things here.
I think you guys presented good historical and gameplay arguments here. I’d also remember the famous Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, which described in detail the intensive Indian Ocean trade during Roman times that even involved East Asian ports. As we all agree here, Egypt always had a strong connection with the Red Sea and its trade, even though the Mediterranean became more important from the Hellenistic era on. So, we all agree that the player, and the AI, should have the opportunity to reasonably represent this historical fact.
Regarding the extra effort for the player and AI to have the opportunity of exploring Red Sea and establishing trade routes there, let’s us be real: in the most western Nile location, Egypt, being the AI or the player, mostly likely won’t be settling cities there, because the area is terrible in production and would make it too cramped, taking away more useful workable tiles from Nile cities. Thus, things will reduce to a situation where we do represent this Red Sea connection with Thebes, or we simply won’t have it, which is, as we discussed, ahistorical.
About Thebes focus on building ships, I’d say that I’m not so sure about that. Right now, Egypt is far isolated in early game and just face troubles against Greek and Roman conquerors, besides an occasional Medjay. Because things are so peaceful, you can afford ignoring military units and defense for a long time, focusing on other things: just see how the AI loves spamming useless cities in Epic or Marathon games. But on the new map things probably will become quite different. First, Egypt will start with Memphis and Thebes is likely to be settled later, so it is less time/production for exploring the Red Sea in the ancient era. Second, with the new civ additions, things may become more troubled: Assyria probably will be hostile to Egypt (and probably we should also make Persia more hostile, because right now it seems that they never go to war) and Nubia will be right next door, and certainly will set its eyes on Thebes, as they did historically. So, I don’t know if things will be so peaceful that the city will afford spamming galleys there, especially earlier on.
While I do think that adding a cape feature is an interesting and easy solution, I’ve come to think that it may be even unnecessary, given that the sea trade with Mesopotamia, Persia and India, and the Red Sea to Indian Ocean exploration, is historically attested at least from Alexander time, so the cape should disappear quite early on. Nonetheless, if added, we probably should include next to Aden, which, IIRC, it is a single water tile between it and the Horn of Africa and could easily block the strait.
(Edit for clarity)