Why is Egypt considered low tier? I do great with them.About to win....

[AntPi1e]

Why is Egypt considered low tier? I do great with them.About to win a FFA vs 11 Computer players on a Huge Map On Immortal(marathon).

EDIT: After playing a few games on Deity for the first time.I have decided Egypt is not as good in deity as it is in immortal or less,for the simple fact that even with egypts UA,marble(15% wonder production in ancient/classic eras) and the policy that gives +15% wonder production I still was only able to finish 1-2 wonders.(by the industrial era)
(be
So to recap, I believe Egypt is godly if not the best civ in immortal or below.In deity I consider them mid to low tier.

 

[Princeofnigeria]

I don't really consider Egypt low tier, but here are the most common points I hear:
1. UA is inneffective at higher difficulties due to AI production level negating its effectiveness, and on lower difficulties it's useless as you can pretty much get whatever wonder you want without it.
2. UU is lack luster and is barely an improvement over the already useless and short lived base unit.
3. UB aids the enemy and gives them an even greater incentive to attack you on top of the additional wonders.
If you have rebbutals I can only give token counter arguements as I don't think Egypt is low tier, more low/mid tier.

 

[AntPi1e]

Hmm.Thanks for the response.Now let the debate begin

"1. UA is inneffective at higher difficulties due to AI production level negating its effectiveness, and on lower difficulties it's useless as you can pretty much get whatever wonder you want without it."

I feel that if you are a player that tends to build wonders, having that 20% increased hammers not only helps you beat ai to completing wonders, but by finishing the wonders faster than you would with any other civ,that creates more time for building other things.Yes the AI has increased hammers in higher difficulty,and they will get some wonders,but this enables you to get some as well,instead of possibly none.I feel like this is the best UA available.


"2. UU is lack luster and is barely an improvement over the already useless and short lived base unit."
Agreed

"3. UB aids the enemy and gives them an even greater incentive to attack you on top of the additional wonders."

The burial tomb gives you bonuses, and gives enemies that raze the city double the gold.Until you actually let a city become razed, the advantage is on your side. If your cities are being razed, you probaly arent going to win anyways.I am finishing a game on Immortal and have had 25-75 happiness the whole game. (Had 3 golden ages just from happiness out of about 10 total golden ages, and burial tombs were a big part of that)

 

[Tyrvos]

Why is Egypt considered low tier? I do great with them.About to win a FFA vs 11 Computer players on a Huge Map On Immortal(marathon).

The thing to remember about tier lists is that they are 1) opinions based on personal preference and 2) relative to other teams.

I don't know what tier list you are going by, but I always see Egypt in the top half.
Here are three that rate them well.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=505057
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/938528-sid-meiers-civilization-v/66881680
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=165514319

Remember that low tier doesn't necessarily mean bad. Civ is pretty good about balancing, although there may be some outliers. Two of my favorite teams, Denmark and Carthage, are rated pretty low tier but that doesn't mean you can't do well with them. What kills some teams is the lack of flexibility from a narrow focus (i.e Denmark).

Hmm.Thanks for the response.Now let the debate begin

"1. UA is inneffective at higher difficulties due to AI production level negating its effectiveness, and on lower difficulties it's useless as you can pretty much get whatever wonder you want without it."

I feel that if you are a player that tends to build wonders, having that 20% increased hammers not only helps you beat ai to completing wonders, but by finishing the wonders faster than you would with any other civ,that creates more time for building other things.Yes the AI has increased hammers in higher difficulty,and they will get some wonders,but this enables you to get some as well,instead of possibly none.I feel like this is the best UA available.

The problem with the UA, at least in my opinion, is that it really doesn't provide too much overall in terms of flexibility. Yes, wonder building is great, but at least for me in higher difficulties, I only focus on a few wonders that I tend to get anyways. I'd rather have a UA that could synergize with my military or with my economy. One of my favorite is the Dutch's UA because it doesn't really determine my playstyle, say by forcing wonder spam, but it helps me with happiness, gold, and diplomacy which can all be used to pursue almost any victory.

 

[danaphanous]

ANY civ that gets extra early happiness is great. I think the problem is so many players stay small early game--it's a habit. they aren't used to capitalizing on that early happiness, just like they aren't used to capitalizing on the advantage for early religion. I see Egypt as good also, but mainly FOR the burial tomb and incentive for religion (which is also a great boost early game). Both synergize really well with rapid early population growth OR expanding wider than most civs can possibly do early-game. Immortal especially, even going tradition it can be hard to get all 4 cities AND keep them growing as fast as possible. No problem for Egypt as they get +8 extra happiness AND you get a religion from the effort. If you are going wide? Even better...that's an extra, critical, early city or two and an early happiness option to help each one grow bigger. (main problems with liberty). Your religion will solve your culture problems too. Who cares if AI get some extra money if they happen to capture a city? I've got a much higher population or more cities as a result and that advantage will snowball all game. Once the AI starts hooking up extra luxes your happiness problems are solved for a while, but Egypt really shines, because you don't need to wait for this or divert for colloseums. Plus, even better, it's less maintenance than a normal temple! You won't run into gold problems building them.

the wonder building might only get me 2 extra or so on immortal games as I usually get what I try for--just a perk, but still nice if I need it. True that it saves hammers, but I'm not wonderspamming constantly early game and getting things pretty quickly already later in the Renaissance and onward. Science has a bigger effect on how many wonders I get.

 

[joncnunn]

I don't really consider Egypt low tier, but here are the most common points I hear:
1. UA is inneffective at higher difficulties due to AI production level negating its effectiveness, and on lower difficulties it's useless as you can pretty much get whatever wonder you want without it.
2. UU is lack luster and is barely an improvement over the already useless and short lived base unit.
3. UB aids the enemy and gives them an even greater incentive to attack you on top of the additional wonders.
If you have rebbutals I can only give token counter arguements as I don't think Egypt is low tier, more low/mid tier.

I would place them low to mid tier. #1 is what really hurts their rating.

#1 At King and below you can build all wonders easily as anybody.
At Deity, the UA stops working entirely due to AI bonuses (unless you want a bit more fail gold from being further along)

So Egypt's UA benefit is concentrated at Emperor level (for the earliest ones) and Immortal level (for slightly later but still early).

#2 The UU is actually decent; No horses required so you can always build it. However there are promotion issues when you upgrade it.

#3 AI won't care about that. And the UB is really good since it both adds happiness and is maintenance free unlike the base building.

 

[Loucypher]

Yeah, Egypt has a poor UA. So what? So does Ethiopia, and that is a civ that's close to God Tier. Having a good UA is nice, but a great building is even better, as Ethiopia proves. And that's exactly what Egypt has.
The Burial Tomb is certainly in the upper levels of UB's. It's not Stele or Pyramid level, but it's up there. Early happiness + Free faith (Other civs have to pay 2 gpt for each temple, after all) isn't a bad thing. It helps with later game Great Person purchases even if you didn't get a religion. Other civs aren't as likely to quickly get that temple up and running. As was stated before, the AI doesn't care about the extra money one'd get from plundering an Egyptian city...and really, if your cities get plundered, you have bigger problems then the opponent getting a bit of extra pocket money.
As for the UU, the ability to quickly build them enables Egypt to be an early game warmonger, if so desired. Yeah they have upgrade issues but so what? Rush down early game enemies with them, then once knights become available, just turn them into cannon fodder that might soften up enemy units a bit before biting the dust.

 

[Vitruvius]

Egypt is top top tier on multiplayer because:
1. Fair wonder production
2. Great UU for early rush
3. Great UB

Egypt is mid-high tier on deity
1. UA also applies to national wonders. UA enables you to rush one ancient/classical wonder which would otherwise be impossible.
2. Shorter lived UU than multiplayer but otherwise still good. It is cheaper, faster and more powerful than CB. Only problem is on single player promotions tend to be kept longer and hence it is better to build the archer line. But don't compare them with regular chariots. Regular chariots actually use horses which you want to be trading with AI.
3. UB is still great.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

[Seabastian Civ]

The UB is really, really great. Anytime you get free happiness that's accessible in the classical (?) era, its Civ calling out, "warrrrrrmonger... warrrrrrmonger."

Egypt is a middle of the road civ that was become a runaway as easily as anyone.

 

[Acken]

How is Egypt UA poor ? What the hell.

Sure it's not Poland, Babylon etc level of OPness but it's a decent UA. 20% more production toward wonders is decent no matter your difficulty.
At low level it still frees up a LOT of turn when you're wonder spamming and at immortal Deity you will still make wonders, especially for a CV... it can give you the edge to get classical/Medieval wonders and for renaissance+ wonders you will again, get a lot of free hammers.

And then they have a good UU for an early rush and a good UB with free happiness.

 

[Calouste]

How is Egypt UA poor ? What the hell.

Sure it's not Poland, Babylon etc level of OPness but it's a decent UA. 20% more production toward wonders is decent no matter your difficulty.
At low level it still frees up a LOT of turn when you're wonder spamming and at immortal Deity you will still make wonders, especially for a CV... it can give you the edge to get classical/Medieval wonders and for renaissance+ wonders you will again, get a lot of free hammers.

And then they have a good UU for an early rush and a good UB with free happiness.

The general consensus among the "deity players" on these forums seems to be that any civ that you have to think about how to use or is somewhat situational is poor. Hence Babylon and Poland are considered top.

 

[civ54lyfe]

20% to include the Natl Wonders is something really nice and i hadn't considered before. neat little hat trick there. espcially when i have to stop building the crap that i really wanna build to pause for the NC.

 

[tetley]

I was thinking the same about Egypt being warmonger. Chariots don't require horses. You can spam these and wreak some havoc, and get cities in peace deals. I think people tend to think of Egypt in terms of EARLY wonder-building, when in fact they need to be doing a low-end, early-game keshik rush and then switch to wonders when the chariots go obsolete.

 

[Loucypher]

The general consensus among the "deity players" on these forums seems to be that any civ that you have to think about how to use or is somewhat situational is poor. Hence Babylon and Poland are considered top.

...Wow. Just. Wow. Tell this to the Maya, please, then report back to me.
Civs are high-deity-tier-material if they are reliably strong in every situation, not if they're only good in specific situations. Hence why Korea (ALWAYS good) is god tier, whereas a civ like Polynesia (Sometimes amazing, often decent, sometimes piss-poor) is in the lower tiers.
Thing is that EVEN WITH THE WONDER PRODUCTION BONUS, it isn't exactly reliable to get early wonders. AI still starts with several techs pre-unlocked and therefore is much earlier to the wonders, and they need less production too. Furthermore, Egypt has a No-Forest start bias, meaning chopping isn't a viable gameplan. Therefore, it's not all that viable to go for early game wonders any more then you'd normally would on deity. Now it does help in the later stages of the game, but really, the UA is just not great.

 

[Acken]

Who gives about early wonders. You still get a bonus production to all the other wonders and national wonders.

Nobody claims the UA is excellent or that Egypt is on par with Korea. It just is okay with a good UU and a decent building. All this make Egypt a decent Civ, not a great one.

This is not a binary system where everything is either great or poor which seems to be a weird mentality here. Because at this rate you'd end up with 5 great civs and 45 (or whatever) poor ones.

 

[Ryika]

Who gives about early wonders. You still get a bonus production to all the other wonders and national wonders.

Nobody claims the UA is excellent or that Egypt is on par with Korea. It just is okay with a good UU and a decent building. All this make Egypt a decent Civ, not a great one.

This is not a binary system where everything is either great or poor which seems to be a weird mentality here. Because at this rate you'd end up with 5 great civs and 45 (or whatever) poor ones.

That's why people rate them "low" tier. Not quite as good as the average Civ, not as bad as the most useless Civs. Can't really see why you'd assume that anyone tries to establish a binary system or wants to claim that all Civs except for a few chosen Civs are equally bad. They actually did the exact opposite.

@topic:

Egypt is a nice Civ for those that actually risk to build wonders that they "might or might not get", but it's not that useful for those "100%-Wonders" later in the game, because at that point your cap will usually not really have production-problems anyway so there's not that much useful stuff that could be built within the few turns that you save.

The UB has some serious timing issues. It won't help you get a religion, it just comes too late, even if you beeline it. The additional happiness is nice for certain strategies (like early warfare), but just isn't needed for the strategies that are usually considered to be effective - so overall, most of the time the UB is usually nothing more than a hidden "save some gpt"-modifier. Which is sad, because it looks really strong.

However, this is standard-speed. Thinks work quite different on marathon, especially with huge maps.

 

[Acken]

That's why people rate them "low" tier. Not quite as good as the average Civ, not as bad as the most useless Civs. Can't really see why you'd assume that anyone tries to establish a binary system or wants to claim that all Civs except for a few chosen Civs are equally bad. They actually did the exact opposite.

Who are "people" ?

 

[Ryika]

Well, those who the op is referring to, when he says:

Why is Egypt considered low tier?

That's of course not to say that they're considered low-tier by the overall playerbase, sorry if it sounded like I was implying that.

 

[Acken]

Well that's what I'm getting at. I don't really know where this is coming from that they're a poor civ.

I certainly don't agree with the statement and the Tier list present on this forum put them at "slightly above average" which seems alright to me.

 

[CraigMak]

Egypt is an amazing civ I don't know what you're talking about. Chariot spam is crazy strong, the mass happiness from their UB is incredibly good too. Their wonder production is an added bonus.