A consistent Egypt strategy?

[Jarms48]

I'd have liked to see the Chariot Archer be placed in addition to the Heavy Chariot, that'd give Egypt some greater viability when it comes to early war.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

This bit of information about Agoge applying to Chariot Archers makes them a bit more attractive then. Instead of rushing Archery (a dead-end tech), you rush The Wheel (which leads to more techs). When you have them, you'll probably have Agoge to cut off the production cost to around 100 cogs. You can still use this policy to produce a couple of Warriors for the last hit.

 

[A+ombomb]

The best egypt strategy is to leverage professional army with mass slingers (0 maintenance). Avoid getting archery and spam slingers, then get commercial hubs in all cities (build on rivers for reduced cost) and external trade routes with bonus egypt money. Save up the $$ and "double your money" when you pro army upgrade all the slingers on the cheap. Mass ranged units are already overpowered, and this is one of the best civs to leverage it. The roads to their doorstep also allow you to transport your army to position faster - nice perk. Can usually destroy multiple civs at once with this tactic, as you will have such an enormous army.

Time getting feudalism at the same time you want to start getting markets in cities, for additional efficiency, since it will remove the ability to produce slingers +50% rate.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

The best egypt strategy is to leverage professional army with mass slingers (0 maintenance). Avoid getting archery and spam slingers, then get commercial hubs in all cities (build on rivers for reduced cost) and external trade routes with bonus egypt money. Save up the $$ and "double your money" when you pro army upgrade all the slingers on the cheap. Mass ranged units are already overpowered, and this is one of the best civs to leverage it. The roads to their doorstep also allow you to transport your army to position faster - nice perk. Can usually destroy multiple civs at once with this tactic, as you will have such an enormous army.

Time getting feudalism at the same time you want to start getting markets in cities, for additional efficiency, since it will remove the ability to produce slingers +50% rate.

I think Professional Army comes too late to upgrade Slingers. The upgrade costs measly 30 gold, and by the time this policy comes into play, enemy cities usually already have walls. Also, beelining it means delaying Political Philosophy.

 

[A+ombomb]

Incorrect - you upgrade the slingers into crossbows, or if your science is strong, directly to field cannons. Avoid researching archery, since archers have a maintenance cost and are more production to build (to optimize money usage, you want to go with the cheapest to produce unit). Upgrading a slinger to a field cannon is 160 with professional army, I believe (80 on online speed). I generally have a mass of about 25 slingers to upgrade by the time I research ballistics b-line, which can come quite early if you hit the eureka moments.

Political philosophy is always the first culture hit. No reason not to get it.

 

[joncnunn]

archers have a maintenance cost

Note that one of the military policies unlocked by an early civic has the effect of eliminating the maintenance cost of Archers (along with the other units that normally cost 1 maintenance per turn)

 

[A+ombomb]

Note that one of the military policies unlocked by an early civic has the effect of eliminating the maintenance cost of Archers (along with the other units that normally cost 1 maintenance per turn)

Sometimes using this is fine, but generally classic republic is far better than alternatives, and the wildcard slot is in high demand. It's much easier to just avoid archery. Also, it advantages egypt with cash economy more to build units of the minumum production value.

 

[KmDubya]

Sometimes using this is fine, but generally classic republic is far better than alternatives, and the wildcard slot is in high demand. It's much easier to just avoid archery. Also, it advantages egypt with cash economy more to build units of the minumum production value.

Archers are what you need for defense against the AI and for killing troops with focused fire. Slingers with their one range are quite bad at this and their really low melee strength leads to them getting one shot by anything stronger than classical units. How do you survive until Modern age to upgrade to field cannons?

Also field cannons do not do very well against equivalent era walls. Sure they'll kill units but you win by taking cities and they are not good at that.

Specifically to Egypt how are they better at a cash economy than anyone else? Trade routes from the AI? Any civ that gets an additional government card (Greece and Germany) or who can build a wonder that gives said card is going to be inherently better at generating cash than Egypt.

Egypt is actually worse than a 'vanilla' civ in that by getting the overpriced chariot archers instead of heavy chariots they can't pre-build and upgrade to knights as their chariot archers turn into crossbows. So their sub par war making in the early game extends into the medieval era by making knights cost prohibitive to use.

Like it or not they are down with Norway in the basement, even Spain gets to the average level if you can manage to get a religion.

 

[Abraxis]

Just because you don't know how to play them doesn't make them bad. If you're going to make this claim you aught to be able to back it up with something a little more substantial than they can't pre-build knights. How are you qualifying that against the bonuses they do receive? Do you even know how to best make use of them? If so why don't you tell us. If not, what is your purpose here, and what value does your snap-judgement have?

As for gold generation, I was making something like 100 gold from incoming trade routes in the industrial era a couple games ago without a single policy or wonder enhancing them. Just from the +4 given by her bonus. That's quite substantial, to say the least. Claiming they aren't good at generating gold is absurd, unless you're infuriating every AI they might have the highest passive gold generation in the game once trade routes become globalized.

 

[A+ombomb]

Archers are what you need for defense against the AI and for killing troops with focused fire. Slingers with their one range are quite bad at this and their really low melee strength leads to them getting one shot by anything stronger than classical units. How do you survive until Modern age to upgrade to field cannons?

Also field cannons do not do very well against equivalent era walls. Sure they'll kill units but you win by taking cities and they are not good at that.

Specifically to Egypt how are they better at a cash economy than anyone else? Trade routes from the AI? Any civ that gets an additional government card (Greece and Germany) or who can build a wonder that gives said card is going to be inherently better at generating cash than Egypt.

Egypt is actually worse than a 'vanilla' civ in that by getting the overpriced chariot archers instead of heavy chariots they can't pre-build and upgrade to knights as their chariot archers turn into crossbows. So their sub par war making in the early game extends into the medieval era by making knights cost prohibitive to use.

Like it or not they are down with Norway in the basement, even Spain gets to the average level if you can manage to get a religion.

Like I said, it depends on tech levels. I can easily hit field cannons by about 1ad-200ad with an average game. If tech is lagging, or you get antsy, get machinery and upgrade to crossbows.

Ranged units are amazing at taking down walls. Not sure what you are talking about. If you really feel like you need it, bring a bombard/catapult, but field cannons completely roll walls. Their power is very high. You do need a general though. I also complete the terracotta army.

You need archery to defend against AI? Cmon now. Lol. If the AI rushes you, swords are just fine with the slingers. I would avoid getting the UU - its cost is prohibitive. The AI is terrible in this game, so I don't understand your struggle.

 

[Abraxis]

Another handy little detail I enjoyed taking advantage of in my last game was using Sphinxes to boost new cities instead of building monuments. Make sure you get a builder out with every settler to put down at least one sphinx and you can start working on something useful as soon as you put the city down. A military unit, walls, or a nice district, whatever. You also start gaining territory immediately (quadruples tile growth from 0.3 culture growth to 1.3 culture growth per turn) which is a very valuable in terms of turns saved. It's a way to outsourced the production for that necessary initial culture to your capital or other high production cities.
It's like a weaker version of Rome's ability. Much more valuable of course if you've built the Pyramids, reducing the opportunity cost of a builder's charge.

I imagine Sumeria could do this too.

 

[A+ombomb]

Another handy little detail I enjoyed taking advantage of in my last game was using Sphinxes to boost new cities instead of building monuments. Make sure you get a builder out with every settler to put down at least one sphinx and you can start working on something useful as soon as you put the city down. A military unit, walls, or a nice district, whatever. You also start gaining territory immediately (quadruples tile growth from 0.3 culture growth to 1.3 culture growth per turn) which is a very valuable in terms of turns saved. It's a way to outsourced the production for that necessary initial culture to your capital or other high production cities.
It's like a weaker version of Rome's ability. Much more valuable of course if you've built the Pyramids, reducing the opportunity cost of a builder's charge.

I imagine Sumeria could do this too.

I'd honestly rather buy a monument than use a worker charge on a sphinx....lol. sphinx output is just way too weak and needs a buff. But sometimes buying a monument and waiting isn't optimal either....putting in an investment to buy the good tiles can produce enough immediate influx of food and production to more than make up the cost of the tiles.

The best way is probably to plant next to the good tiles or steal good tiles from older cities, to get the new city rolling, and just not worry about border to expansion at all.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Like I said, it depends on tech levels. I can easily hit field cannons by about 1ad-200ad with an average game. If tech is lagging, or you get antsy, get machinery and upgrade to crossbows.

Ranged units are amazing at taking down walls. Not sure what you are talking about. If you really feel like you need it, bring a bombard/catapult, but field cannons completely roll walls. Their power is very high. You do need a general though. I also complete the terracotta army.

You need archery to defend against AI? Cmon now. Lol. If the AI rushes you, swords are just fine with the slingers. I would avoid getting the UU - its cost is prohibitive. The AI is terrible in this game, so I don't understand your struggle.

If you don't care about Archers then why build Slingers at all? I'd simply build a few Warriors for defence and beeline Heavy Chariots/Siege Towers to take cities, and later on upgrade them to Knights. Or maybe build Horsemen; why use Field Cannons when you can use Cavalry, which does a better job when paired with Siege Towers?

Ultimately, though, Egypt wasn't supposed to be a warmonger. That's why they seem weak. Chariot Archers are powerful but costly; 3 or 4 of them should be enough to defend you during the early aggression phase. The rest of their bonuses favor a peaceful, tall-building play (even the Sphinx, which was probably designed to be built on those crap tiles, such as flat desert).

Thing is, it's the complete opposite of the current meta. That's why they seem to be underpowered.

 

[Abraxis]

I'd honestly rather buy a monument than use a worker charge on a sphinx....lol. sphinx output is just way too weak and needs a buff.

You say you'd rather buy a monument... why not just buy a worker, build a sphinx, and still have at least a couple charges left over to build other things? Your value analysis seems biased.

You'd prefer an upgrade that gives you a single food, single gold, or single production? I mean, a single faith and culture is not mind blowingly powerful, but it's not useless like you imply. if only for the fact that it gives you more adaptability and gives you more options for expansion. Nevermind the fact that secondary yeilds are more powerful than primary ones (primary yeilds are the means to the ends -secondary yields and military units), and this gives you two secondary yields instead of a single primary. The only change I'd like to see is to get rid of faith for something else, but that's not because I think it's weak so much as I'm personally not a big fan of faith, and haven't figured out a good use for it.

The culture though is worth it in my opinion. This allows you to only use a single culture to grow if you'd like (1 culture for 0.3 to 1.3 is the most significant increase you'll ever get out of a single culture, every additional culture sees vastly diminished returns) Putting that first tile at about 9 turns from almost never, at the cost of a third of a standard builder, the total cost of which should only be slightly higher than a monument at this point. Add on to this the ways of increasing the production value of a builder (pyramids adding a charge and policy lowering their production by 30%) and the cost for me to get my cities growing this way is about a 4th or 5th that of buying a monument, either with cash or production -and I can put that cost in a city that can actually afford it in the case of production.

What's appropriate is often situational as well, but that's the ultimate advantage here. This gives more configurability to tune exactly how efficiently you grow by fine tuning how you distribute your resources. Specifically in this case by creating the means with pyramids and Ilkum to maximize the ability to package and mobilize production and shipping it out via builders using sphinxes as a conversion. At the end of the day it's not about the faith or the culture, those are just the substitutes that make this possible. This practice is about freeing up production which can ultimately be leveraged into whatever you need.

 

[KmDubya]

You say you'd rather buy a monument... why not just buy a worker, build a sphinx, and still have at least a couple charges left over to build other things? Your value analysis seems biased.

You'd prefer an upgrade that gives you a single food, single gold, or single production? I mean, a single faith and culture is not mind blowingly powerful, but it's not useless like you imply. if only for the fact that it gives you more adaptability and gives you more options for expansion. Nevermind the fact that secondary yeilds are more powerful than primary ones (primary yeilds are the means to the ends, secondary yields and military units), and this gives you two secondary yields instead of a single primary. The only change I'd like to see is to get rid of faith for something else, but that's not because I think it's weak so much as I'm personally not a big fan of faith, and haven't figured out a good use for it.

The culture though is worth it in my opinion. This allows you to only use a single culture to grow if you'd like (1 culture for 0.3 to 1.3 is the most significant increase you'll ever get out of a single culture, every additional culture sees vastly diminished returns) Putting that first tile at about 9 turns from almost never, at the cost of a third of a standard builder, the total cost of which should only be slightly higher than a monument at this point. Add on to this the ways of increasing the production value of a builder (pyramids adding a charge and policy lowering their production by 30%) and the cost for me to get my cities growing this way is about a 4th or 5th that of buying a monument, either with cash or production -and I can put that cost in a city that can actually afford it in the case of production.

What's appropriate is often situational as well, but that's the ultimate advantage here. This gives more configurability to tune exactly how efficiently you grow by fine tuning how you distribute your resources. Specifically in this case by creating the means with pyramids and Ilkum to maximize the ability to package and mobilize production and shipping it out via builders using sphinxes as a conversion. At the end of the day it's not about the faith or the culture, those are just the substitutes that make this possible. This practice is about freeing up production which can ultimately be leveraged into whatever you need.

But the citizen that needs to work the Sphinx is not free, while a monument is. The monument always is working giving you your +2 culture. You need to choose to first use a builder charge and build the Sphinx, and then to actually assign a citizen to working the tile.

At what point in a cities development can you afford to work a tile that does not produce any food and hammers? This is the fundamental fail of all of the unique terrain improvements.

 

[Abraxis]

At what point in a cities development can you afford to work a tile that does not produce any food and hammers

Are you under the impression you can only place the Sphinx on empty deserts? You can place them on any unimproved tile, you're still receiving base yields, the only mutual exclusivity comes from the choice between having your citizen work a farm, mine or Sphinx (+1production, +1food, +1culture&faith) on those base tiles.

As far as production goes, I've already explained how this indirectly earns you production, while giving you so many other benefits. The mine would have to work for 30 turns before it could even begin to compare in value for production alone. At that point, the comparison between production and culture (and faith I guess, but I don't even want to get into that) is entirely situational and based on your goals and what you're willing to leverage for victory, and you should pick whichever is appropriate... and having that choice as Egypt is wonderful.
(A bit harder to quantify but definitely significant, there are further bonuses to production provided by culture by acquiring high value tiles faster, and acquiring production saving policies quicker)

As for the farm, food is important, yes, but not that important, certainly not like it was in civ5. It's great to be able to grow up a city quickly, but you're still going to hit a housing cap at which point food is completely worthless and you'll likely cut your food excess in favor of anything else unless you're pumping out settlers.
The ultimate goal in developing a city is to produce secondary yields, which the sphinx gives you right from the start. So yes, a city working a sphinx instead of a farm might grow a bit slower, but it also starts its life, and spends that growth time paying off, rather than simply working toward future potential.

And then there is the simple but maybe crucial caveat that this competition with a farm doesn't really exist either, since Egypt has an inherent bias to start near flood planes (often with wheat on them), meaning it's very rare you'll find yourself valuing food for all its abundance with Egypt.

I don't want to be mistaken as claiming Sphinxes are always worth building, but saying they never are is absurd. The bonuses provided are just less obvious, and take some dedication to develop a working understanding. I thought they were garbage when I looked at them on paper too.

 

[Forster]

Archers are what you need for defense against the AI and for killing troops with focused fire. Slingers with their one range are quite bad at this and their really low melee strength leads to them getting one shot by anything stronger than classical units. How do you survive until Modern age to upgrade to field cannons?

Also field cannons do not do very well against equivalent era walls. Sure they'll kill units but you win by taking cities and they are not good at that.

.

I don't understand why you think field artillery isn't worth building. It isn't as strong as regular artillery, but if you put six to eight of them in a city attack, it will only take a few turns to reduce the city to nothing.

 

[Forbiddentwo]

And then there is the simple but maybe crucial caveat that this competition with a farm doesn't really exist either, since Egypt has an inherent bias to start near flood planes (often with wheat on them), meaning it's very rare you'll find yourself valuing food for all its abundance with Egypt.

And then there are those garment-rendingly frustrating times when I start up a game after a nice casual theorycrafting session, all set to exploit said floodplains only to get spawned next to a plain old river over and over .