Another look at Egypt

We're not talking about single player. You can kill AI with a ham sandwich in single player.

So, your SP advice is:

1. Improve a wheat tile
2. Improve a truffles tile
3. Win!

Seriously, there is nothing in the OP about MP vs. SP, so don't presume to impose an MP limitation on this thread. In fact, the first post to even mention MP was Tabarnak's post (#36) -- none of your prior posts mentioned that you were talking about MP (much less only talking about MP).
 
So, your SP advice is:

1. Improve a wheat tile
2. Improve a truffles tile
3. Win!

Seriously, there is nothing in the OP about MP vs. SP, so don't presume to impose an MP limitation on this thread. In fact, the first post to even mention MP was Tabarnak's post (#36) -- none of your prior posts mentioned that you were talking about MP (much less only talking about MP).

I'm not talking about just MP. Knights are only good in single player because the AI is idiotic and they're the fastest-movement option for taking advantage of that idiocy. If you have to actually fight protracted wars, ranged units are simply superior to everything else, pound for pound. This is especially true with the Gathering Storm changes, not to mention the existence of Victor.

The focus on single player AI interactions is precisely why balance decisions make no damn sense. The increased cost of Knights in GS is absolutely mind-boggling if you're playing against other competent humans.
 
Oh we were most definitely talking about single player. And Knights are considered the greatest base unit in the game for a reason.
 
Yes, first tune disaster counter to 4 :) Now lets take another look at egypt.

+15% production towards districts & wonders built next to a river.
Immune to flood damage.
Can build Sphinxes.
Can build Chariot Archers.
International trade routes yield 4 extra gold.
Trade Routes sent to Egypt from other civs provide +2 food for them and +2 gold Egypt.
--
You overlooked one of my favorite aspects of Egypt, but for reasons that most seem to disagree with me on... but I'll get to that in a second.

As for my overall impression of Egypt, both then and now, I really like them and feel that they are quite versatile but concede that they're overall power ranking would be very low. I could go on and reiterate what others have said, but I feel this can be best exemplified with a line-by-line comparison to Nubia, who really do everything that Egypt can do only better. Egypt gets a 15% bonus to districts, but only on rivers where Nubia gets a better bonus of 20% without the placement restriction which can situationally be doubled. Yes, Egypt's bonus also applies to wonders, but 1.) if you're playing up to your proficiency in difficulty level you won't be making too many wonders and 2.) the placement restriction can force you to decide between placing the wonder in a suboptimal location or losing out on the civ bonus, the latter of which is usually a better option. Regarding the UU, Egypt has an incredibly, incredibly powerful unit that unfortunately is completely prohibitive because of its outrageous cost. Nubia's counter to this (usually) comes earlier, while it technically is more expensive it's actually cheaper because of one of their other bonuses, has a consistent movement of 3 instead of needing to end a turn in a specific terrain to get bonus movement, is stronger than an archer, not quite as strong as the Egypt unit but you can make almost 3 of them for every 1 MCU that Egypt can spit out, and they get extra experience on top. The UI may be an area that Egypt bests Nubia, but neither one is a game-breaking bonus. The sphinx will usually have better yields than an NP, but those yields are still not that helpful, You can have more sphinx's than NP's per city but renewing the non-adjacent to another sphinx limitation means fewer of them. And the NP's strength isn't really it's tile yield, it's the ability to double the district-building bonus when adjacent to a city center. So while the sphiinx is more versatile and has better yields, it struggles to serve a purpose, whereas the NP serves a very situational but relatively potent purpose. As for the trade route bonus, I do enjoy the passive gold bonus as you don't have to do anything to activate it, but that also means that there's little you can do to maximize the bonus's potential as it is out of your control. And the external TR gold bonus is good except for the fact that you need to use more external trade routes, and internal routes can provide more hammers which are more valuable than the gold. Instead of a passive but uncontrolled bonus coupled with a bonus that forces you to either negate the bonus or use externals and sacrifice the production from internals, Nubia gets bonuses to all mines on resources, and as mines are pretty much the best improvement to be making and mines over resources are only better, this is much more easy to take advantage of. True, it does make you have to consider doing without some Magnus chops, but opting for the better yields isn't that bad of a tradeoff. When comparing the bonuses of civs in this game, there are no apples-to-apples comparisons as each bonus is unique. But these two are one of the closest to this kind of comparison, and Nubia's bonuses seem much, much better.

Back to the overlooked aspect, I really enjoy that Egypt can make both their UI and place districts on floodplains. The reason I really enjoy this bonus is that I feel that food in this game is soooooo plentiful. hills with mines are a great example - in previous iterations of the game, grassland hill mines served half of the food needed to feed the citizen that is working it (1 of 2), and plains hills needed 2 food from other sources to feed them. In this game, grass/hill mines are self-feeding and plains/hill mines only need 1 more food to feed the citizen working it. On top of that, farming triangles can feed several food-poor tiles after a relatively early civic, and even if you try to maximize your internal trade routes for production, they'll still generate some food. Then there's some resource tiles that naturally generate surplus food and the fact that there's no improvement you can add to coastal tiles except for one governor enabled improvement that generates only food and situationally quite a bit of it. The point being that food is plentiful and everywhere, so when deciding what to do with a tile that has no other yield than 3 food, already positive, I want to do something other than make that already food-positive tile provide more food, and for everyone else all you can do is farm for exactly that. Egypt can sacrifice that extra food for a district, sometimes giving better adjacency as well, or a wonder or get some culture and faith instead of more, unneeded food.
 
Sorry, I must have misunderstood this statement:

That's because you ignored the context of Pietato asserting that my disagreement on the relative value of Crossbows and Knights meant that I "don't even play civ 6", which can only be true under the following assumptions:

1) Only single player counts

2) Only aggressive play counts

It's hypocritical of you to chide me for supposedly placing a restriction when I was not the one to originally do it.
 
Egypt got crazy good thanks to their new floodplains bonus. Turn disaster intensity to 4 and only build improvements on flood plains, then watch the yields grow. Their original bonus is still viable as well, try and build any districts or wonders on all of your normal rivers, then combine this with Magnus chops (plus Goddess of the Harvest if you can get it) and any policies that provide production modifiers.
This. Egypt's strongest bonus is the immunity to Flood damage. It gives them extra food and production for no downsides, without any other set up needed. Pairs really well with Sphinxes too. Susprised it took 38 turns for someone else to mention this, but better late than never I guess.
 
The river actually has to flood, though. I play exclusively on max disasters, and sometimes a river does not flood.
 
The river actually has to flood, though. I play exclusively on max disasters, and sometimes a river does not flood.
It does very often though given their starts. I typically get lots of flood tiles.

I'm not going to try to argue that Egypt is some super civ, but they are fun to play now.
 
It does very often though given their starts. I typically get lots of flood tiles.

I'm not going to try to argue that Egypt is some super civ, but they are fun to play now.

I tried to play them right after a Maori game, and I was just bored senseless. I guess I will try again after the patch. Egypt was my primary Civ IV civ, so I want to like them.
 
Regarding the UU, Egypt has an incredibly, incredibly powerful unit that unfortunately is completely prohibitive because of its outrageous cost.

It's not prohibitive, it's just an investment you need to plan your game around, if you plan to use it. One chariot archer can turn the tide in a defensive war, two chariot archers will win you cities.
Chariot Archers retain their value well into the medieval era and if promoted can easily defeat knights (from the second row). Believe me, I had the pleasure of feeling their sting.
Another thing is that this game prefers single powerful units over multiple weaker ones. For most cities (especially on the offensive), there are usually only 1-2 good ranged spots, so an archer *corps* (because that's what this unit basically is) is simply more powerful. And it can also move & pillage (farms) to keep itself alive.

They are not versatile gameplay-wise, that's the thing, you etiher go for them or not, you have to decide. If you do, you better make the investment worthwile.

If we look at only this side of Egypt, Gilgamesh and his donkeys certainly win the early powerful era competition, as i find warcarts super-versatile.
 
Any idea if the chariot archers are back to being ranged cavalry like the horse archers or are they still just extremely mobile ranged units? It matters to Mongolia
 
Any idea if the chariot archers are back to being ranged cavalry like the horse archers or are they still just extremely mobile ranged units? It matters to Mongolia
They do not have the ranged cavalry tag.
 
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