[R&F] Civ of the Week: Egypt

Who should be next weeks Civ?

  • Cree (equal first with Egypt last week)

    Votes: 21 31.3%
  • Greece (two leaders for the price of one!)

    Votes: 11 16.4%
  • Norway (and their shiny new Berserker?)

    Votes: 12 17.9%
  • Nubia (and their elimination thread winning archer?)

    Votes: 9 13.4%
  • Sumeria (and their (almost) elimination thread winning donkey wagon?)

    Votes: 7 10.4%
  • Sythia (and... no, it's just Sythia)

    Votes: 7 10.4%

  • Total voters
    67
  • Poll closed .
In Vox Populi for Civ 5, Chariot Archers grant hammers toward wonder production with each kill. Won't work with Civ 6 as it stands (I think it might crash the game) but it is an interesting idea.

Iteru is the ability that needs the most serious look though.
 
Open defensively and try to form friendships - extra trade route gold will help with delegations and the UU will help thwart early aggressors. I'll aim for an early pantheon and pick the +25% for first district which I assume stacks with Iteru. Then I'll focus on settling rivers with ancestral hall and try to lay down a bunch of early commercial hubs and theaters which should line them up for a nice culture victory and all that cash can be used to purchase museums and archealogists.

Gave the above ago and off to decent start after 100 turns. I don't feel like the game is in hand yet though. Iteru didn't seem to help all that much even when combining it with the +25% district pantheon but I guess I'm just so used to magnus chopping that it probably just seems slow in comparison. I did get 4 commercial hubs out and 3.5 theaters plus one holy site in the capital for the State Workforce Eureka and founded a religion. I didn't build any campuses.
  • Expansion was slow - I had an odd tundra start and production was an issue. Even with ancestral hall I still struggled to get 8 cities down.
  • No problem getting pyramids. Chopped them in the 2nd city before turn 40.
  • Government district in the 2nd city (1st district) and chopped one forest to help with ancestral hall. I didn't expand until it was built so only 2 cities @ turn 50.
  • Got the 2nd great writer but I had to put the points card in to get it - Pericles is edging me out in culture right now and ampitheaters are taking awhile to build
  • Grabbed the first two Great Merchants, currently at +40ish GPT but soon to be much higher as two markets are almost done. The 2nd merchant triggered a golden age on the last turn - when I needed 1 point!
  • I only built one UU and it was slightly useful for clearing barbs and taking a city state that rebelled after Georgia captured it even though it was probably 50 tiles away from their capital
  • Only built 1 sphinx next to the pyramids - overall it doesn't seem very good to me. I'm struggling to grow cities and food is more important and saving the river tiles for districts
I'm about middle of the pack in most categories and 2nd in score. Not a dominant start but the strategy seems sound and this is better than usual for me peaceful play.
 

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I'm a bit biased towards Egypt :D but I'd say Iteru should be expanded to include desert tiles too. Like what was mentioned earlier, rivers aren't an ideal spot for either districts or wonders, you usually want to keep those for improvements. It does look nice to have a bunch of wonders next to rivers, but including desert tiles would make it far better while still not overpowered I think.

They're fun to play if you're going for a peaceful building game, I usually try to go with a cultural victory. I need to try to explore using alliances with the new buff to Cleopatra's ability. I like Cleopatra's expressiveness in the game, I would like to see Hatshepsut or another pharaoh like Akhenaten, Thutmoses III or Ramses II as well, but I think that's unlikely.

I would like the wonder-building aspect to be magnified a bit, but otherwise they're still fun for me :)
 
i think Egypt has a rather unique playstyle, which is why I like to play them. I just wish for Iteru to be a bit stronger to encourage making best use of it. How about 20% and bonus for everything next to rivers (so include buildings in districts).

I think they could also do with holy sites or theater square adjacency from rivers to make them less focused on wealth generation - but that would significantly alter the play style.
To me, the holy sites next to rivers pantheon seems a good fit for roleplaying. I just wish Egypt would use the graphics from the scenario...

I think Egypt is stronger on low difficulties when you can grab early wonders (so up until King) to get use of Iteru and better Sphinxes.

The Maryannu is also hard to use. I don‘t Knight rush with Egypt and don‘t even conquer early neighbors. They are ideal for clearing barbs though since they almost never die against those. Two of those keep your early empire barb free due to the mobility and they are handy in defense as well.

The worst thing about Egypt is the city list imho.
 
Finished my Egypt game. I have to agree with the above that Egypt is best suited to mid difficulty levels so you can grab a bunch of wonders. My game was only on Prince, and I dominated despite only conquering 1 free city. I didn't get any cities from loyalty flipping. Everything else was settled by me. But even with an average amount of cities, I did fairly well. I got #7 ranking of Ashoka.

I'll include a couple of screenshots. Experienced players won't get anything out of this since I'm not a top level player, but perhaps this could be useful for less experienced players who may see how to put districts and wonders on rivers. Ignore my industrial zone placement though :lol: , that's hardly ideal. They were essentially dead tiles, so I didn't mind putting those 2 industrial zones there, but there was no adjacency. I have better adjacency down in my southern cities where I have more mines. I wasn't focused on production this game anyways. I just had a spare district to place and so I did.



One good thing about Prince and King is it only takes 1 holy site to get a religion, though occasionally I fail to get one, just depends on who my opponents are and their focus. This adjacency was +3 which is enough to get all my cities converted to my religion and keep them that way. Holy site was next to a river as well, bonus.

Campus is only +1 adjacency, but next to a river for the faster build time. I think Egypt's 15% production bonus may actually be more useful on Epic and Marathon speed since higher speeds may get poor rounding and not really shave off many turns. I played on Epic speed (my save game is in my first post in this thread).

Broadway was built next to a river, that's the real flashy one to the left of my capital and slightly North.

Government Plaza built on the river just 1 tile SW of my capital. Not the ideal place as I only ended up with 1 adjacent district, I just didn't have any where else to build it, and I wanted to the bonus asap for settlers.

Commercial Hub built on the river just to the West of the Government Plaza

The wonder (Casa) built to the South of them isn't on a river, but a dead desert tile. I usually don't build this wonder, and often fail at building it.

Kilwa wonder was built on the coast on a mostly useless tile, but not a river. I kind of wish I hadn't built this wonder as I needed my capital to build other things at the time, but it all worked out. I ended up building Potala palace elsewhere.

The city of Swenett has (going left to right somewhat clockwise) a Neighborhood on the river, Commercial Hub on the River, Great Zimbabwe on the river, Campus on the river, Oxford University on the river, and the industrial zone (no river, not great placement but a useless tile for anything else).

Abydos in the far NorthWest has Forbidden City built on a river and Theater Square built on a river.

I'm happy I took advantage of their bonus as much as I did.

I'll include this picture for people who are still unsure of National Park placement. I probably could have made more, but 2 was enough. I was able to have a decent number of Seaside Resorts, and I had a lot of theater squares, so more was not needed.


You can see Ruhr Valley was built on the river, Eiffel Tower was built on a river, a couple commercial hubs on river, Big Ben obviously on a river as it has to be, I also have a couple Sphinx's on this picture. One right next to Kilamanjaro on the Uranium. I could have removed it, but I had Uranium elsewhere and it wasn't important at that point.

Oh and I also have a lot of neighborhoods in these pictures. Shopping Malls can help with tourism a little bit, and all of my neighborhoods had them. This was a culture win in case it wasn't apparent.

Hopefully these threads are useful for newer players to the game to get an idea how to take advantage of Civ specific abilities.
 
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I pretty much confirmed what I wrote earlier. Egypt is amazing at getting rich very early. This is their main redeeming feature and that's why you can't compare them to Nubia. Nubia simply doesn't have the ability to make this much money.
With Egypt, you can buy tons of infrastructure and still get their production bonuses for districts and wonders.

This screenshot shows everything what's so good about Egypt:
Spoiler :
upload_2018-5-15_17-5-2.jpeg


Turn 123 on Deity, standard speed and map size, 177 gold per turn with only 5 out of 9 trade routes active at the moment. 9 available trade routes! Yes.
An insane capital with Oracle and Petra. 5 alliances! A district cluster near rivers with very good adjacencies. Look at the cost of districts as well! Pretty much everything is discounted because Egypt can spam commercial hubs so efficiently that it triggers the district discount mechanism for other types of districts very easily. Look at the little size 4 city in the north. Even those tiny cities can produce districts in a couple of turns because I stacked all available bonuses.

Some key elements you should focus on to get to this setup.

1. Get the pantheon for +25% production bonus for the first district you build. With this pantheon combined with the +15% bonus, commercial hubs are still almost as cheap as monuments on turn 100. Add Liangs +20% promotion and Merchant Republic a little later and every new city can build the CH in a couple of turns.
2. Rush to Commercial Hubs. Build no districts before that unless you have 1 amazing campus spot. Depending on your science per turn you can also make a detour to "The Wheel" and get one Maryannu chariot. It's an excellent unit to defend trade routes from barbs. To shorten the research time to Currency, you should rushbuy your first trader and send it to a scientific city state or settle near or on tiles that add science. Build a granary in your capital if growth gets blocked by housing. You need the population for extra science and wonder production.
3. Build the Oracle. There are two very early Great Merchants you can get that give one additional trade route each. With the Oracle and the rush to CHs, you can get both on Deity.
4. Try and get early Autocracy and also run the legacy card. After that, rush to Merchant Republic.

That's the basic idea. Now I can rushbuy builders, granaries or additional tiles every couple of turns and get all the great people. The game's already won.
This is my governor screen at this point:
Spoiler :
upload_2018-5-15_17-18-43.png

Get Magnus first for chops and settlers, Liang for cheaper districts and Pingala for the Oracle city to get a ton of great people. My next plan is to build the Casa wonder for 3 governor promotions and use them all on Reyna to be able to rushbuy theatre squares in every city and go for a cultural victory.
 
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@RealHuhn That is a very clever use of pantheon, Egypt’s bonus, and the district discount mechanism. Well done sir. Well done.

Thanks! I also forgot to mention the Medieval Golden Age that adds science to commercial hubs. That plus CH spam plus the 100% adjacency card helps you catch up in science very fast!
 
That is well done. Creative use of Egypt's bonus. That's what we hoped to see in these threads. Thank you very much for the ideas. You did great considering you lacked a lot of rivers and long rivers.

I did fail to get Petra in my game, and did not even try for Pyramids, they went early due to my map type (hot and arid). Sucks missing out on Pyramids as Egypt, but it happens.
 
Thanks for the writeup @RealHuhn . Interesting. I may try that next time.
(Nubia does usually have a good income due their ability to get gold from mines)

I was playing Egypt but it was a bit flat. I can win the game but compared to playing others they are weak. My games are always build around production and unit upgrades and without the chariots I get behind by quite a bit.
Normally I do not care much to build wonders (except Pyramids, which I did not get in this game) I did build some as Egypt but I always find them sort of useless compared to not building them.
Gilgamesh was in the game luckily so I had a good ally and good income. Getting more gold from trade was probably the feature I found most useful in my game. Did not make up for the shortcomings in other areas though.
 
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Negative Civ due to its UU.
This is how I evaluate the Egyptian Civ
Decent Combat Bonus for UU +6
Decent Production Bonus +3
Moderate Trade Route Bonus +2
Unable to Upgrade to Knight -35

Overall Strength -24/100

But it brings along a different tech and combat strategy, which is interesting though
 
I am surprised. I thought these discussions were supposed to be about how to play the civ better. If it is just going to be a bash the civ, why bother?

I voted for them not because of egypt but because I'm interested in trade route and wonder building strategies and I figured that an Egypt thread would get some of that discussion.

It's kinda like how I learned to save all your builders with 1 charge left if you are planning on rushing Pyramids. That's a great strategy for Aztecs, and was suggested in their thread, but it works for any civ, you just have to get your builders differently.
 
Negative Civ due to its UU.
This is how I evaluate the Egyptian Civ
Decent Combat Bonus for UU +6
Decent Production Bonus +3
Moderate Trade Route Bonus +2
Unable to Upgrade to Knight -35

Overall Strength -24/100

But it brings along a different tech and combat strategy, which is interesting though

You rate the UU combat bonus higher than the +4 gold per international and +2 gold per incoming trade route? With two neighbours that's most likely +8 gold per turn very early. The AI loves to get that +2 food. If you focus on getting those great merchants, incoming gold gets boosted even further. It grows exponentially. The ability to rushbuy makes Egypt strong in my opinion, at least in single player.
If you attack your neighbours in medieval and risk losing friends and alliances you only hurt yourself anyway and fall back into the same old meta which doesn't suit Egypt. So I really couldn't care less about knights. Crossbows is all I need.
 
You can send international routes to CS's, or if you really want, just leave them with one city and trade with that.
 
Negative Civ due to its UU.
This is how I evaluate the Egyptian Civ
Decent Combat Bonus for UU +6
Decent Production Bonus +3
Moderate Trade Route Bonus +2
Unable to Upgrade to Knight -35

Overall Strength -24/100

But it brings along a different tech and combat strategy, which is interesting though
Uh? Throw a bunch of numbers anb make it amount to a negative sum... What was this? When I do it with my own set if numbers I arrive at +66384, what do you make of my score regarding Egypt relative power in civ6…?
 
Yeah, Commercial Hub spam is the only viable way to play Egypt at higher levels. Also you need to pray you can actually build enough cities.

But if you REALLY want trade routes and GPT, play the next Civ of the week...
 
Like others have said, Iteru doesn't really shine when you start in the desert since floodplains are your only source for food and housing. The production bonus in itself is also not so good, but I still like the idea of it and that playing Egypt encourages you to build your cities differently. I think you can do a lot more with Iteru and still keep Egypt balanced. I would have prefered that districts (and wonders?) placed on rivers provides food and housing. Too bad that is what the Khmer holy site already does, but it wouldn't make Iteru counterintuitive with Egypt's starting bias.

Maryannu archer, while not a top UU, is still flavorful. We know what characteristics a strong and competitive UU should have, but it'd be boring if all are tweaked to become the same-ish (although it really is expensive)...
 
There are a lot of things they could do to boost Egypt...I rather like the simple idea of just giving an extra production for cities on a river.

Another approach I just thought about: floodplains are generally not good spots for districts or wonders, because you need the food and housing provided by a farm, and you will probably have plenty of useless desert nearby which would be better for districts and wonders. But what if you expanded on the bonus, and change it so that when you build a district or wonder on a flood plain, you will get the yield from that tile, as well as 1 housing? You will get that without working the tile, similarly to how the Mbanza works. That would make Egypt a fair bit stronger, and help them thrive along rivers in deserts.

You could also change the fairly weak production bonus for river adjacency so that instead of 15% for being adjacent to a river, it was 15% for each side touching a river. I don't think that would be overpowered, as most tiles would still be 15% or 30%, but if you can find that perfect tile completely surrounded by rivers, you could get up to a 90% boost, almost halving production time.

Doing one or more of these things could make Egypt a serious contender. Do all 3, and they would probably be a high or even top tier civ.
 
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But if you REALLY want trade routes and GPT, play the next Civ of the week...

Yep they are easily the most money making Civ in the game (now that England sucks). Egypt might be #2. I didn't vote for Cree since they are still so new and I've played them a fair amount recently. I'm more likely to vote for Civs I haven't played in a while. I voted for Egypt for that reason, I hadn't played them in a while and wanted to really explore their unique bonuses more.
 
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