Egypt Tradition vs. Liberty

Do you think Egypt should go Tradition, Liberty or Both?

I can honestly see arguments for both. The wonder bonus makes Traditions beefed up cities nice for churning out wonders, and the wonder bonus is nice.

Liberty, on the other hand provides bonuses for large numbers of cities, which Egypt would use for its UB. To fully leverage their burial tomb they will need many cities.

What are your thoughts?

Edit: Also should I incorporate piety for the temple bonus and possibly pushing religion? If so, when and how to incorporate those policies with either your recommendation of Tradition and/or Liberty

 

I say tradition, it's just generally better anyway, and when combined with the obvious synergies (huge cities with a total of +40% wonder production bonus) it just seems like an obvious choice.

The problem with the UB argument is that firstly the UB applies just as well for a small empire, secondly the hugest issue with wide is not actually happiness (although that's still a problem in the early game) it's the AI declaring war and the loss of growth/science penalty per city that really stymie wide as a strategy. The UB will not help counter that and I believe may actually make it more likely for the AI to war against you.

 

So would you recommend a culture or science victory with Egypt then?

 

I play egypt a lot. I find myself picking tradition or liberty based on the situation.Its never set in stone.Sometimes I even go back and forth between them in the same game,never unlocking either one fully.

 

If you're going for early game aggression with War Chariots, Liberty is better, otherwise take Tradition.

 

Im playing as Egypt right now and I wish theyd declare war on me! Its yet another bloodless game unfortunately. Im the one who's going to have to declare war yet again...

Ive completed Liberty as usual but I have taken a few Tradition policies - the wonder bonus is nice as is the free culture buildings.

Im playing King - Marathon - Huge and going wide as per normal...cant help it!

 

I like liberty for Egypt: temples + makes it easier to go wide.
tradition is always great of course. You really cant go wrong. Egypt is a powerhouse.

 

By the time Egypt's temples come out, that is neither Tradition nor Liberty, but Piety.

 

Liberty will get the war chariot rush going much more quickly than tradition will, starting your attack earlier makes it much more powerful. You can basically just tech to wheel while building your monument, scouts and a worker and start spamming chariots with an extra hammer at turn thirty whilst getting a second city and second worker built without stalling production. Tradition can't match that firepower.

 

It really depends on your terrain. If growth is bad, go liberty. If a lot of space, go liberty. I also like to go full piety as Egypt so I would stop at liberty settler.

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Egypt defaults into Liberty but as Vitruvius points out it depends on the terrain, always. The main trick Egypt has up its sleeve and which can push it into a game-winning position right from the beginning is the Pyramids. That early in the game, the Egyptian +20% bonus towards wonders will prove decisive - unless you're playing on a high, cheating difficulty, Egypt is basically guaranteed to be able to build the Pyramids before anybody else. The Pyramids provide two workers and increased worker speed which, combined with the additional worker and further worker speed boost from Liberty mean you can improve terrain at an absolutely furious rate. This allows you to spam cities like crazy and support them all with half-cost Burial Tombs from Piety (Piety is extremely powerful with Egypt, you should virtually always finish either starting tree then head into Piety, not mix Liberty and Tradition).

In short: Provided the terrain affords it (plenty of terrain with many luxuries) you want to city-spam like crazy. Thanks to the Pyramids & Burial Tomb combo, Egypt is likely the single fastest developing empire in the game if the terrain is good enough. The only problem is the increased risk of neighbours wanting to plunder your Burial Tombs but if you can hold the line, you can develop at a ludicrous rate.

This is the preferable situation for Egypt, IMO. The alternatives were already touched upon: If the land is poor/limited, you could simply pick Tradition and use the added wonder construction bonus from there to catch all the wonders. This becomes stronger if you have Marble access. It means you aren't making full use of the Burial Tomb, however, and being as powerful as it is that's really losing out. The third option is early conquest with the unique unit which can be a decent option thanks to your ability to cheaply support the conquests happiness-wise with the Tomb, again.

 

Word. In MP, I've used this strategy to pump out 7 or so WCs and kill someone in the mid-T50s on quick. Chariots are almost as strong as compbows at a significantly lower price. WCs let you pump out a stream of resourceless units without having to worry about horses. And the high movespeed of chariots means you'll always get the first strike, and that can kill their units and prevent them from getting a critical mass.

Egypt aren't as good as the Huns at rushing, but they have the opportunity to transition out of that into a more standard strategy.

 

Someone suggested opening 2 city piety, while beelining the UB. Didn't really do that much testing yet, but it feels really interesting. It's basically a delayed expansion-spam just like with Liberty, but you're pretty much guaranteed to get a religion and will not have any happiness or gold problems while doing so - diplomacy also is less problematic as it's delayed enough so that the AI will not see it as expanding too early too fast. Seems like there are quite some nice synergies if you want to go wider than usual.

 

It's quite difficult to get as much from liberty/meritocracy as from tradition/monarchy, even in a wide game.
Even in this regard tradition is usually superior, sad as it is.

 

Honestly, it also depends on how you like to play Egypt. If you want to go for a few more wonders then in a regular game, Tradition is the better choice. If you like to spam cities to make use of the UB, Liberty is for you. Egypt works Liberty better then most other civs do. You'll need at least 10 or so cities to have Meritocracy outpreform Monarchy, but Egypt can support those with the aid of the Tombs.

 

I think that you should probably move up a difficulty level then, since king is a very easy difficulty and you're clearly having no trouble. On the higher difficulty levels you're much more likely to come into conflict with the AI, especially going wide.