How to stop Egypt and India from being so overpowered?

[Airrifle48942]

Whenever I'm trying to play from 4000 BCE on an Earth map, Egypt and India are extremely overpowered.
Egypt usually gets the Printing Press by the dawn of 1000 CE and in one game discovered: Buddhism, Judaism, Confucianism, Christianity and Islam!
Also Egypt owns pretty much all of Africa!
And India keeps owning all of Indonesia, Australia and invades China and Iran.
And in one game they discovered Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism and Christianity.
It's so frustrating, why are they so powerful? Other Civilisations just keep getting dominated!
And England and Greece are always the weakest ones, staying in the Classical era until about 1500 CE!

 

[elmurcis]

Play as Egypt and destroy India.. problem gone

 

[TheMulattoMaker]

Or play as China, on Earth18 Qin has the "I Win!" button at his disposal. I'm actually playing as Qin yet again (not at all challenging, just so much fun) and Asoka and Hatty are two of my vassals.

EDIT: Also, the Earth18 scenario is extremely unbalanced. In human hands, Rome, Egypt, and Persia are all in a position to take over the entire Old World with their UUs very early in the game- as a matter of fact, on lower levels you can warriorcheese at least one AI capital with almost any civ. China, Japan, and the European civs start with huge amounts of resources while the Mongols and the Incas have SPs that would make me reroll the map in a normal game. As far as Egypt and India becoming the dominant civs, I can't say I've seen that. Usually Hatty gets crowded out by Saladin and JC, and Asoka gets crowded out by Cyrus. My experience, anyway.

 

[nerdfighter13]

Also Egypt owns pretty much all of Africa!

Do they wipe out Mansa Musa early? Otherwise he could control most of west Africa or more.

 

[digitalcraft]

For his start, Mr. Musa seems to do epically terrible. He generally builds one or two cities out in the desert then vassals to whomever is powerful near him.

 

[TheMulattoMaker]

For his start, Mr. Musa seems to do epically terrible. He generally builds one or two cities out in the desert then vassals to whomever is powerful near him.

Or far. He's my third vassal.

 

[Airrifle48942]

Well, Mansa Musa usually ends up having all of West Africa and the Maghreb West Africa, and by Egypt owning pretty much I mean that they try and get on to all of Northern Africa and try and culturally win against Mali in Nigeria.
I tried doing a normal game in 36civs and Egypt was pretty much their little vassal whilst Zara Yaqob, Mansa Musa and Shaka (colonising Madagascar xD) ran vast Empires.
Then again, this could be some of the script that Rhye did (36civs map he made).

 

[rfcfanatic]

Egypt is dangerous mainly because Hatty loves cultural victories. India always gets technologically advanced and they can have infantry and marines quite early, but in my experience on Noble their military is relatively weak in terms of numbers.

In my opinion, the most powerful AI is China. They are technologically advanced AND they have huge army - the worst possible combination in civ4. Also, Qin always has tons of vassals. Usually they vassalise Japan and Mongolia, occasionally India and Persia, but sometimes even France and Germany end up as Qin's vassals.

The easiest civ to play as is Mongolia, because you can rush China early and India a little bit later. The most difficult civs to play as are those located in the New World - America, Aztec and Inca. That's because you can deal with Old World superpowers quite late when they have already gotten too powerful.

 

[Manco Capac]

Bribe England to conquer those civs.

 

[Yudishtira]

Play RFC - Egypt and India will have collapsed before you spawn...

 

[Drakarska]

Are you playing standard BTS or modded? Eng and Greece have always been a threat in my games, especially modded.

 

[ZeekLTK]

AI Mansa Musa seems to fall into the same trap I did when I tried playing Earth18 as him.

Playing as Mali, you know it's just you and Egypt in Africa (on vanilla at least), so instead of expanding DOWN and taking all of Southern Africa (which seems like it would be easy), you try to expand North to both squeeze Egypt and prevent any European/Middle Eastern civs from settling on the continent, figuring you can get around to settling the south once you've set up a nice buffer zone in the north.

Problem is, there aren't a lot of resources in the north, since it's just about all desert, so the cities you set up end up being a terrible drain because they don't grow fast and don't produce anything fast, so they actually slow you down. Then, since you've spent all your time trying to secure the north, the other civs start to explore and sail down and colonize the south, behind you, leaving you royally screwed! lol

I lost my game as him because eventually Egypt, Russia, and Arabia all declared war on me and I couldn't fight them off. Then the Romans, French, and Arabia started to colonize southern Africa and I was eventually surrounded with too weak of an army to do anything about it.

 

[AdamCrock]

RFC is a good choice to balance that. In 3000 BC scenario Egypt usually collapse around 1000 BC. In RFC Greece has the easiest (imho) "Historical victory" so the can cheese the win with 2,3 cities in classical era. Also in RFC India never made it big from my experience so if Your looking for fairly balanced "historical" gameplay RFC is the mod to play I strongly reccomend it.

 

[nfw]

You can play as Persia so you can kill both early.

 

[Pisskop]

Out expand and persoanlly deal with them. I often have an issue of upkeep being too great and I either gift to another, free state (though this hurts you so), gift to a war vassel if possible, or make a colony. Or just raze them, although this makes an issue of letting another civ grab the land. Sometimes its best to deal with a civ early, even if they are across the continent.

If you take, and then liberate cities after a war you can make them permanent friends through shear extra points, but this may not be the best idea. gotta watch their tech (although taking their cities helps this some, and I'll oftne gift back a few cities to a war vassel. Makes them happier (and less likely to spy ) and makes my intial upkeep lower.

 

[reddishrecue]

One way to stop them from being overpowered is becoming overpowered yourself. Earth maps

 

[CocoIsKing28]

India and Egypt fall helplessly to the mighty praets of Rome . I can never get enough of going straight for Iron Working and conquering the world. If I don't, they never become too powerful. I can usually vassalize both.

 

[tijup]

I would say that Egypt could be a pain, or a total screw up. In my last earth18, she was wiped off
by the other AIs (Arabia, Persia, Chinese and Mongols).
As for Indians, they tend to be crushed by either Persians or Chinese, I never saw them really
powerfull on Earth18 (BTS 3.19 + BUG and BAT)

I got my worst game ever on earth18, as Montezuma. When I started invading EU, I ran into
a *monstruous* Chinse gangbang party, and got stuck in the middlewest exchanging nukes
every few turns, while having to keep up against all other Chinese Vassals.

 

[JoeyB98]

Make like RFC and spawn in a bunch of Impis in the interior of Africa to stop them from expanding too much.

 

[strijder20]

England is usually doing average in my games - especially when you see Lizzy's one of the tech leaders in 1800 AD with 2 cities
Persia is usually much more of an issue than India, and most people tend to follow Arabia's/Spain's religion so Egypt ends up hated (they like to go for Judaism).