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v97 - Egypt

Aylan

Chieftain
Joined
Dec 29, 2023
Messages
9
First, before I get into this thread, I just wanted to note that I had played China in v95, and most of the notes I had written for that game are not really useful anymore, so I won't be making a thread on it or mention it in this post beyond this.
Anyhow, I got in the mood to play some tall Egypt (difficulty 5 - I don't think I'm great at the game, but I'm not terrible either). I didn't feel the need to take many screenshots, most of the things are rather self-explanatory. I also skimmed through the v91 and v94 Egypt threads, and noticed that some of the issues are similar to the ones I encountered. With that being said, here are some of my thoughts:

General thoughts:

-This is my first time using the new government mechanic, and it actually feels really nice to use, though I shall point out one slight issue: when you start the game as one of the first nations (China, Egypt, Babylon...) you quickly run into a wall with policies, as there is no early game policy tree to unlock. It's particularly a problem if you pick Monarchy or Republic as your first government, because you very quickly fill the culture need to get a new policy, but you can't unlock any: you're not yet in the classical era, so you can't pick Patronage or Aesthetics, you don't have the tech to go further into your government tree (can't pick Empire yet because you don't have Code of Law), etc. so you're forced to swap out of the one you want, causing anarchy (which loses you precious time).

-In my first attempt (more on the "first" later), I sent a scout north towards Babylon, and found it at 0 health due to barbarians. I just captured the city with a scout on turn, like, 30? Which seems odd and not a situation that should actually happen. It didn't do that much for me, in the end, but it did prevent Babylon from having a chance at contesting any of the wonders I aimed for.

-On my second attempt, Greece decided to send a settler my way and built a city north of my capital. I decided to restart (that would have prevented me from doing pretty much anything), but I wanted to check if that's normal behaviour at all. It only happened once (out of 4 times), but it got me paranoid, and on every attempt afterwards I positioned two units in northern Egypt (to capture his settler, just in case).

-On every attempt, there was something odd with religious pressure. There was always one religion that managed to get abnormally high religious pressure, and I do not know why. On the first game, it was Hinduism, founded by India: it was so strong that Hinduism was the majority religion everywhere even in Europe. On my fourth and final attempt, it was Eastern Orthodoxy by Greece. It only got back to reasonable attempt when Athens fell to 1 population due to repeated conquest/reconquest and then a civilsational collapse, and because I swooped in with my own religion, but even then it meant that Orthodoxy was the majority religion pretty much all the way to India. Again, I don't know what caused it.

On Egypt in particular:

I will start this part by giving my opinion (though I get that Egypt is very much WIP, and I knew the victory condition would not be fully implemented when I got into the game): Egypt is currently quite weak, due to a few factors that culminate and accumulate on top of each other.

-The first factor is kinda silly, and has been pointed out in other threads: due to desert being inaccessible, you cannot get a settler from your capital to where Alexandria would normally be built. This is because the whole western bank of the Nile is "Desert" and not "Floodplains." Added to that the unfortunate bug that prevents settlers from moving on top of roads, if you're not careful as Egypt, you are very prone to accidentally softlocking yourself from expanding any further. Beyond this, not being to access Alexandria (which would be where you would normally want to settle - good resources nearby, not too close from your capital, and access to the sea) means you either give up an excellent city slot, or you have to research sailing earlier than desired because the only way to get there is by the sea.

-The second factor is the fact that you cannot build farms on floodplains. This set Egypt (historically the main source of wheat in the Roman empire) very far behind as they have little access to food. Your capital has 90% of its tiles that are worthless (at least until you build Petra, where they become "just" terrible instead). I don't know if this is a bug or intentional design, but given what floodplains are supposed to be IRL, I would argue in favour of changing that.

-The third factor is the barbarians. Now, obviously I get there should be barbarians, and maybe if both issues above were fixed, Egypt would be good enough, but there is a pretty big amount of RNG. In my first attempt, there was barely any barbarians that spawned. In my second and third, fighting barbarians was my entire game (with several points where the next wave of barbarians spawned before I even had the time to clear the first). I don't know what exactly can be done, maybe I encountered a bug because I loaded my save (had to go to sleep at some point), but this doesn't quite feel right.

Arabian invasion:

So because your capital kinda sucks, because you have to research techs in a weird order, and because you have to deal with barbarians, you end up falling behind in the important techs, even if you play it right and get the great library ASAP. So, you have outdated units, bad cities, and not many of them in the first place (Egypt really doesn't have a lot of good places to settle), you get into the part of the game that is really, really painful (and ended 2 out of my 4 playthroughs, and still got me really, really far behind on the first one to the point I decided to restart). Arabia spawning.

-First thing I want to point out regarding new civs spawning is a clarity issue, which I wanna bring up even though I know it might be already somewhere in the to-do list: how long do they get to syphon my units for? I understand that Arabia gets a lot of extra units and get to steal some, to prevent the player from having so thoroughly prepared that they get to simply steamroll the emerging civ, but it got really painful to not know when I can once again produce units that won't get stolen. Also, Arabia once stole some of my units even though I had managed to survive the original onslaught and make peace with them without any territorial losses - I don't think that's normal.

-Second thing is the RNG regarding Carthage/Tunis. Because for some reason, Arabia is given Tunis for free if they are independent/barbaric/whatever else, alongside (I assume) every unit in the area, if such happens, you might genuinely just instantly lose as Egypt. I don't know if that should happen.

-Third thing is just RNG over all. I'm pretty sure cities are more fragile in this mod (if I'm not tripping), which is good, I'm in favour of it 100%, but this leads to a situation where your only option to survive against Arabia's invasion is for them to have no melee units. That's how I survived on my first attempt. On my second, I had done pretty much everything right, and they attacked with only 1 melee unit, which I managed to kill before it took any of my cities. It does not feel right that your only reasonable hope of surviving this armaggedon is for the Persian, Greek, and Byzantine AIs not to have created melee units at all/have lost all of them. I'm in favour of it being hard, but it should be mostly on the player's hands to make the right decisions to survive.

Conclusions and suggestions:

Contrarily to what one might think when reading this post, I had a blast. It was hard, and occasionally a bit frustrating, but it was incredibly fun. Of course, Egypt's roleplay victory isn't fully implemented (which is fine, I knew what I was getting into when I booted up this Egypt game), but there is an amazing potential for a "thrive during the ancient and classical era, survive the medieval era, recover in the renaissance" kind of playthrough. I like that Egypt's game is centered around surviving the Arabian invasion, it makes it fun and gives you an objective.
I also really, really like how the early game feels smooth and instinctive: you spawn next to three potential quarries, meaning that the Pyramids just make sense to build. And then, because you have such an advantage in production and in the creation of wonders, you just naturally end up wanting to go for the great library. I ended up also building the Hanging Gardens and Petra (those four kind of feel like they are mandatory to even have a chance for your capital to compete with later European cities).

So, here are some of the things I would suggest adjusting:
-The terrain in Egypt. I think adding one resource of wheat near the capital, a few more floodplains so that you have easier access to Alexandria, and maybe one source of fish near Alexandria would go a long way.
-The ability to build farms on floodplains. That would make the terrain worthwhile in the early-mid game. I ended up never building more than one worker because what's the point? I can't build anything useful on the desert.
-> Those two would lead to a bit more population in Egypt, which would lead to more science with libraries, which would mean you would fall a little less behind in techs.
-Find a way to make surviving Arabia less RNG-dependent, or at least less extremely so. It could be by removing Arabia's obtaining of Tunis if it's independent, or by buffing Egypt even further so that it is more up to the Egyptian player to become strong before the fateful moment.

And here are some of my thoughts on a possible roleplay victory for Egypt:
-The game really, really slows down once Arabia is no longer a threat (it often collapses after a white peace against Egypt, I noticed). Turkey does not really threaten you as it's too busy with Greece/Byzantium, there is no one south or west of you, so there is no real threat. In my fourth attempt, that's when I decided to conquer Ethiopia and Mombasa, and settle western Libya. I also gained a Radanite merchant from Jerusalem which allowed me to annex the Middle Eastern cities (which, for some reason, consisted of Mecca and Athens).
-My point is, if you play your cards right, you should find yourself in a decent position by the ~1600, but there really isn't much to do - you don't have the stability to conquer all of the Ottomans (and I didn't have the techs even if I wanted to).
-So, what if Egypt's roleplay objectives were something like:
1) Build several ancient and classical wonders
2) Survive the Arab onslaught (I don't know, not lose a city to them specifically? Or not lose a city period? I just worry about that last point because of civil wars, but maybe you should be punished for getting into one in the first place.)
3) Make it to the renaissance and build two wonders from that era or further
-Since the Egypt civ in Civ 5 is specifically Ancient, Coptic-speaking Egypt, I could definitely imagine vicory for them being "We haven't lost our territory nor our culture, and we are still able to build wonders way beyond antiquity."

Anyway, I think that's it! I hope I wasn't too long (I realise it's a bit of a lengthy post). If any of the saves could be useful, don't hesitate asking.
 
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ls consider that Arabia has a unique power of converting units, regardless of the spawn.
Ah, that explains a lot, I completely forgot. You can scratch that part about clarity, then.
 
General thoughts:

-This is my first time using the new government mechanic, and it actually feels really nice to use, though I shall point out one slight issue: when you start the game as one of the first nations (China, Egypt, Babylon...) you quickly run into a wall with policies, as there is no early game policy tree to unlock. It's particularly a problem if you pick Monarchy or Republic as your first government, because you very quickly fill the culture need to get a new policy, but you can't unlock any: you're not yet in the classical era, so you can't pick Patronage or Aesthetics, you don't have the tech to go further into your government tree (can't pick Empire yet because you don't have Code of Law), etc. so you're forced to swap out of the one you want, causing anarchy (which loses you precious time).
Rhye, are we supposed to use our reserved culture to swap to different governments depending on our needs in the Ancient era, like the Civ 6 cards with a bit of a stability hit when switching? Is this a feature, or a bug?
 
Are you limited in terms of UI? Like, can you make the policy screen accomodate one more policy group (or one extra line)? If so, I have a couple ideas.
 
First thing I want to point out regarding new civs spawning is a clarity issue, which I wanna bring up even though I know it might be already somewhere in the to-do list: how long do they get to syphon my units for?
I'm not sure about how long, but where should be indicated in the Atlas.

Except for Arabia who has a unique power.
 
i didn't think about forced switching. It should be just an option. We'll have to think about how to fix this
It isn't forcing you to switch; it just feels strange to have this huge stockpile of culture, but it only can be used to switch to a different government. It may be something I just need to get used to, like how faith in Civ 6 accumulates until spent, which means it can exceed 1,000 at some times
 
Unless I missed some magic button, I was definitely forced to adopt and unlock new government types in early game. I was stuck on "Adopt new policy" and couldn't end my turn until I spent my culture points.
 
Unless I missed some magic button, I was definitely forced to adopt and unlock new government types in early game. I was stuck on "Adopt new policy" and couldn't end my turn until I spent my culture points.
Right click the side notification and it allows you to skip the prompt
 
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