Why is Egypt considered low tier? I do great with them.About to win....

[Arcaian]

I don't really consider Egypt low tier, but here are the most common points I hear:
1. UA is inneffective at higher difficulties due to AI production level negating its effectiveness, and on lower difficulties it's useless as you can pretty much get whatever wonder you want without it.
2. UU is lack luster and is barely an improvement over the already useless and short lived base unit.
3. UB aids the enemy and gives them an even greater incentive to attack you on top of the additional wonders.
If you have rebbutals I can only give token counter arguements as I don't think Egypt is low tier, more low/mid tier.

1: I would argue against that. It's not gonna get you the GL often if you weren't already in a position to get it, yeah, but wonders are extremely useful - including National - and getting 20% off them is quite powerful. Means you can get NC done more quickly and start expanding if you're going wide (and not on deity, I do it on immortal and still get a lot of good city spots though), means you just have more time to spend on everything else. It's quite universal, as if you're playing for Diplomatic/Cultural/Scientific victories you'll build quite a lot of wonders, and if you're going domination you'll build a few, plus you can expand more quickly as the NWs are build more quickly.

2. It's actually a very powerful UU if you want to rush early. I've seen it done many times; by the time everyone else has some archers up, these UUs will rip through cities. You can take 1-2 nearby capitals, hopefully before anyone sees you, and then gives you a very solid base to expand from, including much more land as those AI don't steal it all. Harder to do in Deity, still good in immortal, and actually quite a nice synergy with the UB.

3: The UB is my favourite bit. Absolutely incredibly powerful. Basically it guarantees you'll get a religion up to Immortal, as with the increased happiness and no gold maintenance it's easy to build. If you're losing cities then it doesn't matter how good your UB is, you've lost the game already, so who cares if it's increased gold capture? If you forward settle an AI then rush-buy this, sure it may be bad. But cities are lost so rarely in winning games. It also works really well with the UU, as you can rush and take 1-2 capitals early, beeline NC - faster with the UA - and then quickly spam out a whole bunch of cities. You can afford to have less luxes as well, as this is like a free extra colosseum early game. And if you want to play tall, it helps with early gold problems, is a building that's used in a fair few strats anyway, and gives happiness to allow you either a quicker GA, or to expand more quickly in pop size. Definitely helps with unconvential strats as well, where you don't get that +1/2 happiness from each citizen in the cap.

Overall not an incredible, god-like civ, but I would certainly but them above average. They're powerful in a couple of ways, not just one (Polynesia) and have pretty decent synergy between their unique stuff. I would defintely say high mid tier or low high tier, they're much better than a lot of 'mid tier' civs on the lists I see floating around.


But hey, mostly just personal preference.

 

[Redaxe]

I don't understand why so many people think the War Chariot is bad. It's essentially an early Comp Bowman and it is certainly much cheaper to produce. The extra movement is very useful in the early game where time is limited so you can clear out your neighborhood and then have the peace of mind to focus on Wonders.
Yes you won't be upgrading them to knights but so what, Chivalry is far enough away that you can replace your army in the meantime.

 

[tetley]

I don't think war chariots are the bomb, mind you, but that is how I would play Egypt. Early mobile units that don't require horses. Then right when they go out of style you've got burial tombs, and THEN go for the Renaissance wonders. And promotion-save those chariots till they become knights.

Chariots also suck on arborea and highlands maps. They shine on sandstorm. And great plains, but great plains has a lot of horses. So Egypt is a "no" in the "good in every situstion" category.

 

[TractorBoy]

We can disable start bias if we are pre determined to build an ancient wonder, even on Deity it is possible playing as Egypt. I manage to get the Great Library maybe 2/5 times and if I don't get it I will restart. Playing on a standard size map your odds of getting the great library are probably as low as 1/10 as any other Civ.

 

[kkapalk]

I certainly don't consider them to be a low tier civ! I find the increased wonder production extremely useful, and the UB really helps out when happiness starts to become an issue. Also, in one game playing as Egypt I got attacked early by an AI and the UU certainly helped out then.

 

[Matthew.]

I thought the promotion problem was half fixed? It still shows the range promo's, but when hovering over an enemy it still lists the extra damage? If it isn't just a display bug, then it is good enough. You can always pick up Cover, too, which is an excellent promo on any unit.

And no, not low tier Civ. I'd guess the people mentioning that are looking at it purely from a Deity perspective. Which is fine. But considering the majority of Civ players fall into the Prince ~> Immortal range (no source, but I'd guess probably a decent bell curve distribution), Egypt does more than fine.

They are flexible, too. A surprisingly decent warmongering Civ, since maintenance free temples means you can squeeze out cheap happiness for a bit of a surplus to cover an extra enemy city or two.

 

[Loucypher]

I thought the promotion problem was half fixed? It still shows the range promo's, but when hovering over an enemy it still lists the extra damage? If it isn't just a display bug, then it is good enough. You can always pick up Cover, too, which is an excellent promo on any unit.

And no, not low tier Civ. I'd guess the people mentioning that are looking at it purely from a Deity perspective. Which is fine. But considering the majority of Civ players fall into the Prince ~> Immortal range (no source, but I'd guess probably a decent bell curve distribution), Egypt does more than fine.

They are flexible, too. A surprisingly decent warmongering Civ, since maintenance free temples means you can squeeze out cheap happiness for a bit of a surplus to cover an extra enemy city or two.

Proper Deity players don't consider Egypt low tier. It's the poor deity players - the ones who can only play following 4-city-tall-tradition-NC Rush - who'd consider Egypt subpar as that playstyle isn't Egypt's strongest suit. Egypt's bonuses are more befitting a somewhat wider, warmongery empire, that wants to get a few key wonders to support its chosen strategy. Which definitely works, it's just not as directly powerful as the 4-city-tall-tradition playstyle with Maya/Korea/Babylon is, therefore causing players who can't adapt to consider Egypt to be subpar.
The only point any Deity player can make is that the UA is, at Deity at least, weaker then one'd maybe like.

 

[Tabarnak]

Definitively top tier. Tall or wide. Turns shaved for both wonders and national wonders and extra faith and happiness from UB make this civ a good candidate to evolve even into hardest spots.

My best FFA(mp) game recorded in term of raw power is with this civ. Only a very few other civs would have reached that power alone.


Link to video.

 

[Karmah]

at higher level , I use Egypt for its capacity of early expansions. I 'd get enough happiness , chariot helps me defend vs an angry neighbour who didn 't appreciate my forward settling and the +20% wonder will help me get NC at a fair cost even if I have 4/6 cities. It s only about bonuses early game ,but a good early start is usually a key to victory even with the late game oriented BNW. The UA might still help for some end game wonders.

 

[MightyMite]

I also rock with Egypt. Great Civ for my play-style.

 

[Jimdigriz]

Playing Egypt right now and loving it!

The UB is brilliant - anything that makes this much happiness is going to save loads of trouble later on. The UU isn't amazing but its not the worse. Im a bit of a wonders fiend so the UA is good for me.

Im only on King level mind - huge, marathon game as usual.

 

[Halcyan2]

I'm not a fan of the UU but it's not terrible. The War Chariot does not require horses, which is a very valuable thing. If you are lucky, this also means that Egypt has the potential to leapfrog to Ancient era Knights if you get the right ancient ruins result.

I think the Burial Tomb was much stronger in the Vanilla game when Temples were cultural buildings. Now that they are religious buildings, they are often less of a priority for me.

 

[gamemaster3000]

Just "lost" (i.e. choosing not to continue because I'm so behind in tech) with them due to a few miscalculations.

1. War Chariots aren't worth it. If they could move after shooting like camel archers and keshiks they'd be overpowered, but on deity the AI has swordsmen very quickly and their low strength of 6 with no terrain bonuses means that city bombard + sword attack is enough to go from 100->0. More importantly, though, you could be gaining experience with archers to start working towards the incredibly important +1 range or +1 attack improvement.

2. The wonder production isn't very good in deity IMO. Most of the wonders are built before I even research the tech, so it's not much of a factor.

3. +2 happiness on the temple though, is quite good and one of the better bonuses in the game. Beakers = best thing you can have, and happiness is the biggest limiter on your population and therefore your beakers. Even a city with no resources could be net zero unhappiness at size five if you could score one happy from religion, a colosseum, and a temple.

 

[Syailendra]

some people overrated the add 20% against wonder trait. Look at russia they got extra 1 hammer from strat res. In early games that means 20% of everything on top of double resources.
If you needs 20 turns to finish a wonder with anybody, you'll get it 4 turns earlier with egypt, but if you use babylon or korea, you probably got the tech 4 turns earlier on top of any bonus that tech unlocks, meaning that egypt bonus is nullified. If you use aztecs or inca, you probably have one extra citizen to get more hammer when producing a said wonder. Should i continue?

 

[Acken]

Yes please continue comparing Egypt to Babylon, Aztecs and Korea.

 

[Xiao Xiong]

I don't know. I bet I could win on immortal (my level) with a civ that had no UU, no UA, and no UB. All my games follow the same skeleton regardless of leader anyway: build scouts, maybe a shrine, get granary up, library, water mill and stone works if possible, rush the national college, beeline education and get universities up. Insert as possible build/steal/buy workers and maybe a few units as necessary, or a settler or two if there are some great spots. Once universities are up, start making some decisions about what victory condition to go for based on what I've been able to do so far and who my adversaries are.

If I am playing a war monger, I might delay the national college a bit to pump out some early units, but even as a war monger, I could wait until after machinery to war monger.

In that scheme Egypt's UA helps me build the national college, oxford university, and national epic, which I always wind up building sooner or later. I might also build heroic epic, east india. I might manage to squeeze in a wonder or two.

The UB fits that plan pretty well in that extra happy is always great. I may build it early if I have a good shot at a religion, I may build it late if I just want the extra happy. Anyway it will help.

The UU is not all that great because it takes early hammers when I am usually rushing towards the national college and don't want to spare them, but if I am forced to build early units because I am next to a war monger or barbs are a huge problem, it is not that bad an early unit to build.

 

[Halcyan2]

The +20% to wonders production bonus is often lamented as people not that necessary or helpful, or just sorta bland.

I think the effect is very subtle (though still powerful).

Awhile back, on the 2K blog, there was a post about some of the game developers trying to figure out if it would sometimes be worthwhile to move their starting settler. So they experimented with 3 variations:

1. Always settle on the first turn.
2. Spend 1 turn to move somewhere better and then settle
3. (Control) Choose the same spot as #1, but delay one turn before settling

One thing they noticed was a sizable amount of games under condition 3 were significantly behind. After further analysis, it turned out that many of those games had lost a wonder (one turn behind) to another civ.

So yeah, +20% to wonders may not be really flashy, but even getting a single turn or two ahead to clinch a wonder may be a turning point in your game.

 

[Redaxe]

Syailendra - Russia may get extra hammers from strategic resources but that only helps you if your start has horses & iron. The benefit falls off very quickly and won't be that noticeable in the mid game.

Also how many players complain of missing a Wonder by 1 turn? You realise that in this circumstance Egypt would get you the Wonder.
So its not just extra Wonders, the UA reduces the build time of Wonders which lowers your risk of being beaten by 1 turn. So its not just a case of "I built a Wonder in 8 turns instead of 10". You never know that another Civ could have built that Wonder on turn 9 or 10 and your UA not just gave you a Wonder more quickly, it also just may have stopped you from losing that Wonder if you did not have that 20% bonus & now the AI instead suffers from wasting several turns.

 

[LoneRebel]

Just to echo what the OP and others have pointed out - that the extra gold from capturing a city with a Burial Tomb should not really figure into these calculations, because if you, the human player, actually lose a city, you probably aren't going to win the game in any case. Has anyone here actually managed to win after losing a city?

Of course, it does matter when Egypt is the opponent, but that's a different story.

 

[Princeofnigeria]

Just to echo what the OP and others have pointed out - that the extra gold from capturing a city with a Burial Tomb should not really figure into these calculations, because if you, the human player, actually lose a city, you probably aren't going to win the game in any case. Has anyone here actually managed to win after losing a city?

Of course, it does matter when Egypt is the opponent, but that's a different story.

I've won after losing my capitol once. Wayfinding is a hell of an escape route.