Egypt units: winning combo is...

I read in a few threads here that just using spearmen and archers will work with Egypt. I have run a few trials with it on custom combat and it seems to me not to have a weakness. Both units are relatively cheap, the standard archer and available spearmen. I even tried the Nile spearmen and formed a square with my spearmen and had my archers inside. It worked. Only one spearmen unit routed. The spearmen are a good counter for everything that hits them except for ranged units and the archers can handle the ranged units. I am a relative noob to this game. Do you see any flaws with this combo? I realize that fleshing it out with a few chariots or desert cavalry might be nice to chase routers but does it sound like a winning combo to you? The chariots seem to cost more and you can't make a static defense with them. For this box formation to win I don't need to even manage the fight. As long as the spearmen stand their ground the archers will automatically slaughter the rest.

Basic archers and Nile Spearmen is a really good combination for Egypt, but obviously it could be improve... It you can afford it. Phoaron's bowmen is one of the best in the game, very accurate and deadly in range, and can double as powerful light infantry if the situation demands it. Phoaron's Guards is the obvious upgrade to Nile Spearmen. But both sets of units are much more expensive than archers and nile Spearmen. What's your purpose to use this, in the campaign or online battles?

Chariots doesn't seems to work too well on it's own, Egypt lacks good cavalry and am no fan of Egyptian heavy Chariots. Although Egyptian Chariot Archers is more than formidable on the battlefield.

When phalanx units form a defensive circle with missile units in the middle it is very hard to break them. One big flaw is that they're all packed up together and it would be far too easy to pick them off with heavy artellaries. Onagers and such would destroy them utterly if it hits, but i doubt the AI have such intelligence, although humans definitely have.

Hi Quintus, my comments were in relation to singleplayer campaign against ai. Your point regarding long range artillery is a good one though. I had not thought of that. Does the computer throw artillery against you later. I have only played a little on the campaign as a Julii and I am not that far, timewise, so I have not seen oponents with artillery yet. I assume the counter to artillery is other artillery or cavalry correct? I noticed that the Desert Cavalry unit is 40 and not 27 like most units and it has a bonus against armor and has a desert bonus. What kind of bonus does it get against armor? Is the desert bonus significant? I would probably build some of those to counter the artillery and hope it is not to well guarded. I guess artillery can really mess up your day.

Hi Slim.
It’s quite unlikely that the AI is intelligent enough to throw big rocks at you, although some of them would probably deploy some sort of field artillery later on in the campaign. You do not counter enemy artillery with your own artillery, but with cavalry. Like all other missile units, artillery units are weak in melee, onagers being even weaker than the rest because the unit consist of engineers instead of poorly trained archers. Any artillery unit should be easy target for your cavalry; even the weakest of melee cavalry should find no problem at all in slaying them once in reach.

Desert cavalry should have the same number as most other cavalry units, but that’s no important. Desert cavalry are relatively weak cavalry compared with other stronger cavalries. Their bonus could be a BIG advantage if used correctly. Bonus against armour halves your opponent’s defence due to armour. E.g Roman legionnaires have a total of 22 defence (I think), 12 of them due to armour defence, if your desert cavalry attacks it than its armour defence would be halved to 6. Weakening your opponent considerable. Although that doesn’t mean desert cavalry would deplete any heavily armour troops because heavy armed/armoured troops are much more powerful even with their armour defence halved. Bonus fighting in desert basically grant your unit with a higher morale and many aspects which would help them in a fight in the desert. In contrast the heavily armoured Legionaries would suffer a set-back while fighting in desert , because of it’s armour the units are baked under the sun. Different units have bonus in different environments. Most of the barbarian units have bonus fighting in snow or woods. Egyptians receive bonus in desert. Chariots are very powerful on the Egyptian plains, but becomes much less effectively in boggy grounds or city streets. So terrain really matters.

Egyptian forces can prove very difficult to beat in the deserts, overall I don’t think the AI have enough skills to deploy onagers effectively, but keep some sort of cavalry though. You just can’t go anywhere without them as any faction, maybe apart from the Greeks.

Pharaoh's Guards + heavy archers => enemy is history

You can play the Egyptians in much the same way as you'd place the Greek cities or Macedon. Build phalanx based armies and take advantage of the chariots for breaking enemies. You should not go mad training chariots however as they're next to useless for besieging or defending cities. Keep the backbone of your forces as phalanx units. I've done well in the past using mostly Nubians, slingers and axemen as flankers. Nile spears are a good upgrade to Nubians and worth having. Bear in mind however that this is quite an overpowered faction anyway so there is not alot you can do wrong in the early stages of a campaign unless you're careless. It's later on when you come up against the post Marian Roman units that things can get more difficult.

Dont forget chariot archers. Also Egypt is home to lots of good mercs like Bedouins and Arab Cavalry. Early on Bedouin HA's are good. And Nubians kill Seleucid Militia Hop's.