Amphibious is quite possible on Egypt. You have to produce quickly biremes in Antioch. Do need to drop the Salamis garrison before their fleet arrives. This, as you are aware, needs to take place in a very short time frame.

They then tend to clump fleets around Salamis.

Build a port in Jerusalem and wait there. When their navies are far, you can go fairly far. The second turn of sailing allows you to land in the Delta.

I've tried to farm enemies before. They still disappoint. Personally, I have a vendetta against the Eggy since they produce hordes and hordes of their ridiculously overpowered and ahistoric units.

They are too much of a threat to Seleucids to farm em. I'd rather use full Seleucid roster to have nice fight with post marian romans.

As for levy pikes, they are quite solid. As with all phalanxes, shield their flanks and then they are good.

Try putting one unit inside each other makes em practically unbreakable. Remember to stretch them out 2 deep and then stack so you have both 3 units' worth of glittering pike points at each location but also a long frontage to prevent wrap around.

Unfortunately, they aren't that much use early on while fighting the Eggy.

The Eggy forces are fast and mobile. I find pumping out some militia cav to be the best option. Making a few levies is useful but definitely for sieges against Eggy and not field battles where you would rather use your cav to smash and run.

BTW, when I blitz through, I don't have much time to deploy a sizeable levy pike force even against the Eggy. The threat is Kiya's army which is a full stack with the 2 nasty chariot archers.

Getting em to counter march in the stretch between the Suez location and Jerusalem is fun when you do an amphibious drop and sack Alexandria.