[SPOILERS] One Jump Ahead

[Qgqqqqq]

Egypt, China and Sumeria are all better then Ottomans.
The metas changed a lot over the years.

[Jowy]

China and Sumeria I can understand due to the starting techs, but Egypt?

[Qgqqqqq]

Egypt has the same starting techs, ans one of the best UU in the game, as well as a unique means of getting a shrine without investing in a wonder and/or temples.
Main thing is the War Chariot though.
Janisarys are good but come way too late to have any great effect on the game, and hammans aren't very good because one never builds aqueducts until the industrial age.
Sumeria has the same starting techs as Ottoman(only China gets agri+mining) so I'll address them too - they're UB comes early so can help a crashed economy, and is also cheaper.

[Jowy]

Makes sense I suppose, though Egypt's reasoning doesn't exactly match with the meta I think. Religions are very low in priority. And how much help is an earlier shrine when you only have the religion in a few cities at best? War Chariot is a nice unit, but I thought the meta is extremely against early rushes, so you don't want to rush your neighbor, and there's only a small chance that you get rushed yourself.

Btw not disagreeing you, just trying to understand the reasons behind the meta

[Commodore]

Big Pitboss logic?

That shrine is amazing LOL. 70 gold from religion. We put stock exchange in here and it will be awesome.

[Jowy]

That's T192 though, you'd get a shrine normal ways long before that.

[Qgqqqqq]

Point is, what are "normal ways"?
Basically you can only get a GP from a early wonder, or from a building that gives specials, of which there are precious few. Of them, the only generally available one is a temple, which takes ages to mature anyway. With a obelisk you can very cheaply get 2 priests hired meaning a GP is available about the time of a GS, unlike normally where they come very late.
And shrines early are much better then shrines late because they double the passive spread rate, which can save a lot of hammers.

The war chariot power is not centred on the ability to rush, but one the ability to ward off enemy units, maintain a skeleton defence (because they can move fast and function like axes) and kill barbarians.
Sniping cities PBEM49 style can work well too.

[Qgqqqqq]

Oh and pitboss shrine>>>>pbem shrine, because normal speed increases passive spread, and there are bigger maps.

[Krill]

Makes sense I suppose, though Egypt's reasoning doesn't exactly match with the meta I think. Religions are very low in priority. And how much help is an earlier shrine when you only have the religion in a few cities at best? War Chariot is a nice unit, but I thought the meta is extremely against early rushes, so you don't want to rush your neighbor, and there's only a small chance that you get rushed yourself.

Btw not disagreeing you, just trying to understand the reasons behind the meta

Let me put this into perspective.

I have only once gotten a GS before a GP, and that was in PB1 with Joao of Inca, and it got used to bulb Philo to found a religion. Every other game I've played has been GP before GS, because I've dropped the slider to fund horizontal expansion, and shrines assist that function, especially if religion is spread to pop borders, so every city gets religion the turn it is founded. However, if you go through the games I've played, you'll notice that I regularly got one of the first two religions, and generally Henge or Oracle to generate that GP. That obviously isn't always possible, and Egypt (and Arabia) alleviates that need by enabling multiple priest slots on early buildings.

I could go into more detail, but I would instead suggest looking over PB3 for early game use of Egypt.

[Jowy]

Good stuff

Instead of studying PB3, I made this monstrosity for our first post.
Bad MS Paint shops are pretty much a tradition by this point.
This is why I'll never be a good player, isn't it?