Never payed Egypt myself but I think the key would be to ally with persia against Carthage and Greece.

On a map with 5 players positioned more-or-less in a circle it always comes down to 2 vs 3. As long as you make sure you're not one of the two you'll be fine. Makes the variant quite boring, the map is quite intricate though, so fun for moving units around :)

having played this variant i entirely disagree.

Egypt is connected to presia, greece and cartage. persia is connected to greece, egypt, and by going over the top of greece(which may annoy the greek player, unless he's helping) to rome.

Greece is connected to everyone except carthage.

Cartage is connected to Rome and Egypt.... i really need a diagram for this. But it's not entirely a circle, with the greece-egypt strong connection, and the persia - rome weak connection the circle is broken (and that's ignoring the seas which may be so full of fleets that convoys to pretty much anywhere are posible, and also ignoring Carthage - Greece sea lanes, but i've never seen them used so i'm less convinced of that conection.)

2 vs 2 vs 1 is possible, with that one shifting.

In a 2 vs 3 senario, Rome and carthage can form the equivalent of the juggernaut and roll over the three eastern powers if they are squabling amongst themselves, but at some point when the 3 (greece, egypt and persia) are recuded to two or one, rome and carthage are likely to turn on each other....

The two power alliance is probably more stable, but breaks down when they are on the way to a solo...

my 2 cent.

Advice for egypt. Hold the line against both persia and carthage.

Leptis is always fun, and Jerusalme are always bones of contention.

Crete and cyprus re also worth diploming over...

Egypt sucks. I hate playing that, as you have a rare occurence of expanding because you are such an easy target for Persia and Carthage.

As Egypt, the best tactic in my experience is to ally with Persia against Greece while maintaining some sort of agreement with Carthage. However, Persia typically wants to move south because directly to their north is a bit of a gap in the SCs. A Rome-Greece agreement can almost always be assumed because it's easiest for both of them. So, if you agree to ally with Greece against Persia, Greece will love the opportunity. At the same time, be sure to keep Rome and Carthage fighting or either you or your ally go under. If necessary, support Rome in this effort so that he wins that fight. He's less likely to go for you than Carthage is because of the location of his home SCs. Once that happens you can switch to him instead of Greece as an ally.