Who said Ra has the best eco may have not played Ra.
The 10% empowering rate will only affect in a very short period.Because a priest occupy 2 pop,100g,it's about same cost for 2 vills.
For a drop site which have 10 vills there,you add 1 priest you get 10% resource faster.You add 2 vills you get resource 20% faster.So priest so useless on empowering if you think about pop.
The only use of priest empowering is before you reaching pop limit and TC is always busy pumping vills. It's a very short period as Egypt.Normally I have 2 priest empowering gold and wood(pharoh on food).Start from 5:00 and at 10:00 or 11:00 i will be popped.In the 6:00 I am like to have 1.5 more vills working(about 5 vills on wood and 10 vills on gold,if more vill on gold,i will send them to other site and no priest).Egypt vills gather gold and wood at a rate at 0.95/s.Basicly I got 450 vill seconds so about 450 resource.I spend 200g on priest.It's still a deal,but can it make Ra's economic the best?
The civ which has best economic is norse.Probabaly Thor(I am not sure) but even loki's economic is far better than Ra's.In general,loki's village performance is 30% higher than Ra.I have made a post on MFO and calculated very carefully by one of my game played a loki.( i will find it out later).
Ra's midgol unit is ignorable too.I played another game(3v3),on my side is an Ra player too.He FH and pumped camel+CA army.His rate is 50 higher than me but if not his partner come to save him,he could be owned by me.10% more HP is nice but comparing with odin's +20% hp on all unit from hillfort,poseidon's -10% cost on a unit,10% more HP is not big bonus.
Monument cheaper:Is it a big bonus?Any egypt civ can build a monument from the very beginning.
4% games use Ra and 44% or 45% winning rate can tell something.