I think they are very good and maybe a bit underlooked but the sheep thing isn’t the reason why.
Tbh I normally don’t have more than 2 or 3 sheep.
All of them are scouting and I don’t have a mill early on.
That being said in tramgames it can be different.
If you FC you tend to build a mill after a few fishing Ships case you might loose water.
Allies can send you leftover sheep as well.
And two free bushes are also quite good for safe food if you don’t find any at the start.
And shrivamshas truly disabled the ranged units from your enemies.
And you can kill enemies quickly with the siege elephants.
I was playing in a 3v3 nomad tourney(with a civ draft) and I think we won every game I played gujaras which isn’t a lange amount of games and where not all top civs are played simultaneously but they sometimes singlehandedly won us games.