Mastering Civilization IV – The Arabian Empire in Civilization IV

Civilizatin IV - a sequel of Cilization series, have been released about 3 years ago (in October 2005). Even now the game is very popular. With the victory options and most the pre-game selections (choosing the map, the climate and sea level, game speed and world size, Difficulty Levels (A,B)) having already being covered in previous articles, we are now reviewing the aspects of civilization choice.

Each playable nation in Civilization IV yields certain traits and can help guide a winning strategy. In this part of the series into the CiV IV game, we'll explore the Arabian empire.

The Arabian nation has the Camel Archer as its unique unit, which replaces the Knight unit. The advantages over Knight are obvious – neither horses nor iron are required, making you independent of those resources, and the unit can withdraw from combat (25% chance).

The Camel Archer, however, requires Archery along with the standard Guilds and Horseback Riding (also required for Knight). Those (relatively early technologies) should be discovered as soon as possible, meaning Feudalism and Machinery will be studied “by the way”.

The starting technologies are Mysticism and The Wheel, meaning it would be wise to discover Polytheism or Meditation (founding Hinduism and Buddhism respectively) right away, and afterwards turn to Masonry and Pottery (with Fishing or Agriculture).

The civilization has only 1 leader – Saladin.

Saladin is defined as “Philosophical” and “Spiritual”.

“Philosophical” means that you will have a bonus of Great People appearance (+100% birth rate). However, doubling zero is still zero – so you should either build wonders or create specialists in your cities. Universities (that speed up your research by 25%) are built with double speed, so discovering Education and building Libraries (required for University) is very logical.

“Spiritual” will give you an edge of “No anarchy” during revolution. This means that you should change your civics and/or religion frequently (there is a general limit of 1 revolution in 5 turns however). Of course, when doing so you must take into account the effects of the chosen Civics and Religion. Temples are constructed at double speed, meaning that you should discover priesthood and maybe think of founding several religions (discovering Polytheism is beneficial as it gives you both the Hinduism Religion and the path to Monotheism technology (with Masonry), which is required for Judaism).

You should also consider building missioners to spread religions, as it will lead to more happy people when switching to “free religion” civic in modern times.