Viability of Morocco?

What are you general opinions on the viability of Morocco in Civ5?

Their UA is great for some early game and provided that you can get your trade routes out early enough and you actually have a city-state or another civ in range of your trade routes. I've had many games where it was just to early to send out my caravans or cargo ships anywhere else but internal trade routes. I also find the UA falls off very quickly, 1 and 3 per trade route with each different civ means nothing and falls of even by the mid game.

Their UTI, the Kasbah. This also feels mediocre at best to me, I mean sure if you get a heavy desert start which isn't unlikely as Morocco they can make those flat desert tiles at least somewhat useful but, I feel you still need Petra on top of that to be viable at all and getting Petra on higher difficulties is near impossible seeing as if a civ has 1 desert tile in their workable borders they will go for it 99% of the time.

Then they have their UU, the Berber Cavalry. I actually quite like this UU, it has nice combat bonuses inside their own territory and on desert tiles but it is pretty much purely defensive unless there's is a lot of desert on the map you are playing. Sure, having a strong defense can be quite nice on higher difficulties and is quite necessary, but having a strong offense is too and this unit outside their territory without access to desert tiles is again, mediocre at best in my opinion.

All in all, Morocco feels like Arabia and Ethiopia had a strange child and they were the result, excelling at neither of what both those other civilizations do. Of course this is only my opinion, I'd like to hear what everyone else thinks.

They are very viable, unless Arabia is in the game they are a a shoe-in for Desert Faith, which will normally result in them being one of the first to found a religion.
This will also slightly improve the UI as it will now also get 1 faith per tile.

Quite a crap civ tbqh. Early game culture boost from trade routes is useless because you will want to feed your cities and by the time you're big enough to spread around, the boost becomes rather insignificant. Kasbah is all kinds of inferior to river farms and petra oasis hills, you can only spam kasbahs on dry hills

Their UA is indeed pretty lackluster, though it's not because the UA itself is terrible: it's just that international trade routes have such a high opportunity cost even with the UA compared to internal trade routes that you rarely end up running them unless it's to fulfill a CS quest, earn CS influence through Treaty Organization, or to offset negative gold of a wide empire.

The problem I find with Kasbahs is that they are less useful than Civil Service farms and desert tiles have poorer yields as well, so even Kasbah-improved flat desert is strictly worse than plains or grassland tiles with any improvements. All they really do is make flat desert bearable, but still not ideal. The only time they can actually improve Desert tiles to the point where you'd want to work them instead of Grassland or Plains tiles is if you get Petra in addition to Kasbahs.

Their UU is nice, but kind of situational. It comes a bit too late in the tech tree to be that useful and depending on the map, their strength bonus is pretty much just a situational, friendly territory bonus. If it were a Knight replacement that received double movement in Desert, it would be a lot more useful while still keeping to Morocco's theme.

All civs are viable. You can best Diety with absolutely any civ and basically by any VC. Will you get the quickest finish time? Probably not. Might it be trickier? Could be - I think their are certain players here that would not find any real increase in "difficulty" regardless of Civ.

In multiplayer they would probably be considered a handicap but it's not an instant loss. If you're the sole desert bias then it could still lend itself to a strong advantage.

It's one of the worst. Barely better than a neutral civ.
Their UA has a ridiculous impact. The bonus is only per DIFFERENT civ. If it were per trade routes maybe it would be interesting but as it is.... also the bonus is small (3gold 1culture).
Their UI requires some very narrow conditions to be useful (petra+flat or hill deserts).
And their UU only has two poor bonuses, one totally useless (homeland guardian) because you will rarely make Cavalries to defend and one that you will rarely benefit from (desert warrior). The reason why you rarely make cavs to defend is that if you're defending you're probably playing a non domination game and therefore unlikely to be invested in military tradition. You're most likely defending with range units, infantry as blockers and planes later on. Sure when everything is set, one guy in your territory on desert, you'll wreck his face but we're far from the far better UU available in civ5. I preffer the Comanche Rider to it, +1 movement and cheaper better suited for blitz domination games with artillery and cavs.

Their only hope is the desert bias and get a good desert capital...

For the purposes of their UA, are CSs considered different civilizations? If so, sending your TRs to the CSs (ala new Germany) could make the UA more useful; especially if you fill out the Patronage tree.

Yes. But CS are usually lower to begin with (and no science early).

Delnar_Ersike said:

The problem I find with Kasbahs is that they are less useful than Civil Service farms

Click to expand...

They're excellent for non-fresh water desert hills -- 1 food, 1 production, and 1 gold is better than 1 production from a mine (or even 2 production post Chemistry). That's kind of a really narrow range in which an ultimate improvement is useful, though, and so it's not very good overall.

Delnar_Ersike said:

If it were a Knight replacement that received double movement in Desert, it would be a lot more useful while still keeping to Morocco's theme.

Click to expand...

Still wouldn't matter. Like Acken said, Cavalry are built to capture cities during domination. Unless it benefits that somehow then any bonus is pretty useless.

Desert Folklore, Petra plus Kasbah, Yeah, they're very viable. Their tile improvement is their best attribute. Especially in BNW where gold on the ground is very rare.

LordBalkoth said:

They're excellent for non-fresh water desert hills -- 1 food, 1 production, and 1 gold is better than 1 production from a mine (or even 2 production post Chemistry). That's kind of a really narrow range in which an ultimate improvement is useful, though, and so it's not very good overall.

Click to expand...

Not to mention that the best non-riverside desert hills tend to already contain pasture or mine resources, and you wouldn't necessarily build Kasbahs on those, either... maybe you would for a pasture resource, depending on how quickly you're going to build stables and/or if you opted for Desert Folklore or another pantheon over Culture pastures.

LordBalkoth said:

Still wouldn't matter. Like Acken said, Cavalry are built to capture cities during domination. Unless it benefits that somehow then any bonus is pretty useless.

Click to expand...

Cavalry are built for domination, but Knights are a lot more all-round useful. Chivalry lies along the route to quick Research Labs, after all, while Military Tradition does not. If Knights are indeed used for capturing cities, flanking, and fast pillaging, having the Knight UU receive double movement speed on Desert would help it perform better at the tasks it's already suited for; having bonuses similar to the current UU's would just make them a highly situational, usually worse version of Siam's elephants.

CraigMak said:

Desert Folklore, Petra plus Kasbah, Yeah, they're very viable. Their tile improvement is their best attribute. Especially in BNW where gold on the ground is very rare.

Click to expand...

Desert Folklore is only good on floodplains and desert hills, and you'll want to build farms on floodplains anyway. You'll also want to build farms on riverside desert hills too unless you're really strapped for early hammers. Remember, flat desert with Desert Folklore and a Kasbah is still just 1 food 1 hammer 1 gold 1 faith, which is like a worse version of Trading Post on flat plains once you no longer need to faith for your religion (trading 1-2 gold and 1 science later for 1 faith earlier). You really do need Petra to get the most out of Kasbahs, and even if you do get Petra in every game, only one city (out of at least four) will every benefit from its Kasbah-enabling prowess.
Unless you're Persia, tile gold in BNW is overrated. If you are starving for gold, a single CS trade route can give you 2-3 cities' worth of gold from pre-BNW tiles (10-12 tiles' worth). I only think Persia might be an exception because of their reliance on GA, which boosts tile gold but not CS gold. The main effect of removing tile gold in BNW was not an increase in value of the tile gold sources that remained, but a decrease in value in non-resource water tiles that were only not terrible because of their extra gold yield.

stormtrooper412 said:

Quite a crap civ tbqh. Early game culture boost from trade routes is useless because you will want to feed your cities and by the time you're big enough to spread around, the boost becomes rather insignificant. Kasbah is all kinds of inferior to river farms and petra oasis hills, you can only spam kasbahs on dry hills

Click to expand...

I dont know I think they're very viable. You do get that early game boost because your early trade routes aren't likely to be food anyway - because there's no point sending food to a city when you're tight on happiness - which you are early game (early game happiness not food is the key growth limiting factor).

That culture boost helps get policies - but also protects against tourism and that's important because you want to have a tourism edge against the civs youre sending trade routes to so you get the increased cash bonus from them.

Kasbah's get spammed and the UU has good synergy with the terrain and allowing you to go tall and wonderwhore on Emperor and below or wide and then hold what you have.

Either way you get rich pretty quick and diplomatic victory or cultural victory are your most likely win routes.

Delnar_Ersike said:

Desert Folklore is only good on floodplains and desert hills, and you'll want to build farms on floodplains anyway. You'll also want to build farms on riverside desert hills too unless you're really strapped for early hammers. Remember, flat desert with Desert Folklore and a Kasbah is still just 1 food 1 hammer 1 gold 1 faith, which is like a worse version of Trading Post on flat plains once you no longer need to faith for your religion (trading 1-2 gold and 1 science later for 1 faith earlier). You really do need Petra to get the most out of Kasbahs, and even if you do get Petra in every game, only one city (out of at least four) will every benefit from its Kasbah-enabling prowess.
Unless you're Persia, tile gold in BNW is overrated. If you are starving for gold, a single CS trade route can give you 2-3 cities' worth of gold from pre-BNW tiles (10-12 tiles' worth). I only think Persia might be an exception because of their reliance on GA, which boosts tile gold but not CS gold. The main effect of removing tile gold in BNW was not an increase in value of the tile gold sources that remained, but a decrease in value in non-resource water tiles that were only not terrible because of their extra gold yield.

Click to expand...

I personally would put kasbahs on flood plains for the 3 food 1 hammer 1 gold instead of just 4 food. If you get petra, flat deserts giving you 2 food 2 hammers 1 gold are just epic.

The only thing that sucks about kasbahs is that I tend to start tearing them up for mines once I have chemistry and Order. It's hard to justify the food and gold when a mined hill gives you a full anvil or better if it's a petra hill.

Liegence said:

All civs are viable. You can best Diety with absolutely any civ and basically by any VC.

Click to expand...

Liegence is right on the money. OP what do mean by “viable”? Compared to so many other in-game factors, your starting civ makes very little difference as to whether you will win or loose, or have and an easier or harder time with the play. But it is the only variable you can control for!

OP, take a look at this very deliberative tier list. The objective analysis of uniques is great, but also note that there is only a single point difference between tiers. On that same scale, starting dirt and player skill is probably worth 0-100 each.

tat501 said:

I dont know I think they're very viable. You do get that early game boost because your early trade routes aren't likely to be food anyway - because there's no point sending food to a city when you're tight on happiness - which you are early game (early game happiness not food is the key growth limiting factor).

That culture boost helps get policies - but also protects against tourism and that's important because you want to have a tourism edge against the civs youre sending trade routes to so you get the increased cash bonus from them.

Kasbah's get spammed and the UU has good synergy with the terrain and allowing you to go tall and wonderwhore on Emperor and below or wide and then hold what you have.

Either way you get rich pretty quick and diplomatic victory or cultural victory are your most likely win routes.

Click to expand...

It may hold water on Emperor or below but their advantages seems disadvantageous on Deity:

you HAVE to grow big
the bonus culture you get is insignificant for defense against tourism
the UI has a synergy yes but only on specific terrain and/or Petra, I would absolutely never ever work a flat desert Kasbah tile even with DF on it. A different story if you throw Petra in the mix but on Deity, it's a big gamble

CraigMak said:

I personally would put kasbahs on flood plains for the 3 food 1 hammer 1 gold instead of just 4 food. If you get petra, flat deserts giving you 2 food 2 hammers 1 gold are just epic.

The only thing that sucks about kasbahs is that I tend to start tearing them up for mines once I have chemistry and Order. It's hard to justify the food and gold when a mined hill gives you a full anvil or better if it's a petra hill.

Click to expand...

I'd rate 1 food over 1 hammer 1 gold, but that might just be me; there are situations where I wouldn't, such as early- and mid-game Liberty, but floodplains are so good for Tradition that I don't usually pick Liberty in the first place with such a start. I already discussed the issue with the "if you get Petra" line (one, it's possible that you do not get Petra, and two, it will only ever be in one city if you do get it, so all of your other cities still have to make do with worse Kasbahs); Netherlands does not need a wonder to make Polders viable, Inca does not need a wonder to make Terrace Farms viable, and Polynesia does not need a wonder to make Moai spam viable (they do need a good map though).

beetle said:

Liegence is right on the money. OP what do mean by “viable”? Compared to so many other in-game factors, your starting civ makes very little difference as to whether you will win or loose, or have and an easier or harder time with the play. But it is the only variable you can control for!
[...]
On that same scale, starting dirt and player skill is probably worth 0-100 each.

Click to expand...

To be fair, starting dirt is influenced by your civ's starting bias. Morocco, Arabia, Austria, and Inca are more likely to start in Petra capitol locations. Civs with plains bias are more likely to start in amazing, plains river systems. Civs with jungle bias or tundra bias are more likely to get poorer starting locations.

Every civ is indeed viable on Deity, because winning in Deity often relies on tricks that all civs can use, regardless of their uniques. People could win Deity if they were using a civ with no uniques at all. Multiplayer is a bit different in that it makes certain civs' uniques better or worse, but only Venice is flatout not viable in multiplayer because they're the only ones who cannot really make use of a good starting location. It doesn't stop Morocco's uniques from being worse than, say, Netherlands' or Inca's though.

stormtrooper412 said:

It may hold water on Emperor or below but their advantages seems disadvantageous on Deity:

you HAVE to grow big
the bonus culture you get is insignificant for defense against tourism
the UI has a synergy yes but only on specific terrain and/or Petra, I would absolutely never ever work a flat desert Kasbah tile even with DF on it. A different story if you throw Petra in the mix but on Deity, it's a big gamble

Click to expand...

Irrelevant or inconsequential, yes, but not disadvantageous. The only four civs with possible disadvantageous uniques are India (slower chariot archer, increased unhappiness from city count), Byzantines (Dromons mean that they do not get a water capture unit until Caravels), Iroquois (no +10% hammers on their workshop), and Venice (no settling, no non-puppet expansion cities, nearby CS bonuses are removed), and of these four, only Venice's negatives are bad enough to really be disadvantageous on high difficulty levels.

beetle said:

Liegence is right on the money. OP what do mean by “viable”? Compared to so many other in-game factors, your starting civ makes very little difference as to whether you will win or loose, or have and an easier or harder time with the play. But it is the only variable you can control for!

OP, take a look at this very deliberative tier list. The objective analysis of uniques is great, but also note that there is only a single point difference between tiers. On that same scale, starting dirt and player skill is probably worth 0-100 each.

Click to expand...

Perhaps viable is the wrong word then. I know that every Civ is capable of winning Deity based on the player who is controlling them, but I was talking about them in reference to other Civs and their UA's, UB's and UU's. Some people may enjoy them, but I personally enjoy playing stronger Civs. I also wanted to point out what I thought was wrong about them and see if anyone could bring up some good points about them and showing that they are a better Civ than my current opinion of them.

Sebulous said:

Some people may enjoy them, but I personally enjoy playing stronger Civs. I also wanted to point out what I thought was wrong about them and see if anyone could bring up some good points about them and showing that they are a better Civ than my current opinion of them.

Click to expand...

Your opinion / observations are correct then. Objectively speaking, Morocco is below average (see that thread I just provided). As much as stronger Civs, I personally enjoy those with unique improvements or UA that encourage unusual play.

In my opinion one of the worst civs. The UA is directly bad. The UI is decent but not fantastic unless you have Petra, which you will only have in one city if you even get it (makes a bad tile into a decent tile, but not a great one), and their UA is good enough on paper but actually pretty useless under most circumstances.

Irrelevant or inconsequential, yes, but not disadvantageous. The only four civs with possible disadvantageous uniques are India (slower chariot archer, increased unhappiness from city count), Byzantines (Dromons mean that they do not get a water capture unit until Caravels), Iroquois (no +10% hammers on their workshop), and Venice (no settling, no non-puppet expansion cities, nearby CS bonuses are removed), and of these four, only Venice's negatives are bad enough to really be disadvantageous on high difficulty levels.

Click to expand...

It's quite disadvantageous actually:

1. If you send your trade routes away for the bonus gold/culture, the return saturates to irrelevant VERY quickly, and you end up disadvantaged because on higher levels, growth is the key concept and without growth you can't possibly compete on Deity unless you cheese it. The exception is if you have really REALLY good start (3 Salt tiles, 3 Wheats etc etc) and you don't need caravans for faster growth. Since most of the time you don't get such starts, by sending your trade routes out early, your growth is bad and you end up in a disadvantage.

2. Since growth is key on higher difficulties, you build farms on flood plains and river/oasis hills and since you'd want every tile around you to be either of the two, farming them instead of spamming kasbahs is better in my opinion.

3. In my opinion cavalry is used strictly for conquest due to high mobility, so it's silly to keep them around as defense when there are better options by the time they roll around.