Iran

Not sure how many people play Iran, given the need to manually switch, but I quite like giving it a go. The 2nd UHV is very good fun to do, poking the Turkish, Mongol and Mughal bears without getting your head ripped off is always fun! But the first and third UHVs are a wee bit annoying, as they seem very dependent on circumstances and luck given how late you start:

- For the first UHV, you are largely dependent on the European civs that are willing to open borders still being alive. Vikings, England, Portugal, Poland and Moors (do they count as European) will usually open borders whilst you are Islamic, most of the other ones won't. And lots of them are often dead by the time Iran spawns (Moors and Poland most usually). You don't normally have access to Secularism, so you end up having to switch to no state religion just to get open borders with the militant ones, or just hoping they have switched to secularism, or somehow have adopted Islam by the time you spawn.

- For the third UHV, you can't tech to Egalitarianism or reach the Industrial Era in time, so you essentially need five GAs in a city with 4,000 culture. That's extremely difficult to get in time without getting luck with wonders and / or polluting the pools and basically just hoping you get lucky with the GAs. Baghdad is usually the best city to do this in, as you can capture it early and the wheat, sheep and flood plains support lots of GAs, and with the Opera House you can run five artists, but even then you are rushing to get 5 GAs by 1800 without any polluting (imo you need the Taj Mahal for the additional Golden Age), whilst relying on the city having decent wonders at the start to boost the pool without too much polluting. I can get the city to 18-19,000 without much trouble, but without a perfect start you can't be sure of 20k, and that's annoying given the need to play through 24 turns of Congo just to start Iran.

Has anyone had any luck with these, or thought of any strategies I may have missed?

I played Iran 2 times and somehow never had problems to open borders with 6 Europeans while being Islamic. Nearly every Civ wanted open borders with me in the beginning turns.
If they don't want to open, try to gift them 30 gold to improve your relations temporarily, open borders then. (although when switching ingame to a new Civ, I somehow can't use my gold for trading in the beginning... few turns later it works )

cider said:

I played Iran 2 times and somehow never had problems to open borders with 6 Europeans while being Islamic. Nearly every Civ wanted open borders with me in the beginning turns.
If they don't want to open, try to gift them 30 gold to improve your relations temporarily, open borders then. (although when switching ingame to a new Civ, I somehow can't use my gold for trading in the beginning... few turns later it works )

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Should mention I generally only play Emperor level - I guess civs are less willing to open borders on Emperor. I have -6 attitude with most leaders due to running a different religion, so even with +4 from gifting gold and tech they are still annoyed and won't OB.

I've tried Iran, it's usually always too much of a mess in my games with either half its cities razed, or some random country like France or the Tamils occupying it.

you can attack mughal and capture delhi and azimbad as soon as possible with enough bombards and merceneries,then it's not so difficult to get enough great artists.but remember,AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

Proposal:

More Zarastruthian/late-Islamic wonders.

Ideally, I think most European civs should be running Secularism by the time Iran's UHV is up anyway. Almost every game I play countries like Britain, Germany and France run Theocracy/Organized Religion until the end of the game. (which is usually late 1700's for me)

soul-breathing said:

you can attack mughal and capture delhi and azimbad as soon as possible with enough bombards and merceneries,then it's not so difficult to get enough great artists.but remember,AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

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It's not so much the population needed to get the GAs, as much as the number of artists you can run. Once you have Drama you can run two artists per city, but it's not until you get 8 cities and the Opera House you can run five, and by the time you've done this it's often too late to get enough GAs. Given the time constraints, unless there are plenty of easy wonders left for you to grab, you usually need six GAs to get a 20,000 culture city.

I think the best solution would be to add an artist slot to the Caravanserai. That way you'd be able to run an extra artist sooner and get the GA needed.

@swarbs
I remember that @qiu has once been succeed in Iran's uhv in this way I concerned, maybe he could give you some advice.