Strategy for Arabia (UHV)

This is my strategy, that I successfully used to win a UHV-victory with Arabia before the spawn of the Ottomans (with the old download-version of RFCE and also a current SVN-version):

With your starting units you should be able to take both Byzantine cities just north of your starting area. Once this is done send all available archers to defend them and your remaining horse archers to take Alexandria.
Jerusalem (Yafa) should only (!) built spearmen. It is tempting to build a house of wisdom or a heroic epic here. Don't. (Well, you can, once you have ~4-6 spearmen and feel safe enough)

I usually use the additional settler you have upon start to found Al-Quahira just north of the marble in Egypt. While this city doesn't have many workable tiles, it has lots of floodplains which each give +5 food when improved with a farm! (also the marble is nice for the heroic epic and maybe later the mezquita)


in the north it is all about defending the status quo, so build some walls and defenders:

I also always use Tyre to build some ships (1st: war galley, 2nd: galley) to explore. With some luck you meet Bulgaria and France and can trade some techs. Especially meeting Bulgaria around the time you have Ghazi (or earlier) is important!

Your remaining horse archers from the conquest of Alexandria can now move along the North African coastline. Depending on how many you have, you might be able to take the Byzantine city there and/or Tunis.

Now make peace with Byzantium. Alexandria/Al Quahira can easily build the settler you need for the last city in Arabia, but first them grow a little.

You should focus on building troops (spearmen, mostly) and walls in your cities for now. Alexandria and Al Quahira can also build houses of wisdom, granaries and other improvements, but all other cities should focus solely on units and walls untill you get Ghazis. Careful, once you research Farriers, some barbarian Ghazi will attack south of Jerusalem, they will probably kill most/all of your spearmen, but this should give you enough time to build some Ghazi of your own.
I always give them the flanking (retreat) promotions but combat (strength) also works.
Also: keep your eyes open for the great Nubian mercs (they're basically longbowmen!)

Once you have 3+ Ghazi to defend Jerusalem against the barbs, you can send your next few along the North African shore to capture Tunis.
By ~900 AD you should get lucky and Byzantium declares war on someone who isn't you (you've been nice to them after the initial conquests, right?), so join them and get open borders (yeah!).
I always send 3 Ghazi to cross the Byzantine lands (who know how long the cooperation will last, after all) and try to meet the "Europeans" (Hungary, Germany, etc).

3 Ghazi are usually enough to take some independent city somewhere:

(the Polish capitol is also a great city to conquer just after they found it)

As you can see on the minimap, I haven't expanded beyond the UHV1-area but my ships have explored most of Europe.
But from the time the Byzantines open their borders to the moment my European city/cities are ready to pump out missionaries, Tarabalus and Dimashq have almost non-stop been building missionaries and kept sending them to all the Byzantine cities. Byzantium will eventually remove Islam, but if you keep sending them in you should get at least 2/3 of their cities to embrace your religion

Once my European city is ready, it takes over production and Tarabalus/Dimashq build Ghazi/Workers to send to Europe.
I always try to get Hungary and the Norse to open their borders to me and send in some missionaries, often they will convert
Of course your presence in Europe won't be well liked and some idiot will declare war on you...just don't fight them but send your Ghazi towards another juicy target and gift the endangered city to some civ close by.
Milan is a great target, Genoa can be (though you will need more like 5 Ghazi here) or any other independend city you encounter.
Although it is really easy to accomplish, you shouldn't forget UHV2, usually Alexandria & Al Quahira are enough to produce settlers and Ghazi for this, you just shouldn't forget it
I recommend placing the settlers in their positions and settling 1 turn before the time limit is up, and then gifting all North African cities but Tunis to Cordoba (Tunis can produce a galley and join in in the missionary-spam)
Once you reach the 30-32%, you should try to get either Germany or France to open their borders to you (usually by joining in on of their current wars). Et voila.

So far, I've won in 1320 and 1323 respectively

okay, I just tried it on Emperor (SVN 1086) and the strategy worked there as well.
On Emperor, you have slower research (who cares, you always research at + XX % anyway) and higher maintenance costs -> build some bazars here and there, when you got the time.
Since there will be the Seljuks around the time of the first crusade (plus usually some barbarian Ghazi), you really should build more units than you think are necessary and also recruit a couple of mercs.

This time I even managed to reach UHV3 by 1200 AD.

Using your spy points you can convert one or more civs to Islam once they have it in at least one city, this can be used for example like this: station a spy just outside enemy borders, build a city on this spot. "Liberate" it on the same turn, since your spy has been stationed there for 5 turns (no risk of being spotted, since its was neutral territory) -> you should be able to convert them and with the boni for having the same religion and liberating a city, they should almost always open their borders for you, for more missionaries. I haven't tried it like that yet, but am convinced it should work.

The Ghazi can conquer almost any city up untill ~1200 (by then you will have to deal with castles or knights), so just conquer, build missionaries and gift it away when endangered or no longer usefull

OK, I am going to try this. Any time I tried to go for UHV 3 soon, my home cities get conquered by Arab tribes, or Seljuks or whatever.

Using your spy points you can convert one or more civs to Islam once they have it in at least one city, this can be used for example like this: station a spy just outside enemy borders, build a city on this spot. "Liberate" it on the same turn, since your spy has been stationed there for 5 turns (no risk of being spotted, since its was neutral territory) -> you should be able to convert them and with the boni for having the same religion and liberating a city, they should almost always open their borders for you, for more missionaries. I haven't tried it like that yet, but am convinced it should work.

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Though probably expensive to do in practice, I have to say that's brilliant.

@swinnend: the game with Arabia is somewhat different from other civs as that you don't really improve your cities, I build very few workers (the basics are there plus you usually start with 1-3 so I up that to maybe 5), hardly any city improvements and lots of units (1st spearmen then almost exclusively Ghazi untill you switch to knights).
I had 1 archer + 2-4 spearmen + 0-2 nubian archers up untill 8xx when I researched Farriers, from there on I had ~2 infantry defenders, 2 mercs and 4-8 Ghazi in Jerusalem. Your city in Arabia should have 2-3 defenders as well (I recommend 1 merc, 1 spearmen, 1 Ghazi)
once you get closer to ~1050 (Seljuks and 1st Crusade) you should have about 12 Ghazi in your homeland. Also: once you have Ghazi, fight offensively (attack as soon as they enter your culture, before they can pillage too much), with Flanking1+2 (only need barracks for that) you get 50% chance to win + 25% retreat, so either you win (and get lots of xp) or they retreat and the next one kills him. with combat1+2 you get something like 74% chance to kill + 4-5% chance to retreat. (you'll want some with the anti-heavy-cavalry-promotion for the seljuks and the crusaders, but also some with flanking 1+2 to kill the catapults of the crusaders and later take care of the Mongols)

since you'll have a holy city and a few houses of wisdom (Alexandria, the Al Qahira city and maybe 1-2 more) you should be able to become tech leader even when researching at ~50-60% (the bazar at your capitol is quite important here)

I also recommend switching to Serfdom + the one that gives you +1 trade route (not manorism which gives -1) as soon as you get the option to take Serfdom since it will boost your production in Egypt and Antiochia by quite a bit.

have designated "missionary-cities" (I usually take the 2 ex-Byzantine ones in the north, since they're closest to their targets) and others for "military" (Jerusalem, Tyre, 1-2 more), only the later ones need barracks (and also these only when you feel safe enough with the troops you have) and stables

I think it is quite important to get a foothold somewhere in Europe (I have grown to like northern Italy and Poland) before 1000AD.
3-4 Ghazi can probably take Venice or at least Milan. Same goes for the city in Serbia and the Polish cities.

oh and try to help Cordoba. Gift them techs, gift them resources (they often lack Iron), if they manage to survive against Spain this gives you a couple of percentage points

and keep Byzantium happy, they are your shield and having open borders with them is much better than having to conquer half of their empire

@Wessel:
you are one of the first civs to start, so you'll probably get a "total spy points" bonus (I mean the percentage on the spy advisor screen) and since the city will have your religion, of which you own the holy city while it is not the state religion of your target you get another..-25%? more?...this should become quite feasible. For Byzantium I payed something like 300 spy points. (although I used on of their cities, since we already had open borders)
plus the AI usually loves those stupid spy specialists so I think I made something like 15-25 spy points per turn, if you focus them on 1 or 2 civs, this should work in the timeframe of "set spy point target, build spy, build settler, go settle", but as I said, I haven't tried it yet (at least not this exact strategy).
On Monarch getting open borders is usually easily accomplished by bribing them with a tech and in my Emperor game there were a lot of wars

edit: just tried it, it works, the time your spy waits outside in the no-mans-land counts as "stationary" and makes operations on that field less expensive. so with this strategy you have 0 chance of being found before you want to use him (and usually you have ~80% of success)

You can also often try to convert civs through diplomacy before they have chosen a state religion. Gift them a city with Islam in it, then gift them techs until they agree to switch. Works particularly well with Lithuania and the Vikings, and once they are Islamic you can OB with them and dump loads more missionaries into their other cities to ensue they stay Muslim. Or capture cities like Ragusa and found one on Corsica then you can try and get Venice and Genoa to convert to Islam soon after they spawn.

Doesn't work very well after they choose another religion, as they hate you pretty quickly after!

Chep said:

oh and try to help Cordoba. Gift them techs, gift them resources (they often lack Iron), if they manage to survive against Spain this gives you a couple of percentage points

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Oh no, I overdid it.

seems like it

but you haven't explored Europe, probably haven't met all other civs (bribing them into wars with each other, buying/selling techs and opening borders for missionaries all help)

I think that in none of my 3 Arabic games I've ever sent a unit to the Iberian Peninsula. I gift Cordoba Iron, Silk and techs (and later cities), sure, but the fight is theirs

spreading Islam there is pretty hard, since Spain almost immediately removes it from their cities. Hungary, Poland, Lithuania and especially the Norse are far more welcoming. Also: If you get the "Orthodox civs" to convert, they tend to keep your religion and spread it for you (in my last game Islam spread to Bulgaria on its own, since I met them early enough and as a consequence Kiev later converted as well, even before I had ever met them).

I also think you took the North African cities too early in the game. By 11xx I usually only own Tunis and the Byzantine city (I don't remember the name, but the one in North Africa), as they just slow you down research-wise and bind your troops. Though it might be a good idea to use them for stability, once you feel technologically advanced enough, so that you can counter instability from owning Venice or Genoa.

I take it you want to rely on the Ottomans to convert the Byzantine Empire, but I don't think thats wise, you could really use them as a buffer from enemies while you send your units through their lands.