Arabia useless in multiplayer?

[reeses4brkfst]

I recently played a multiplayer game with friends and picked Arabia because the combination of massive wealth and religion lets you do pretty much anything. I soon realized though that my friends were not willing to buy luxury resources because their happiness was "above zero".

Without being able to rack in 240 lump sums or GPT I became useless and was unable to use wealth to boost my development of religion. The only reason I felt I was able to at least survive most of the game was because my friends are mostly new to the game and camel archers bought me some time.

My question is this: Is there anyway to successfully use Arabia in multiplayer and if not then what is the closest civ to the Arabian play style that works in multiplayer?

My Arabian play style is one where I push for religion early game and then move toward diplomacy as the world congress become available. I prefer using Arabia because if need be I can repurpose my gold to quickly produce units, build science/culture buildings or whatever else I need to do while I am not buying out city-states.

Any work around the community may have found would be really helpful.
* (Hope I posted this in the right place)

 

[Mercurio]

Considering how you still get double oil, longer land trade routes, stronger religion spreading through trade routes and Camel Archers, I would hardly call them useless. But yeah no selling luxuries, that's gaming the AI anyways... You could still get some use out of it by trading against other luxuries/resources since more diversity increases trade rout income for everyone.

Also if your friends are new, I'm pretty sure you can use those camel archers to sweep them off the map completely if you wanted anyways.

 

[Resipsa]

I soon realized though that my friends were not willing to buy luxury resources because their happiness was "above zero".

Well then they weren't expanding or growing fast enough then were they?

 

[reeses4brkfst]

Well then they weren't expanding or growing fast enough then were they?

That might have been part of the problem. There were also eight of us tightly fit onto one landmass. I should amend my previous post by adding that some of them had played several times before. I think the strategy was to kill me first since they knew I would win out in the long run.

So what i'm getting from this thread is that Arabia is still pretty good. I just wont have quiet the edge i'm used to which I suppose can be said of most/all multiplayer games in civ when compared to the AI.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Also, if everyone is ganging up on you, Camel Archers probably let you survive longer than you would have otherwise.

 

[Mercurio]

Well the trading for gold thing is what makes Arabia truely imbalanced. However Camel Archers are still awesome and can be pretty hard to counter even if you know, what you're doing. The double oil allows you to field large ammounts of oil requiring units (planes/battleships etc.) even if you have limited resources. Even if the land trade route thing and religion spreading have limited use, you still have two edges you can use for the battlefield, which you should use accordingly.
Beeline camel archers, so you can use them early and when your friends can probably only counter with crappy horsemen and chariot archers. Build lots of bombers and use those when the time comes.

 

[Vidszhite]

If you build any strategy that is dependent on others acting a certain way, you're going to have a bad time. You didn't miss out because Arabia was useless, you missed out because you tried to do a very narrow strategy that used only one aspect of one thing that Arabia is good at, and it didn't work the way you expected. Arabia is the only civ that can reach all the other civs with caravans early in the game, their Bazaar is fantastic at generating gold, and they get by far the most out of Petra, since they usually start near Desert and their caravans are the best.

AIs are usually the only ones who will buy luxes for lump sums, and even that requires a DoF now. Humans know the value of gold better than the AI, so expecting your friends to act like the AI was your first mistake.

You could have easily set up a religion without lump sum deals, and in fact you should have done this right away. What you also could have done was be the distributor of happiness, trading your luxes for other luxes to give yourself more golden ages, and thus, more gold and culture. Happiness can also be thought of as currency for city growth, and thus, amassing happiness allows you to grow huge. Arabia can very easily go wide to spread their religion, since more cities means more pressure, and more faith. You can go tall as Arabia as well, and use your trade routes and Grand Temple as the means to spread your religion.

Because of the fact that you'd be the happiness salesman, though, trading luxes 1:1 makes you very valuable to the other players as the game progresses. They will want to be your friend because you have all the luxes, and they suddenly can't live without you. Double Oil also makes you an important ally in the late game. As long as you make yourself valuable to the others, you won't get into many wars, and you can use your status to propel yourself to a cultural victory.

Of course, if others see what you're doing, and march an army at you, the Camel Archer is the best ranged unit in the game for its time, MUCH stronger than the Keshik, even has stronger ranged attack than the Knight has melee attack. This can make any prospects for war with you very, very daunting, which is what you should aim for: make them covet your services, but teach them that it does not pay to covet your land.

 

[FrostK]

Are you plaing without comps? Playing without AI is another game...

If u play with comps you also need according difficulty level. I.e. if u can win 99% games on King in single, select Immortal.

 

[Gucumatz]

Are you serious? Arabia is considered one of the most powerful MP civs out there:

Camel Archers murder everything, extra luxes are limited yes - but you can still trade them. A desert start means possibility for Petra + Desert Folklore. Camel Archers are arguably much better than Keshiks too in Multiplayer as they have a higher strength allowing them to take harder hits if you are ever outfoxed a bit.

 

[ABPoobah]

Sorry if this is a stupid question - does Arabia start with extra luxes or something? If not why the focus on selling luxes being a specifically Arabian thing? It's kinda a staple of any civ in single player high difficulty games. The only civ I guess I'd say is weakened though by the inability to trade away their lux would be the Dutch?

Arabia's good because lategame it has crazy oil, and gets a great boost to income through the Bazaar all game long.

 

[tat501]

Because the Bazaar creates an extra copy of luxuries -so if you have 1 marble then build a bazaar - you magically have 2 marble so you can sell one.

 

[Luckystrike77]

If you play multiplayer with competent players, that understand the power of golden ages and growing their cities optimally, you will have no problems with selling your lux-ressources for gold per turn. Everything from 4 to 7 gold per turn is reasonable, depending on when in game etc. Buying a lux can also have positive side effects like Happy Kings Day and City State Missions.

 

[ense7en]

If you play multiplayer with competent players, that understand the power of golden ages and growing their cities optimally, you will have no problems with selling your lux-ressources for gold per turn. Everything from 4 to 7 gold per turn is reasonable, depending on when in game etc. Buying a lux can also have positive side effects like Happy Kings Day and City State Missions.

Yeah i don't think too many MP players will pay GPT for luxs...
But you should have extra lux for trades (probably will have too many extra, but that's better than fewer).

And Camel Archers are amazing.

Obviously you cannot exploit people with trades for gold, but that doesn't make a civ weak...just means you have to be smarter.

 

[Randall_Flagg]

If you play multiplayer with competent players, that understand the power of golden ages and growing their cities optimally, you will have no problems with selling your lux-ressources for gold per turn. Everything from 4 to 7 gold per turn is reasonable, depending on when in game etc. Buying a lux can also have positive side effects like Happy Kings Day and City State Missions.

You have found people who would pay GPT in MP?

 

[bcaiko]

I take it the other players didn't have luxuries for trade, either? A lux for lux trade is a good deal in multiplayer. Mid game Golden Ages are a powerful tool for getting you where you want to be.

 

[anandus]

I hardly find players in multiplayer that are willing to give lump sum gold (understandably, I wouldn't either), but surely lux for lux trade must be possible? Especially if your are playing with 8 players you must be able to find players willing to trade?

But maybe you were too late and most players already traded their surplus lux?

 

[Babri]

You should try this:-
Build an army of camel archers. Threat them to buy your luxuries otherwise you'll pillage the crap out of em. It could work I guess.

Sent from my HTC One V using Tapatalk 4 Beta