ALC Game #22 Pre-Game Show: Playing as Saladin

My vote is for founding an early religion, building the AP and the ultimate diplo victory. Leverage Saladin's spiritual trait to switch civics to get shared civic bonuses from AI's and get them to vote for you. Along the way many religious wars will be fought with the infidels and the protective trait will give us an edge. Don't forget to accumulate the shared war bonuses from other AI's - they never go away.
 
Justinian is very dependant on resources
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A man cannot conquer with Camel Archers alone!

I think you could have a good try with Cataphracts though.

How many games have you went without Iron and Horses by Guilds? And you can go out and get some the meaner way. With Axes.
 
It should be noted also that with the Madrassa you can run priests and Scientists. This gives you an early option of switching between priests and scientists throughout you empire to suit the city (obviously a commerce rich city would benefit Scientists, as would a military city might benefit the extra hammer from a priest). I wouldn't be too reliant on priests once you've bulbed Theology for the AP. You'll want to run Scientists to get into a position to bulb Philosophy and use Angor Wat and later Merchantilism to max out those hammers along with the benefits of the AP. I usually win either a military victory or Space with Saladin.
 
I've Been busy lately and not playing Civ lol... Probably really rusty by now :P...

Well my Thoughts are Depending on which Victory Condition you're aiming for you may neglect some Uniques and traits in use of others with this leader.

Culture is the most easiest and obviously Victory Condition fro Saladin with his Myst Start and UB, grabbing Religions and building cheap temples for the extra boost in culutre is easy, the rest is dipolmacy, so you may never get to ever use the Protective Trait or the UU.

The Other Victory Condition is Dipolamcy/Domination, depending how the AP vote goes.

Basically it's a religion Grab (may not be possible on Emp without high commerce start), Temple Whipping and Oracle Slingshot to Monarchy for early Happiness and Verticle Expansion while you beeline to Fuedalism for Powerful 5XP, Drill 3/ CG3 LBs.

The higher Happy Caps should allow you to utilize your UB's Specialist so you can research Feudalism faster.

After Conquering with your LBs, Consolidate your Empire and Beelines to Guilds, Your Economy comes 1st before the beeline because I tend to Lag and Stagnate aropund this time.

As long as you get your UU before the AI gets Engineering, it's should be a relatively fair advantage.

If you still haven't got enough Votes for a Dipolmatic Win by the age of Rifles, you should aim for a domination Victory with your Drill1/CG1 Gunpowder units around this time.

yeah It's a bit summarised, going into detail takes to much time :S. Hopefully you get the idea on my style of play with Saladin.
 
I started up a game as Saladin last night, and the Madrassa absolutely rocks. As long as Saladin has those, I won't call him a weak leader. :)
 
Sisiutil said:
I am willing to go to war for stone, as I said, but that is at odds with the turtle-and-build strategy.
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I think you largely miss the window on the early stone wonders if you choose to fight for stone.
 
Only a couple things to add for thought, as I pretty much agree with most of what has been said here.

1. If you want to grab an early religion (as in, one you can get because you start with Mysticism), be careful if you pick "Choose Religion" as then you have to guess whether the AI will pursue Meditation or Polytheism first. From my game experience, the AI tends to favor Meditation, but it's not unusual for the AI to get Polytheism first. In one game I played without Choose Religion, Hinduism was founded early, but Buddhism wasn't founded until much later.

2. If I'm not mistaken, you can get AH directly through Hunting. So if you end up with livestock, Hunting should take priority as you can get both the paths to AH and Archery opened early.

EDIT: On the founding of a religion, yes, the same could apply if Choose Religion is not selected, but the point is you then know which tech was pursued first. With Choose Religion selected, if you pick, say, Poly first, and an AI founds a religion before you get Poly, you won't know if it was Poly the AI picked until you get Poly yourself.
 
I've played Saladin a lot.
He's good at:
Spiritual means you can do FE and go hardcore war. Basically for most non-insane difficulties, you can probably do a fast conquest. Unfortunately, protective isn't going to help you much.
Protective means archer expansion is strong. Then you can grow a nice economy, get liberalism, and nationalism, and draft your way to victory.

Madrassa is best pre-caste system, which lends itself to earlier war.
Religion, maybe. It might slow down your expansion. I don't see diplomatic/AP victory as his best victory option.
Pyramids, ok especially if you're relying on specialists and great people to fuel your research, but slows down your early attack/expansion.
 
NintendoTogepi said:
Islam as the big religion again?

It was already the big religion in the last game :p
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There's no guarantee that I'll found it, and even if I do, that it will become the big religion.
 
ratrangerm said:
EDIT: On the founding of a religion, yes, the same could apply if Choose Religion is not selected, but the point is you then know which tech was pursued first. With Choose Religion selected, if you pick, say, Poly first, and an AI founds a religion before you get Poly, you won't know if it was Poly the AI picked until you get Poly yourself.
Click to expand...

Just hover your mouse over the technology and see if it still says "First to discover founds a religion" or not.
 
Well any other religion would look out of place for Sal-ah-din.
 
I vote for an early 'strategy' of settling further away city sites and then back filling. The cultural output of madrassas and protective archers should make this feasible. While founding Islam, of course! The cost of far reaching early expansion could be countered by an early prophet founding the Islamic shrine!

Claim a lot of land to yourself, with an emphasis on getting stone for even cheaper walls and castles, and the rest will be easy. Stone will help with some choice wonders too (Sankore? Minaret?).

As for victories, culture or diplo would suit nicely, but everyone loves a military victory too.
 
Starting with Mysticism, having a high culture UB, and being Protective might indicate an attempt at a cultural victory. I don't know that aiming for any specific religion is vital in that case.
 
I have nothing to add. Only that I'm another one of the long-time listeners / first-time posters. I only just got BtS about a month ago and am still playing at chieftain level. :blush: (I'm trying to get one of each win at each skill level before advancing, and I just haven't had much opportunity to play yet....)

I have, however, spent the last several weeks reading your earlier ALC's (the main reason I ran out and got BtS was so I could keep up with what you all were discussing...) and have already benefited from the lessons of your games.

In my almost completely uneducated opinion, though, I also think you should go for a religion.

So, good luck! I'll be watching and learning. I may even comment from time to time. :mischief:
 
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