Arabian Social Policies

[Carl5872]

I wanted to get your opinions on what 5 (I always like to rank the 5 best for any civ even if not going for a culture victory) best social policies for Arabia.

Here's what I have so far and why, but please give me your feedback.

1. Liberty - Overall I feel it is the best of the 3 starters. Since Arabia gets a trade route focused UA, there is synergy with the SP that gives happiness for trade routes in liberty. Although there are more advantages Liberty has over the other two, I don't think they are any different for Arabia than for any other civ, so I won't mention them here.

2. Commerce - Playing to Arabia's strengths of trade routes, the maintenance reduction from the commerce policy has synergy with the UA. Also since the Bazaar will ensure that Arabia has each original copy of its luxury resources the commerce SP that gives a happiness for each luxury type will help Arabia more than it would help other civs.

3. Rationalism - Arabia will probably have lots of extra gold from the trade route bonus and the ability to sell off bazaar luxuries, so by going down rationalism, Harun can use all that gold to pump into research agreements.

4. Order - Following the chronological flow of social policies, lastly I chose order. Again going back to the trade route ability, it is naturally in Arabia's best interest to have many cities connected via trade route, and Order benefits cities with a large number of cities.

5. Patronage - This one is more of a filler to get to 5. It follows the same reasoning as Rationalism. Arabia will have surplus gold, which it can use to buy city states. If its going to buy city states, it may as well use social policies that will make the most of that.

 

[joncnunn]

My top list for Arabia

#1 Liberty: Is indeed the best opening for Arabia (and everybody else)

Science Victory:

#2 Start Tradition unless you have a lot of coastal cities in which case Commerce). The extra growth from Tradition will generally help more than Commerce. And you'll get more happiness points from Tradition than Commerce. (Commerce is sometimes better when you have a lot of coastal cities, particularly if production is low in several)

#3 Base Rationalism (interrupt above as soon as you reach bulb Astronomy) For RAs

#4 Complete the above tree #2 you started

#5 Rest of Rationalism

Cultural victory would be

#2 Piety

#3 Start Tradition

#4 Freedom (interupt above as soon as you reach the tech that opens this)

#5 Finish Tradition

#6 Sometimes Commerce, but in other cases Patronage. (In more cases Patronage)

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Commerce: While many players do initially sell their only copy of luxuries, by the time they can open Commerce they are now keeping the first copy and only selling duplicates. So no real advantage to this policy for Arabia.

Order: The thing is that if you've already opened Rationalism, your only one policy away from a happiness bonus there (Humanism; which since your going to have Universiities & Public Schools everywhere is actually 2X as much as Order's). Several cities done building by the time Order tree completed.

 

[Muskie]

I play Arabia often. And I don't consider Commerce that important. I generally open Liberty. I am a big fan of Patronage. So sometimes I finish Liberty and then start Patronage, other times I need Piety.

Rationalism often comes late enough that I don't use it or need it, even for science victories. I play with a variety of civs and always try stuff like starting Tradition and delaying the use of the free culture building ploy I read about here.

For trading and Arabia I would say Patronage is much more important than Commerce. I'd argue that for most any civ and tactic Patronage is more important than Commerce. In Alpha Centauri you could win commercially, by dominating the energy exchange. I never accomplished this due to random power failures...

Gold is good, but it isn't that hard to come by. I had 1800 gold as Spain early on in my last game just from scouts and triremes.

I also choose Order or Freedom based on the size of my empire and the state of the world, both are good, but Liberty and Patronage are closer to cornerstones of my Civ V playing tactics with and without using Arabia.

 

[joncnunn]

In Alpha Centauri you could win commercially, by dominating the energy exchange. I never accomplished this due to random power failures...

You pretty much needed enough energy to bribe every remaining city on the planet. Which was normally somewhere between 10 & 100 times more than what triggered the first random power failure event.

So you pretty much needed to have turned off random events to successfully go after it unless you wanted several power failures.

 

[pspboy7]

Commerce is great for archepelago maps (no brainer actually) but not much else. Liberty is probably the best opening track no matter what victory you go for if not the most important track in the game overall as it can be applied for every contigency.