Babylon: Middle Eastern Juggernaut

[Shawmane]

Does anyone else have this problem still? I know that the Bowmen were toned down some but , to me, it still doesn't seem to be quite enough. It seems know matter which culture I choose to play, in every game, Babylon is a serious thorn in my side.

As the Persians, my immortals fall like leaves from trees once I attack either Babili or Ninua. If they are the aggressor, usually from Shush/Shushan/Susa flipping, it takes nearly every immortal that I start with + the immortals I recieve from the city flipping to take any 1 city from them. If I have to be the aggressor, and not recieve the deserter units, then I typically lose my entire army of immortals on the first attack. Ninua in particular is a very
difficult city for me to take. I believe the problem is the craptacular immortals, either that or just bad luck on my part.

As the Arabs, if Hammy is still around...and he usually is....He almost always declares war as soon as Ur and As-Sur flip, at which point I take an enormous force of camel archers and attack Babili typically ending in me with half the force I started with , the rest mortally wounded and the city of Babel in my control. By the time my units are healed enough to assault Ninua, he has ammassed a force of spearmen, bows and mercenaries the likes of which I could never support...especially with only Ninua and Artaxata under my control. Cutting their Copper doesnt help much since Artaxata has iron in a nearly inaccessible square.
It's even worse if he doesn't declare war when the cities flip....

I want to suggest just removing them all together but im open to suggestion on how to deal with this menace!!

Incidentally, shouldn't the city of Babili's name change to Baghdad when the arabs conquer it?

 

[Lord Apolon]

I've noticed the same thing. In a recent game, I spawned as Persia and the Babs already had five cities. After Shush flipped, I was able to take either Babylon or Nineveh, but either way left my army unable to conquer the other city, or even tiny Ur. I tried several times from the first Persia turn but no matter what I did, I couldn't take down Babylon in a timely manner.

In my game today as Rome, Babylon did not fall until about 1200 A.D. They were about even with the Arabs when I took out Greece later than I would have liked, and not long after I had a firm grip on Asia Minor Hammurabi invaded me with such forces that even my Praet and cat juggernaut couldn't keep them back. I fortressed up in Constantinople while they took Trapesus and Ephesus. (Granted I wasn't too concerned because of the imminent Turkic spawn)

I didn't take the cities back until the 12th century, and then from the newly-spawned Turks. 6 or 8 trebs and some praets took care of Asia Minor. Then I attacked Babylon and only had such an easy time because the Turks had just spent half their army whittling down Babili. Fortress Nineveh, of course, had a monster stack and +125% defense (Hammurabi always seem to get Kukulkan!). Luckily they moved most of the stack to the weakened Babili just in time to be eaten alive.

So.. yeah. The production in the Middle East is much higher than it used to be, and the powerful Bowman, plentiful resources, early wonders, and early start make Hammurabi a force to be reckoned with, easily able to stalemate AI Arabia and a match for Turkey as well.

I feel like he needs another nerf. I would suggest a VERY high chance of an immediate war with the Arabs. And maybe a few more camel archers for Saladin. Of course, the Persians should take them down if possible. As it is they never seem to do anything much besides get eaten by barbs.

Technically Babylon is not in the same place as Baghdad, close but not the same, although when I get my hands on it as the Arabs I manually change the name. I'd support that change mostly because Babylon is not an important city today, but Baghdad obviously is.

 

[Danger Bird]

Pillage Babylon's lands (don't attack the cities) and they are likely to collapse.

At least, it worked that way once for me as Arabia. (I don't remember if this was before or after they got the extra rocks.)

 

[Mercenary82]

Babylon is always at the top of the powergraph until Arabia or Turkey spawns. The nerfed bowman doesn't really change this since they always have hordes of Swords, Spears, Axes, and Cats, much much more than civs like Persia or Greece can deal with.

I really think something has to be done about the hordes of units they spam, its just not realistic for a civ their to be so powerful compared to other civs. I'd rather not see their territory nerfed, but I'd like to see the Babylon AI tweaked to not spam so many units if possible.

An idea I had that would be a comprimise to removing them would be triggering an auto-collapse of them into independents at 700 BC when they are controlled by AI. This would get them out of the way for other civs, but would still let players play Babylon.

 

[Morfydd]

I dunno havent had any difficulty from babylon to speak of ...
as the eqyptians i used Babili as a means to acheive my historical victory <conquedered babili> by turn 50 with hordes of war chariats as to their removal playing arabia I managed to capture babil and nineveh by usign my intial troops to pillage their empire then i took theri cities all within the first 30 turns as arabia then used the workers they so generously provided me with to rebuild and stabalize....
as persia well they are a thorn and always will be a thorn in persias side <the same is still ture today> so its pretty accurate but the same tactics of taking away their resources then the cities works ..<they tend to send their troops out to stop you from pillaging the countryside then take them ...Trying to used any mounted unit to take a city is wastefull and folly to begin with eheh

 

[Mercenary82]

Yeah they are easy to kill with Egypt if you rush them, but for anyone else like Greece, Persia, or Arabia they are way too hard to kill most of the time. Fortunatley this new plague is killing off all the excess unit spam Babylon loves, so it seems to be taking care of the problem.