How do i get good research as Arabia?

[Logoncal]

Trying to play Arabia. The Second UHV is reachable for me but UHV 1 feels complicated. I'm running at constant 0% science due to the ridiculous ammount of cost that Arabia suffers from.

What do i do? What build should i follow on my cities? Anybody has some tips for it? I just want to know how can i make Arabia a flourishing economy and a proudly scientific caliphate.

 

[catacau]

Use great people to discover techs. Don't research Paper because it will make the Great Library obsolete which is a great source of Science and Great Scientists

 

[star15389]

Build the University of Sankore and the Spiral Minaret, and a temple/monastery in every city. Also conquer Byzantium for the Hagia Sophia. I don't know if that obsoletes GLibrary in 1.15; even if it does go for it anyway

 

[Logoncal]

Build the University of Sankore and the Spiral Minaret, and a temple/monastery in every city. Also conquer Byzantium for the Hagia Sophia. I don't know if that obsoletes GLibrary in 1.15; even if it does go for it anyway

Oh yeah, the Hagia Sophia....
I guess i can easily conquer Byzantium at the 600AD start, since his starting units are a JOKE

 

[Fresol]

Get a Great Prophet and you control 3 shrines. And the Dome of Rock.

 

[Logoncal]

wait, hang on. How the flying fudge i take constantinople without gunpowder? That danm thing has 200% defense and i cant quickly build siege units because Arabia's starting cities are all ****

 

[star15389]

Roll for a start where Byz refuses the flip. 8 Camels is more than enough to take Constantinople, Athens, and Belgrade

 

[Tigranes]

Roll for a start where Byz refuses the flip. 8 Camels is more than enough to take Constantinople, Athens, and Belgrade

You mean a start where they declare a war on you? Because AI cannot refuse the flip AND keep the cities (AND lose units every turn).

Lately it was notoriously hard to roll starts where AI declares a war on you on spawn and you get unit boost. I used to roll for the starts like this in the past but lately just gave up. I think @Leoreth discouraged wars against the newborn civs? Perhaps 10 turn peace with newborns rule has something to do with it?

 

[catacau]

And the Dome of Rock

The Dome of Rock is not very useful in this stage because religions haven't spread that much so you usually just have a +5 gold, generated by the Dome, by the end of UHV with the Islam shrine and that's it.

I don't like conquering Constantinople, i lose a lot of time and units trying to do so. I don't even declare war to the Byzantine, i rather focus on conquering Iberia through Africa.

On buildings, you usually have to build monastery->jail->market->library. Jails are a must for Arabia because you will have a lot of cities, market and library are dispensable but are ok if you have enough military to conquer Iberia. But in my stratagy the main Science source comes from GP, especially after recent updates where GP can discover more than one tech.

 

[GuitarDemon]

Havent played version 1.15 yet but I imagine its the same strategy, spam a great prophet ASAP, build the muslim shrine, build markets and what ever else increases money output in just your shrine cities, build spiral minaret ASAP, you get a free temple upon conquest so that helps, build monosatries (extra gold after spiral minaret), hmm couple courthouses, and that should get you rolling pretty good, dome of the rock works well for me