Cre/Chm was cut for mild reasons....
Camel Archer is just plain awful. I opened my first Arabia game, glad to finally play as Arabia. Is starting techs I actually liked, made my strategy much easier. In fact, his techs are perfect for it and it worked flawlessly. I build Madrassas everywhere and expanded to about 8 cities. THen, Loius invaded with a warrior, on a small one-tile peninsula that forces to go through Arabia. I beef up defenses and his true, though pathetic, invasion force is crushed. Now I'm mad, and use peace to take full vengenace. A decent army predominately made of Camels came to the borders. He declares, I invade ans since Zara stretched hiself to box Loius off, I soon reached Paris after skipping a heavy city. My army, after taking three cties was decimated, so bad that the AP Dow would not convince one of the most easiet to capitulate vassals to do so. Their only modest point, retreat odds, I don;t even remeber seeing at all. Might be bad luck there, but I never tried playing them again and don't intend to.
The Byzantines are really a beefer version of Arabia. Same start techs, both SPiritual except for Imp instead of Pro, same replacement UU, but the Cataphract is actually good. The Hippodrome is also pretty great, at least in relation to the Madrassa.
Bad Knight UU+ Good for me, but not for most start tech+ Bad UB+ plus a terrible trait combo= Arabia
Great Knight UU+ Good for me, but not for most start tech+ Decent UB+ Decent traits equals= Byzantium
