He's the least interesting of the leaders IMO..
Starting techs: Mysticism and the Wheel. Mysticism gives you a decent chance at founding a religion, but the fact that it's paired with the Wheel means you can't start with a Worker build (unless you want to have your worker spend a dozen turns building roads...).
Traits: Spiritual and Protective. Not bad, but no synergy with each other, the starting techs, or the UU/UB.
Back when Sal was Philosophical, there was an attractive early path for him: snag an early religion, then either build an early Priest wonder (Stonehenge / Oracle) or pick up Priesthood, chop a Temple, and run a Priest. Voila: very soon you'd have a Great Priest and an early shrine, with shrine income and a good chance of spreading the faith to your neighbors.
Now that he's Protective... well, you can still pull this off, but you have to wait an extra 25 turns for your Shrine, and that makes it a lot less attractive. Early income is better, and spreading religions works best when there's not much competition yet.
Unique Unit: Camel Archers. These are Knights with no resource requirements and a 15% withdrawal chance. Let's think that through.
One, if you don't have either horses or iron by the time you get Guilds, something is very wrong. (And by "don't have" I include "can't get in trade".) Either the RNG has decided to stick it in, rotate it, and snap it off, or you're just not playing very well. I can't remember the last time I reached Guilds without having access to these resources. So, the resourceless part is pretty worthless.
Two, if you really are resourceless... well, congratulations: you now have a UU that can't be upgraded. Good luck in the Cavalry/Cannon era; you'll need it.
Three, the Knight/Camel Archer's window of utility has shrunk with the introduction of the Cuirassier.
Four, the Camel Archer is one of those annoying UUs whose special power disappears when it gets promoted. This is forgivable when the UU is otherwise good (Quechua, Samurai, Praet), but adding insult to injury when the UU is otherwise mediocre.
Unique Building: The Madrassa, a Library that produces 4 culture instead of 2 and that will let you run two priests and/or two scientists.
This isn't a horrible UB, but... feh. I guess there's some synergy with the starting techs, since both are on the way to Writing. Again, if Sal were still Philosophical this would be a much more useful UB, allowing you some nice fine-tuning of early GPs. But he's not.
Unlike the Inca Terrace, the Madrassa doesn't come early enough to help with early land grabs. You can whip it in a newly captured city for quick border pops -- it's better than a Theater -- but it's also more expensive; Sal isn't Creative, so it's not half price.
It's probably some use towards a Cultural win -- 1000 year old Madrassas will produce a whopping 8 cpt, which is nothing to sneeze at. But this would be more impressive if Sal's other traits helped with Cultural, which they don't really. If the silly Protective trait were replaced by Creative, Financial, Philosophical, or Industrious, you'd have some good synergy going. But as it is, the Madrassa just sort of sits there.
The Madrassa doesn't suck, mind you. It's just kind of... blah. Mediocre.
And that's Saladin for you: mediocre. He's not horrible, but he's not very good either. And there's nothing about him that makes him particularly fun or interesting to play.
Am I the only one who doesn't care for Sal? Agree, disagree? Thoughts?
Waldo
Starting techs: Mysticism and the Wheel. Mysticism gives you a decent chance at founding a religion, but the fact that it's paired with the Wheel means you can't start with a Worker build (unless you want to have your worker spend a dozen turns building roads...).
Traits: Spiritual and Protective. Not bad, but no synergy with each other, the starting techs, or the UU/UB.
Back when Sal was Philosophical, there was an attractive early path for him: snag an early religion, then either build an early Priest wonder (Stonehenge / Oracle) or pick up Priesthood, chop a Temple, and run a Priest. Voila: very soon you'd have a Great Priest and an early shrine, with shrine income and a good chance of spreading the faith to your neighbors.
Now that he's Protective... well, you can still pull this off, but you have to wait an extra 25 turns for your Shrine, and that makes it a lot less attractive. Early income is better, and spreading religions works best when there's not much competition yet.
Unique Unit: Camel Archers. These are Knights with no resource requirements and a 15% withdrawal chance. Let's think that through.
One, if you don't have either horses or iron by the time you get Guilds, something is very wrong. (And by "don't have" I include "can't get in trade".) Either the RNG has decided to stick it in, rotate it, and snap it off, or you're just not playing very well. I can't remember the last time I reached Guilds without having access to these resources. So, the resourceless part is pretty worthless.
Two, if you really are resourceless... well, congratulations: you now have a UU that can't be upgraded. Good luck in the Cavalry/Cannon era; you'll need it.
Three, the Knight/Camel Archer's window of utility has shrunk with the introduction of the Cuirassier.
Four, the Camel Archer is one of those annoying UUs whose special power disappears when it gets promoted. This is forgivable when the UU is otherwise good (Quechua, Samurai, Praet), but adding insult to injury when the UU is otherwise mediocre.
Unique Building: The Madrassa, a Library that produces 4 culture instead of 2 and that will let you run two priests and/or two scientists.
This isn't a horrible UB, but... feh. I guess there's some synergy with the starting techs, since both are on the way to Writing. Again, if Sal were still Philosophical this would be a much more useful UB, allowing you some nice fine-tuning of early GPs. But he's not.
Unlike the Inca Terrace, the Madrassa doesn't come early enough to help with early land grabs. You can whip it in a newly captured city for quick border pops -- it's better than a Theater -- but it's also more expensive; Sal isn't Creative, so it's not half price.
It's probably some use towards a Cultural win -- 1000 year old Madrassas will produce a whopping 8 cpt, which is nothing to sneeze at. But this would be more impressive if Sal's other traits helped with Cultural, which they don't really. If the silly Protective trait were replaced by Creative, Financial, Philosophical, or Industrious, you'd have some good synergy going. But as it is, the Madrassa just sort of sits there.
The Madrassa doesn't suck, mind you. It's just kind of... blah. Mediocre.
And that's Saladin for you: mediocre. He's not horrible, but he's not very good either. And there's nothing about him that makes him particularly fun or interesting to play.
Am I the only one who doesn't care for Sal? Agree, disagree? Thoughts?
Waldo
I need to go capture Pacal's capital since he got the Great Library.
