Here’s the key points of the guide:
- You can choose to push for religion or warfare early on. An early religion increases the chance of getting two important synergistic beliefs, but early warfare can eliminate a religious rivalry quickly and makes Arabia’s uniques synergise better.
- For the early-religion approach, try to get the Papal Primacy and Jesuit Education beliefs. Why Papal Primacy? Well, for some strange reason city-state bonuses to districts counts as an adjacency bonus. When you send delegates to scientific city-states, you’ll not only get extra science from the Campus districts, but your Madrasas will turn that into extra faith! Jesuit Education lets you buy Madrasas with faith, helping you get them up and running sooner.
- For the early-warfare approach, get Campus and Commercial Hub districts early – don’t bother about Holy Sites at first. Send a small force of Mamluks to a vulnerable enemy Holy Site city, capture it, and found your religion there. There you go – you’ve just set back a religious rival and founded a religion while focusing on more directly productive districts. This path is more consistently useful. Edit: It’s worth building a few Heavy Chariots early on both as anti-rush defense and to immediately upgrade to Mamluks once you have Stirrups.
- No matter your path, you’ll want Campus and Holy Site districts in all your cities eventually. Your worship building provides good bonuses and will be dirt cheap. With the Theocracy government, it’s free to build!
- Madrasas are amazing UBs and really underrated. They’re universities available an era earlier (they come at the Theology civic, which you need to build worship building with anyway) which produce slightly more science, and that’s before taking their faith bonus into account. Get the Natural Philosophy policy card (available at the late-classical Recorded History civic) and not only will your campus adjacency bonuses (including the science from city-states) double, but the faith output of Madrasas will as well! You can easily make 10 faith per city or more just from Madrasas alone.
- Ultimately, Arabia has the great ability to switch victory path without losing much progress. Mamluk domination not working? Switch to religion and enjoy the advantage of having set back a religious rival. Religious victory not an option? Spreading your religion around gives you science and hence a head start in the Mars mission.
Original Link – Continuation of discussion