Civilization Bonuses:

Team Bonus: Foot archers +1 attack vs. buildings

• Market trade cost only 5%
• Transport Ships 2X HPs, 2X carry capacity
• Galleys attack 20% faster
• Cavalry archers +3 attack vs. buildings

Q) Will any UU, Super Unit, or any other unit be able to stand a chance against the Saracen UU and live to tell about it?
ES_Sandyman:  A) The mamelukes are generally less-effective against units that have good normal armor. They are also vulnerable to most siege weapons, and are ineffective vs. fortifications. They do not have good piercing armor, and so take heavy losses from enemy missile troops (particularly hand-cannoneers), though they also inflict heavy losses in return. Finally, the mameluke is one of the most expensive of all the UUs. They even cost more gold than the infamous elephant (less food, tho).

Q) Horse Archer bonuss vs. buildings? What kind of bonus is that?
ES_Sandyman:  A) An extremely useful one. A Saracen cavalry archer does three times as much damage to a building as a "normal" cav archer. It means that the Saracens are the _only_ civ that can use ranged soldiers (as opposed to the ever-vulnerable siege) to destroy an enemy town. Add this to the mamelukes, and you have a deadly combination.

Q) Are there any drawbacks that the Saracen player faces when playing against a good defensive civ?
ES_Sandyman:  A) Sure. To show you what I mean, the Saracen navy is an attacking navy. Its bonuses and researches are offense-oriented. Thus, fighting the Saracens at sea is tough. BUT if you do manage to get the upper hand, the Saracens find it quite hard to retake the ocean. As compared to, say, the Byzantines or Chinese, who have fine defensive ships so they can maintain a naval presence even if they are no longer dominant at sea.

This same principle is generally the case with the Saracens. When they're on a roll, they're very hard to stop, but if you CAN stop them, they find it hard to get going again. Their units are not terrific at recovering from a disadvantageous situation or sitting out a siege.

Although perhaps I have actually answered the wrong question. The Saracens are, in fact, an excellent foil for a defensive civ -- they strike, the defensive civ counterstrikes, and so forth. But this kind of war just goes on until one side makes a mistake or runs out of a critical resource at a bad time.

The civs that the Saracen has to be very careful against are not so much the good defensive civs as the other offensive civs -- if the Saracen takes a bad loss in battle, he can't really protect his town adequately from a strong attacking civ. This is also the case with the other offensive civs (such as Goths), of course, and it makes these kind of battles rather interesting -- betwixt Saracen and Goth, the fight is most critical & decisive, because once one of them gets into the other's town in force, it's curtains! On the other hand, the first time or two that the Byzantines get a troop of forces into your town, you can probably survive unless something has gone seriously wrong.

Q)Don't you think that the Saracens are too strong a civ (excellent infantry+Very Strong UU+ Stong Siege+ top-notch ranged units+good economy)? If they lack any heavy cavs., that is substituted for by a killer hybrid of ranged and cavalry which is the Mameluke? What is their weakness?
ES_Sandyman:  A) Here are some weaknesses.

1. No heavy cav. While the Saracens don't fear other players' heavy cav, they also don't get the advantage of having their own armored strike force. Heavy cav performs useful tasks that no other unit does quite as effectively.
2. Average-to-middling defenses. Good enough for Castle age, but once you get into late Imperial, the Saracen fortifications start to look a bit threadbare. Still, there's worse-off civs.
3. Their economic bonus is highly useful, and is probably my favorite economic bonus of all AoK, but it is not the kind of bonus that you can easily parlay into fast advancement, and it also has no effect in the Dark Age. In fact, the more skilled you are at micromanaging your economy, the less vital the Saracen bonus becomes! Maybe that's why I like it so much -- because I'd rather manage my armies than my economy.
4. An Attack Navy instead of a Defense Navy. If you are the kind of player who doesn't like to mess all that much with the ships, Byzantine or Chinese is much better for you -- when the enemy Cannon Galleons come by to pelt your coast, you can quickly turn out a few demolition or fire ships and make the foe take notice. But you can only really take advantage of the Saracen navy if you like playing with boats. Not all players do.
5. Their unit bonuses are not unit-oriented. For instance, a Mongol horse archer, all things being equal, will defeat a Saracen horse archer. Similarly, a British foot archer will defeat a Saracen foot archer. Of course, the Saracen archers can destroy buildings far more quickly, but this is cold comfort if your units are being killed in one-on-one. Sure, the Saracens get fully-upgraded infantry but (for instance) so do the Celts and Japanese, plus the latter get an infantry bonus besides. This is perhaps not so much a "weakness" of the Saracens as a lack of special strength, but you can see where I'm going with this.

Unique Unit:

• The Mameluke

ES_Deathshrimp:  You will see that the Saracen UU does not deal out tons of damage the way a Teutonic Knight or horde of Samurai might, but is hard to counter. That may be its greatest strength.

History