Crusader Incursion | Learning Campaign - Saladin Stronghold: Crusader II Guide

Win:

• Enemy Lord dies

Lose:

• Your Lords dies

The third learning campaign focused on Saladin introduces a significant change - you will be now commanding the opposing, Arabic, forces. During this and latter missions you will only have access to the mercenary forces.

As always, you should think about a proper layout for your buildings, to maximize the production.

Start the mission by setting up a Stockpile between the oasis and the stone reserves. Afterwards, build the Granary on the oasis, surround it with 3 Apple Orchards, 2 Dairy Farms, 2 Sheep Farms and construct 2 Stone Quarries with a single Ox Tether near them on the stone reserves - in case of a wood shortage, remember that you can buy them off market, and if you need some extra manpower, build additional Hovels. With time, as your population grows, remember to build additional food production buildings - you will have to make it through without the aid of Bakeries.

As soon as you start accumulating stone, you should finish up your walls - you can only build the smallest towers, but the Arabian equivalent, even though the weakest of the towers, offers the biggest height advantage. You can't make any weapons, so you will be forced to hire mercenaries - all the information about each one of them can be found in the "Units" section of this guide. Remember to build a couple of Candler's Workshops and a Mosque to increase your popularity rating.

First things first, you should hire a couple of Arabian Archers and send them on the walls (or towers). Next, it's worth to make several Horse Archers - their defense is almost nonexistent and they can be easily defeated by a smaller group of regular archers, but they are extremely effective against enemy siege equipment, as well as slow, heavy melee units, which can't keep up with them.

Breaking through the enemy defenses isn't all that hard.

When you have your walls and defenses finished, you should start preparing your strike force. To attack the enemy castle, you will need Arabian Swordsmen, Arabian Archers and Catapults - all the units are made solely by using gold, so you will need quite a lot of it. Build at least 10 Catapults - it will allow you to destroy the enemy defenses without breaking a sweat. As far as the rest of your forces go, you have a great deal of freedom - remember that Arabian Archers are extremely cheap, so you can easily hire dozens of them fairly quickly. Arabian Swordsmen will come in handy while dealing with armored targets, not to mention that they are the your only unit (during this mission) able to attack and kill the enemy Lord.