Soph's AoE Chronicles: Saladin 6 The Lion and the Demon
Difficulty: Hard
Attempts: 2
Achievement: Offense is the best Defense (Wipe out all opposing forces before building a wonder)
Well here we are, the pinnacle of Saladin's campaign. We're still in Acre, yet it grew substantially in the meantime. The Europeans decided on another crusade, and history shows that Saladin actually got decisively defeated in this battle. Our opponents are: Knight's Templar (teutons), Philip II (Franks), Richard Lionhearted(English), Jerusalem(Byzantines) and Genoa(Italians). Genoa used to be Byzantines as well in the old campaign, but this got changed in the Definitive edition.. since well they are from Italy after all. There's also a small Persian ally called Persian outpost who have a dock to trade in the south and will support your siege with a mighty army of *gasp* five whole Elite War Elephants.
Anyhow, I got a bit scared at this point in time, there's been a few rather nasty scenario's in the other campaigns i played, while it has been smooth sailing for the whole of this campaign. The problem of course being that this is supposed to be 3 sword difficulty, compared to just the single swords of Barbarossa and Joan. It's probably all based on this last level right? I'd love to get that achievement as well, so we'll be focusing on that instead of building a wonder and defending(the regular way to finish the scenario).
I started up a test run, not really focusing on my eco too much but just checking if I could raid the English(I really don't like longbowmen) early to maybe take them out of the equation. I raided the Knights as well as they were close. It went better than expected, i did have trouble taking out buildings though.. so we needed siege. Also the Knights Templar aren't that great of an idea to hit early since their units take so long to take down while needing a lot of micro. This is all time wasted which could be spend on taking out opponents.
Now the streaming of units started from the other bases.. the French leading with Bombard Cannons, Hand Cannons and Paladin.. Jerusalem with Trebs Onagers and Champions. The Knights with rams and Teutonic Knights. The English with their Longbowmen and Scorps and their two hero unit trebuchets. To make matters worse Genoa will send a shitload of boats your way to attack from the sea as well. All in all, looking at what was streaming in it seems I made a terrible choice in raiding the English and Teutons. With their composition they'd never be able to easily break through walls and castles. Anyway we know enough now, let's resign.
Attempt 2:
Let's get serious. This time I will focus on my eco with a ton of fishing ships and villagers directly assigned to resources, I whip up a trebuchet or two and grab a few extra mamlukes and go straight to the Franks in the North with all my military to see if I can clean them up before the siege of Acre starts. This goes surprisingly well, you do want to watch out not to aggro any Knights Templar units though.. as they'll keep following your guys with Teutonic Knights. Focus on the French! After partically wrecking their base I cut through to the Genoese which were my main target. I really don't want to focus on water at all if possible, so taking out the Genoese early on would be a massive boon. Seems they don't have any army to defend whatsoever and you can just crush them if you cut through the French base, well that's exactly what I did. The Genoese resigned soon after. The French also wouldn't be a problem for quite some time as they needed to rebuild.
Time for us to put on some defenses, especially on our northeast flank. There are some cliffs which we can easily wall up and gate up to expand the influence of Acre. You'll want to do this as your woodline is in this region just east of your base. I put up a Castle in this woodline as well. Jerusalem will attack with at least 5 trebuchets everytime. The English with some Cavaliers, Longbowmen and Scorps and the Teutons with Rams and Knights. I had about 20 Mamlukes running around to defend against these sorts of incursions. The Castle in the woodline had to be rebuild about five times in total, five trebuchets destroy it way too fast, even if you respond straight away. It doesn't help that it's build down the cliff as well. Sometimes we got lucky and they actually attacked the forward walls instead. Ooh cool, we get reinforcements... our beautiful 5 elephants........ YAY.
Anyway, some 25 good Saracen archers + 10 Mameluks and a trebuchet or two should easily take care of the Teutons and the French remnants. We set up new eco bases on the island of gold to the west and the woodline of Genoa(man they have a lot of wood) while raiding the Teutons. They end up not being a match like the past few times we fought the Templars. This leaves the English and Jerusalem. I focussed on Jerusalem since they were by far the most dangerous of the two.. and the one taking out my Castle time and time again. Mamelukes and Trebs does the job fairly well here, since my army barely needed to defend anymore we rolled over the Jerusalem forces. I don't think we need to talk about how we smashed our last enemy afterwards, the scenario had already been decided when the French and Genoese got crushed at the start. Achievement Get!
Yeah this campaign is not worth the three swords I'm sure. Onwards to Genghis Khan. If you guys are interested?
