Stronghold Heaven

Aleppo, Consolidation of Power

Objectives

‘Bring Aleppo to its knees using the slave army supplied by the local emir. The city is heavily fortified and you will have to plan carefully to fight your way through its two gates.’

Resources

Notes

The third mission in Saladin’s Conquest sees a much more formidable enemy and a tougher castle to siege. The enemy lord must be killed in order to win here, but there is no time limit as per the previous mission. Overall, this is one of my favourite missions from the historical campaign and requires some thought in how best to proceed.

Start with taking about half (12) of your assassins. Move them to the south east of the map. The first aim here is to take out the archers found in the tall tower. Ask them to climb the walls and then kill the archers (Arabian bows). Once done, swiftly move them along the front wall to the gatehouse, killing the crossbowmen found on top of it. The gatehouse will be yours, albeit only temporarily. I also managed to take out the archers (Arabian bows) in the north-western tower and decided to sacrifice these troops by asking them to make a headway into the swordsmen that are littered in the outer bailey area of Aleppo.

I then moved my slingers and about 8 of my Arabian swordsmen to the front wall. The swordsmen destroyed the outer gate and the slingers were able to pick off a couple more of the swordsmen here. It is at this point that I decided to make use of the slaves. In smallish groups of around 5 or 6, they can be used to set alight the houses just inside the outer gatehouse. These burning homes will be useful in weakening or even killing some more of the enemy swordsmen and by continuing this approach I was able to set fire to all of the buildings here, allowing the flames to creep around and ignite the bakeries and barracks. This will probably kill off the bulk of the swordsmen here, although a few remained near the inner gatehouse each time I played.

The second phase of this siege is just as tricky, but you do have an abundance of troops available. Firstly, I selected the remaining 12 assassins and asked them to scale the wall near the large square tower to the south of the keep. The aim here was purely to take out the four crossbowmen here. At the same time I moved the bulk of my Arabian swordsmen to attack the inner gate, taking out the remaining two enemy swordsmen here. As a backup, I moved the slingers to attacking range of the crossbowmen in the tower there. I found that the crossbowmen tried to pick out my swordsmen here rather than the slingers, although only one of the 12 assassins made it into the tower. The inner gatehouse fell shortly afterwards. Use the Arabian swordsmen to kill the remaining enemy troops, including the enemy lord. I still had the bulk of my slaves left here, but you could use their numbers to storm the keep area if you feel under pressure. Weak they may be, but in numbers they can do a great deal of damage, even to a lord.

A great map that has some great elements to test you here.

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