Human lord & Rat, Duc de Puce (10K gold) v Saladin 'The Wise' & Sultan Abdul (10K starting gold)
Mission 10 in the skirmish trail turned out to be another relatively easy mission, as you've a healthy 10K starting gold. There is sufficient resources around you, close to the keep and therefore the stockpile, to run your desert economy. The teams here are evenly matched, with the Sultan and the Rat both weak at attack and defence. So, it's really you versus Saladin once more.
I Started out by immediately placing woodcutters' huts, four of them, just to the north of the keep. Food was to be apples initially, with three orchards enough to see me through just about the whole mission. I still placed a wheat farm and a hops farm early on, as my intention is, as usual, to turn off food consumption once I had +8 ale coverage.
I chose to place 2 stone quarries early on too with 4 oxen tethers in total, a good way to secure more money by selling all excess goods. For this map I chose to build a basic castle, similar to the one used by the Richard Lionheart AI. The stockpile was extended by two squares to house all the initial goods. I sold the pitch as I wasn't intending to use it here.
My military units of choice were to be crossbowmen and swordsmen, so I set about producing the weapons required as soon as I was able to. I initially bought 20 crossbows and 20 leather armour to defend the castle against Saladin's horse archers early on.
Before too long I had a decent sized army and with three catapults, 40 crossbowmen and 40 swordsmen, set off to take down the Sultan. My crossbowmen did a huge amount of damage here, as the slingers of the Sultan were simply too weak. Once a tall tower had been destroyed I moved my swordsmen in for the kill, with the crossbowmen covering them and taking out Arabian archers on top of the keep. A swift victory, with little loss of my own.
I then decided to have a go at taking out Saladin with these troops. I've always thought that I needed more units than this to be effective against his defences, but these were more than enough. In fact, I used the swodsmen to take out a small gatehouse on the northern side of his castle, with crossbowmen doing a pretty good job of taking out those mangonels on top of the round towers, as well as a number of fire throwers. I find these two forms of defence can really halt your progress if they aren't addressed.
Sure enough, I removed Saladin with minimal fuss, and in retrospect there was little need for such a well developed economy at the start. Still, you live and learn...