How to Kill Each of the AI’s, Part 2

by Leaveyou

Killing Sultan

Killing Sultan isn’t as easy as it may look. I attacked him with 20 assassins and 25 crossbowmen and made great efforts for my attack not to fail. The first thing to do is to close his gatehouse.

Then, by using the crossbowmen you kill all of the troops on the walls. It looks like the crossbowmen refuse to fire at melee units on the keep (that’s not because my crossbowmen are behind a wall, I tried at different distances) so it was hard to hit anyone.

After a period of time in which he tried to gain money by demolishing his structures, he surprised me by demolishing the gatehouse and the towers. Suddenly, my crossbowmen weren’t safe anymore from melee troops so I ran like hell thinking the mission is lost. But then I realized that the Arabian swordsmen are following my crossbowmen thus leaving the keep unprotected, so I rushed my assassins in and finished the mission.


Killing Saladin

How exactly do you kill an AI which builds 7 towers and fills them with mangonels and archers? I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near that thing. That is why I had to destroy the towers like I did to Wolf, only this time I will destroy as many as I can. They say that he rules the desert economy… well, in that case I will have to ruin him economically first. That will be an easy task. Getting inside after that will be harder. For this mission I used:
30 fire ballistas
7 trebs
20 assassins
50 crossbowmen
plenty of portable shields to protect the fire ballistas from the agile horse archers

The total cost is about 19000 gold (again there must be a cheaper way so if anyone finds one post it in the Crusader forum). The first task is to find the appropriate distance from the towers so that they’re in your trebuchets’ range but they’re not able to fire. You can use a portable shield for that as they’re the cheapest mobile strong units.

After destroying the first 3 towers I moved most of the fire ballistas, built another 3 trebs and destroyed what I could (only towers).

Torching down his castle is a good idea as he cannot manage fire well. You can decrease the fire watches’ mobility by closing his gatehouses:

The next step is to kill his archers with ballistas and get your crossbowmen on top of his castle.


Killing Lionheart

That isn’t as hard as you may think. Although Lionheart is the best attacker his defenses are pathetic. All I did was rush my ballistas until they could destroy those irritating mangonels. Then I cleaned the towers, burnt the castle and destroyed the barracks.

Then I placed a troop on the barracks site to prevent the AI from rebuilding it (actually I also did that for the waterpot too) and used a tower to get my crossbowmen on top.


Killing Caliph

I initially wanted to try different ways of killing him but after I tried with 20 assassins and 20 fire ballistas I gave up. It was too simple with this combination and cheap too (5400 gold). And I only lost 3 assassins: 2 trying to close the gatehouse (they got spotted) and one when fighting with the king. These were the steps: At first I approached with my ballistas. Then I started destroying the front defense to be able to send an assassin there to close the gatehouse. I did that too. Then I destroyed the barracks and placed an assassin on the site. Then I started cleaning the castle (easy task) with arrows and fire. When there was no troop left in the castle I sent my assassins inside.

That’s all for now. Remember I’ll open a forum topic about this article where you can post your strategies IF and only IF they are cheaper or if the loses are smaller at a similar price.

Back to Part 1

by Leaveyou