Moors (Rest of the Muslims)

Main points, tips, strategies for Moorish (Moors) play on very hard campaign and battle difficulty.

Bullet

1 - Units Worth Mentioning
2 - Risks and Potential
3 - Battle Tactics / Expansion

1 - Units Worth Mentioning

Desert Cavalry
The desert cavalry or granadine jinetes will be your ultimate field weapon for a very long time. It might also be worthwhile to say that you will have to take the big battles at the field and outplay the enemy heavy cavalry early on. Desert cavalry is strategically superior to arab cavalry in my opinion. These cavalry can be used to draw out heavy cavalry and stall them to flank with a bodyguards charge or etc.

They will destroy any sort of "on-foot" regiment. If you drag out field battles, desert cavalry will win; stamina is it's only superior attribute to the christian jinetes. But ultimately; this means they can outrun anything.

Tuareg Camel Spearman
These camel riding, allah praising, spear holding avaricious riders can be used to get rid of those mailed knights early on. (They will cause problems). The problem however is that camels apparently eat a lot or something. Upkeep cost for this unit is 300g/turn which means you should employ them with caution. It is however a very strategic unit that offer versatility and quick solutions.

Dismounted Christian Guards
This is my favorite spammable on-foot unit in the game. It has higher attack compared to it's equivalents and also a lower upkeep compared to most of them. Once these start coming in; Moorish start being very strong in siege battles aswell.

2 - Risks and Potential

You can conquer wherever you want in MT-2, but there are efficient and inefficient ways to do so. For moors there two risks and one very big potential worth mentioning. In any game, I hate guides that go "turn one; walk here... turn two; kill those enemies... turn three; repeat" etc.

Risks
Moors however is one of the factions that I unfortunately have to do this. You have to move Marrakesh garrison and field army to Algiers. I mean you don't have to; you can always lose Algiers and fight back etc. but this always is a waste of time. Sicily will come and siege Algiers very early on.
You will want to defend that siege and push east into tunisia; hold your ground there against the Sicilian, venetians; byzantine and so on. (Yes; moors will have to fight everyone)

.. Once you capture the Iberian peninsula; the English will come and siege Leon from the northern sea. Other than that; if there are no ongoing crusades, and you took Toulouse (which you should); lets just say Pope really likes to do crusades on Toulouse. Other than that... I don't think there will be any suprises. Fight some of the crusaders on the field; try to take out the generals; turn lower castles into towns. Keep higher castles and build towers on them. Also, do not convert Tunisia into a town.

Potential
Timbuktu & Arguin hold hidden potential. They offer a variety of lucrative tradeable goods such as ivory, slaves and gold and are completely blocked from the rest of the world. My advice is that you start sending merhcants as early as possible; and send one general and regiment to conquer both these towns early on.

Attackers come only from north and east.

Jihads.

As you conquer into europe; large portions of land will be left behind, safe and available for income boost.

3 - Battle Tactics / Expansion

Early Strategies
Portugal and Spain are your initial enemies. In very hard; if you can end a faction quickly. You definetly should. You have two expansion routes. One goes into Iberia and then France; the other one goes east towards Tunisia. You should definetly defend Algiers and expand towards Tunisia early on. This will give you a decent castle to hold your enemies at bay. From Cordoba; you should try to capture Toledo very quickly. Don't worry about Valencia untill it's very conveniant to take. The general idea is to always leave enemy without any castles. Once you destroy Spain and Portugal; you will need to rush and take Toulouse. Always "Occupy" castles if you are not going to turn them.



Mid Strategies
You will have to fight off in the French territory and eventually the Roman territory in this period. Taking Caen is important and a good tactic is to destroy every single building in the castles once you capture them in middle Europe if you are going to turn them. I usually keep Toulouse, Toledo, Palermo, Caen, Innsbruck, Hamburg and Bran in Europe. Turn everything else into farmyard. My suggestion here is to set Toulouse as the new capital. You will also have to increasingly create imams at this point of the game.

Late Strategies
You will have massive armies by now. Investing further into armor is a good idea in the castles. Making the cannon investments as fast as possible is also good. You will need to strenghten your navy for the end play where you capture jerusalem.

Long live the warriors of Islam...

[Jay42]

Thanks both!

[Girei]

Because it is much harder for castles to have rivolts and since population caps are how castle's are levelled up; ai seem to do very good job at increasing population fast. It will be a shame to kill population and destroy castles last level and buildings done on that level.

Note that; lets say your castle levels up at 9000 population. You have 11000 so you levelled it up. You made tier 3 stables. If that castle is sacked and population is beneath the 9000 cap. Your tier 3 buildings that are not supported by the tier 2 castle will be gone.

[TellTr0n]

Jay42: It may be because castles have slow population growth, if you kill the people, it may take a while for them to regrow.

[Jay42]

Lovely guide, thanks. I find the European push is definitely aided by the fact that you're never attacked from behind really once you take Iberia.
Why was it that you should occupy castles that you need, btw?