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So I recently decimated the Turks with my Byzantine armies. Excited to get my chance to play my first Islamic faction I started a new game with them on a Very Hard/Hard difficulty. I was doing fine for the first 10 or so turns, then my economy took a dump and I couldn't recover fast enough before a crusade and the Byzantines took me out. Appreciate any and all help, thanks!
well i can try a few suggestions of my own which did work but this was on a hard/hard difficulty. 1st objective is to consolidate the middle east starting from outside in. this is because ports like smyrna,constantinople, iconuim, rhodes, cyprus, alexandria, antioch, jerusalem, gaza, adana and acre are in close proximity to each other and will generate exports of 4 or more goods aside from the market upgrades. but i suggest you upgrade the ports first. taking the regions from outside in will give you this sort of setup=the cities inland get less income than the cities with ports. after you destroy egypt and byzantium leave the other rebel cities unconquered. go for the port cities and make sure you get a decent sized navy for this also(to intercept crusaders by sea and to guard the ports). this is also important to block the land bridges at constantinople so that land based crusader armies cannot get through. for your army just spam cheap turkish horse archers. i suppose you know how to use those effectively. egyptian armies are mostly mixed and not mobile enough to chase you around. cheap horse archers are cheap, mobile on the map, mobile on the battlefield and are good in large numbers. use them to defeat egypt and remnants of byzantium. from there go slowly inward towards edessa and the others. for diplomacy forget it lol everyone on vh/vh is just waiting for the opportunity to gang up on you if they have the chance.