Saba is probably the faction I have had the most fun with in EB, mostly because the enemy factions you will encounter first have much better troops and recources than you. When I played, I first captured the 3 cities closest to my capital. In 1.1, unlike previous versions, you actually have an okay economy becuase your capital already has a mine built. I also allied with the Ptolomies early, because while they will attack you pretty much as soon as you share a border, an alliance seems to discourage naval invasions (with BI).

I then moved on to Africa after building a ship in the city south of the capitol. This was probably a mistake, because expanding east would have been safer, but the challange my decision provided was great. Almost the turn after I took Meroe, the treacherous inbred prolemies attacked the city. Sallying each turn helps alot when defending against Ptolemain attacks, as long as you have slingers.

The trick with winning against the Egyptians is to keep them on the defense. They were fileding elite units by the time I wound up in africa, so fighting them on equal grounds usually goes badly. The trick is that, as long as the Egyptians are at war with the Selecids, they tend to leave their southern cities lightly guarded. As long as you avoid roaming armies, you can usually send a few units to attack a city and take it before reenforcemnts arive. Extermination plus destructions (useless buildings and "wonders") will make you a lot of money, and with the cash you can build mines in Carna and Meroe, both of which have "1200" mines and will give you plenty of room to create a goodsized army.

I often sacked cities multiple times before taking them for good. The trick is to be attacked before they rebel, as this tends to tie up reenforcements and prevents "rebel army" creation. I liked to leave sacked cities in control of a weak depleted unit, and take the rest of my raiding party to the next city. Using this tactic, you can keep the Ptolemies tied up taking back their cities long enough to build infrastructure and train more guys in your home land.

The hard part is keeping Prolemain cities under your control (ie not revolting). I recommend sending high influence generals to these cities and moving your capital to africa. While I harassed southern egypt, I send a massive armyby ship to Alexandria, which was also thinly garrisoned, and soon was in control of Egypt and on my way to training heavier troops.

One thing to keep in mind is the large distances between cities in Arabia and southern egypt. This will be helpful in allowing you to takecities beofre reenformencts can arrive, but they will also tire out youtgenerals very fast. Strangley enough, tiring (w/ movement restrictions) also applies to boats, it took me almost a year and a half to sail from southern arabia to alexandria.

Also, if the Ptolemies do attack your homeland with a large army (which they did to me), your best bet is to get your city to rebel back to you. Using spies and destruction of mood-helping buildings before attack, I had Carna revolt back to me in no time. I used the ridiculously expensive rebel army mostly composed of experience 5 arabian skirmisher cavalry (who rock my socks) to take down the enemy army (somposed of elite phalanx andheavy infantry) easily, then disanded most of them to save my treasury.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun with all this, and if it appeals to you, good luck.