thanks for all of the tips. i'd love to try a Turkish campaign but i'd also like to see them thrive when the A.I.'s controlling them. it seems like in most of my previous campaigns, the Byz dominate that part of the map about 80% of the time and if it's not them, it's Egypt. i've even seen Armenia thrive in that region but i've never been lucky enough to get a campaign going where the Turks were thriving and i had to worry about facing them on the battlefield.