The Turks

[KARTLOS]

I'm used to play with Turks and I have some suggestions :
Give up Erevan and Mossoul, sell all buildings and use all the soldiers in the 2 cities for plunder Antioche. Now you are rich ! Then, give up Antioche right away (crusaders will come soon) and move your army to Adana. Once you have captured Adana, turn it into City and build a dock as soon as possible.
While Byzantium attack you, make one boat and go to capture Cyprus island. There is only 1 or 2 units garrisoned so it's easy and the docks already build will help you to get some money. Now you have to defend your borders against Byzantines and later, Egyptians. Make 4-5 Turks archers in Caesarea, send them to the mountains left to Iconium with 1 or 2 infantry units and let Byzantines army attack you. In battle, put your army on the higher position in mountain and watch your Turks archers devastating the ennemy army. If you play well, you can kill an entire 20 Units army with your 7-8 units. All you need is to place your archers very high in the mountain and protect them with your small infantry.

Right to Adana, you can see 2 mountains between the only road to Antioche. You will wait Egyptians attack here and use the same tactics than above.
When border will be safe, expand you territory only to the west, cities are more interesting. Don't forget to take Heraklion and Rhodes islands, many trades and money are available here.

Let the East cities to Egyptians who will have to fight Mongols alone, later in the game (good luck to them)

all this is completely unecessary. there is no need to give up on any cities! i would heed anyone reading this not to follow you advice. playing on h/h i was able to take the sorrounding rebel provinces, without any of these drastic steps and then see off the egyptians and byzantines fairly earlly.

i would suggest playing very agressively at the beggining, and taking out the egyptians and byzantines before they become too powerful.

with the turks it is favourable to use armies with alot of horse archers (you have no choice at the beggining). just surround the enemy and shoot the to peices - there is very little the enemy can do to respond. if they have some ha's of their own, surround them and then charge into melee with several ha units is usually sufficient. the horse archers really do allow a very agressive style of play as it is possible to wipe out large armies without sustaining many casualties at all.

dont be afriad to use the horse archers agressively as melee cav at the right moment. the siphais are decent melee troops, and though the others are less good being charged from all sides is often good enough to route the enemy. they will take casulaties but the ha's are a generic cheap unit and you can send them off to the nearest fort to heal after the battle. (also you will find that your ha's end up with really high experience as they take so many kills and this improves their melee stat not ranged.)

USE JIHAD - cynically use the jihad- this is the best way for the turks to get decent infantry at the earlly stage. (i believe i declared a jihad on baghdad at a very earlly stage and this will give you the footsoldiers to take on the egyptians.

it is possible to complete the long campaign before the mongols arrive. however if you are thinking you will still be around then it is important to prepare. i think they arrive around 1215. I would suggest builidng any farm upgrades you can in the middle east as you want all these territories to be be as highly developed as possible - eg big walls with ballista towers etc. this is another good reason to take the middle east as earlly as possible so you can start preparing.

I didnt have any problem with crusades - early in the campaign the pope declared a crusade on antioch (my city). a full stack army with the portugese king arrived near constantinople. i totally massacred the army to a man in one of my most enjoyable victories. they had few if any ranged units and were slaughtered by my horse archers whilst my sultan and his ghazis watched from a hill above. no one else seemed to have joined the crusade and it failed. i dont recall if any more crusades were called after that but i was too busy pushing west to be threatened by one.