Egypt

[frogbeastegg]

Egypt needs to be unlocked before you can play as them. To do this you can either complete a campaign (on any difficutly, long or short setting) with one of the five starting factions, or you can edit the preferences file. To do this open your Sega/M2TW folder/data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign, find the file called "descr_strat" and open it with wordpad. Now find the section which says

campaign      imperial_campaign
playable
   england
   france
   hre
   spain
   venice
end
unlockable
   sicily
   milan
   scotland
   byzantium
   russia
   moors
   turks
   egypt
   denmark
   portugal
   poland
   hungary
end
nonplayable
   papal_states
   aztecs
   mongols
   timurids
   slave
end

Change it so it reads

campaign      imperial_campaign
playable
   england
   france
   hre
   spain
   venice
   sicily
   milan
   scotland
   byzantium
   russia
   moors
   turks
   egypt
   denmark
   portugal
   poland
   hungary
end
nonplayable
   papal_states
   aztecs
   mongols
   timurids
   slave
end

[Doug-Thompson]

(Just the opening moves so far.)

Blitz northwards, along the coast. Ask your Imans for a Crusade against Jerusalem, and sack it.

This massive infusion of cash gives you an enormous head start on other factions. The prestige and piety coming from a successful Jihad doesn't hurt, either.

You can leapfrog from one province to the next: Jerusalem, Acre, Antioch and Damascus will fall in quick order. I avoid conflicts with the Turks at first. They're keeping the Byzantines busy. Also, you don't have to worry much about Egypt. The Moors are far away and probably busy with either Spain or Portugal

Eventually, you'll have a Jihad into Baghdad. After that, you can backstab the Turks effectively.

[TheFluff]

Well im going to pick up from where doug left off because those are the best opening moves, but i will add a few more detials and such of couse! Anyway lets get to it.


Egyptian game winning units

Egypt plays very different from any euro faction and because it gest its best units very early on but lacks heavily armored units. It plays different from the turks also however because egypt uses more of a mixed army that is usually more infantry heavy and lacks a cheap horse archer. Egypt has three core units that need to be at the heart of ever army, this is the saracen infantry your base spear unit superior to your town militia and upgrade able to wear mail, Mameluke archers that are game winners in there own right,and kurdish javelin men who are bar none the BEST defensive unit you have available to you early on.

Basically saracens should be used as your core infantry unit against any faction, but what makes them so good is that after a certain point in your game when you go on the offensive, they will be very easy to build at any large city and dont require awhile lot of teching up and there armor can be upgraded very easily. Mamelukes are your dual purpose units, what makes them special is they are available early and can dominate throughout the game because as there melee skills start to dwindle, they can phase to the archer role. The only down side is there cost, so very early dont build to many, but dont forget to include at least 2 of these units in ever big stack you have. Also they can be built from the get go, making reinforcing and recruitment very easy. Lastly, the Kurdish Javlinmen are your **BEST** friends when the mongols finally arrive. Infact there so good im going to talk about them alot more later, but for now just know they are your primary defensive unit to be used on walls, but on the field, since they have a sword and shield can be used as heavy skirmishers or even used to take on town militia or other light infantry. They can also upgrade there armor.


2nd act,the holy land. what now?

So you've taken all the holy land up to around aleppo. a few things may or may not be going on. By this point you have lead 1-2 crusades, one to bagdad and one to any city you want in the holy land, most likely Jerusalem. This is ESSENTAL simply because the experience you gain for a jihad is going to give you the edge and you need to be training 1 or two professional army's to head west and get you silver striped units to fight the mongols later.Before you head west though, tech up Jerusalem and make it a money maker but also get it to a HUGE city ASAP, you need huge walls because your going to be fighting massive crusader army's soon and eventually the big bad mongols them self. Also, tech up your three starting provinces and make them money makers via trade besides gaza, make sure gaza can recruit javelin men if you havent already. Also, head to the big province SE of gaza, take it and make it a city, same goes for the one SW of alexandria, they are your fall back areas that are relatively safe from the mongols and crusaders and can, if things get very bad, send out units to the holyland or where ever need be.


Pre Mongol invasion prep

After takeing a good 10 turns or so to mess around in the middle east or rebuild/inforce army's and buildings after takeing every possible rebel province you will meet and border the turks. you might be at war with the turks since they need money and if your not, you will be now. Luckily you can take out the turks very fast. Create one or two full stacked army's with a *train* of 5 or so units behind them to garrison captured cites and head to there capital Iceniem, but take the two . One thats done and you've beaten back any main turkish army. Also, if you havent and its in turks control, consider takeing edessa. Also beat back any crusader army's, but its ok to let them make it to there targert because you need to pratice and prefect your city defence for when the mongols come. Your ideal defence againts crusaders and later mongols i find is about 6 archers, 4-6 javelinmen, 4 saracen milita, and whats left is up to you, but i reccomend more saracens or town milita. Use the javelinmen to defend the archers on the walls...you'll get used to it and see just how fantastic these guys are.

Anyway, your main goal is to make it to constinople BEFORE the mongols come. you MUST do this or else you have a very large chance of not really winning as much trying to do the recovering game. You dont need to actually wipe out any factions, but you need to render them combat ineffective long enough to finish up your plans and such. Also rember to take rhodes and cyprus and make them into cites because you are going to loose quite a few cites in the holyland before long.



Mongol invasion

Well this is it, the moment you've been waiting for! Well...at least dreading. Around turn 70 you will get a pop up indicating that the mongols are coming, so finish up your conquests, make cease fires, open trade agreemen ts and prepare to fight a very defensive battle. They usually come around bagdad but dont always attack it. Either way, make sure bagdad, edessa, aleppo, and ALL the cites north of gaza in the holyland and east of the old turkish capital have either full or 75% full garrisons. In my game the mongols ALLWAYS went for either aleppo or antioch and wont move west or south until they sack one or both of them. In my campagin i had to fight the mongols AND ****4**** crusader army's at the same time, so take it from me, DO NOT ALLOW YOUR CARIO PORT TO BE BLOCKADED! This IS your life line. Money will be very tight because you are going to have to fight TWO mongol hordes (if you beat one, it usually retreats back to bagdad and gets more men) and you will loose a few cites because you wont have money to reinforce your defenders.

Take as many men as you can from cites not in the danger zone (alexandra, ciro, those old rebels towns you should have built up around them, etc) and have 1-2 relief army's standing by ready to enter a city that beats back a mongol army but its garrison is spent. DO NOT use your FEILD army's (they use a different composition, mostly more horse archers) because they will get annihilated. Use them to fight off crusader army's and or to conquer and sack whats left of the turks and bez's (rember i said not to finish them off, thats why :P ). This will give you the oh so needed cash injections to refill your army's. Also, no matter what, i dont care what you think, unless you are an expert, have alot of time and a fast computer, dont fight the mongols on the field. Trust me, the way to win is to break them at your walls (and pray they dont bring seige engines) and thats where your javelin men will shine, they can beat back soldiers climbing the walls AND throw things at them! Plus they are cheap to build.

Anyway, expect to beat back the first stack of invaders, but when they go back and bring another wave this is where the real trouble starts. These guys are usually better then the first wave, much more experienced, sometimes 9 stared generals leading every army. B asically you want to kill about 1-2 stacks worth of men per city they attack. At somepoint they will start to split up, this is where you have to really be decisive. Take your main army (if you have it reinforced) and attack with 2-3x as many men. Then you'll want to rest and bring up any reserves, and swap generals etc. Th e best army's to use against the mongols are ones that use a mix of cav and spears and javelins (not really archers, they are for sieges) and always focus fire on there general with your missile units. When your at this point in the game, jerusalem might be your only holy city left, and nessia on your western front could be the same case. You have to fight a battle of atrittion, but every time the mongols attack, make sure they become so weak that they loose to many men making the next series of attacks very hard. If you win a seige defence, expect to be attacked again right after, and use your lurking army's to pick off the mongol army's that were just beaten.


End notes

The hardest part of the egyptin game is to beat the mongols and crusaders. Once this is done, rebuild and *blitz* to north italy to refill your coffers. At this point the world is yours. You will have the best army's from years of almost nonstop fighting, the best tatical knowledge and jump off points from Cairo (to italy) and constinople to eastern europe. At this point you might have a hard time fighting off armored units, but rember you have cheap durable units that are low teir and can be fielded in mass. good luck!

[Sharpy]

Good guide :o)

One thing I feel needs a mention is the Naptha throwers. These little fellas can cause absolute havoc in the opposition and are possibly the most lethal General killers I've come across.

Another point is that in my campaign, the Mongols came in above the Caspian sea. To counter this, I've had to take the Turkish cities to the North and am currently bracing myself for the onslaught at the bridges and mountain passes below the steppes.

[LestaT]

In my own Egyptian campaign, currently at 1125 AD (using 2tpy) the only time Crusades was called was towards Antioch which at that time happened to be rebels.

Probably I did a bit cheating by sending about 5 imams to Rome

Anyway, using the 2tpy instead of the regular 2ypt when do I expect the Hordes to come ? Currently I'm having border wars with the Turks while having mostly naval engagements with the Venetians.

I conquered all of Arabia and up to Baghdad, Edessa, Antioch (the rebelled from the Polish crusaders and I took it) and Alana (?)

Since using the 2tpy but unable to mod the build times (until the unpacker arrives obviously) most of my starting cities and Jerusalem were already tech up by now.

Well, I don't have any tactics in anyway but mostly follow the Council of Nobles instruction. If able I usually declare Jihad to take the cities which were ordered for extra income and experience.

[TheFluff]

Good guide :o)

One thing I feel needs a mention is the Naptha throwers. These little fellas can cause absolute havoc in the opposition and are possibly the most lethal General killers I've come across.

Another point is that in my campaign, the Mongols came in above the Caspian sea. To counter this, I've had to take the Turkish cities to the North and am currently bracing myself for the onslaught at the bridges and mountain passes below the steppes.

Glad you found it helpfujl. Indeed naptha throwers are a good unit, but i had a h ard time geting them to work and they dont seem to be to effective against the mongols because the horse archers seem to allways targert them even when fighting INSIDE a breach.

Anyway i have a few updates to the guide i want to throw out to whom ever is keeping up or intrested in this faction.


EGYPT PLAYS EXACTLY LIKE MILAN!!!!!
BUT BETTER!


It took me awhile to relize this but after doing tests with units and looking at unit prereqs i learned that Egypt plays nearly identical to Milan in the sence that your best units are ALL in the citys. Infact your Halberders that are your rank and file unit right next to your scaracens,and become buiildable with the large city milita barracks. This is actualy a huge deal beacuse Halberders are one of the TWO only heavy infantry avalible to you, and they decimate spearmen and are a somewhat ever match for fudal foot knights and are good against anything really. Think of them as a wartered down janisarry inf unit that comes earler and is cheaper.

Ok, so thats all good and what not, but what takes the cake? the fact that Mamluke archers, arab cav, your 2handed axe men (dont rember name) and battle feild assisans(req guild first) are all avalible at the city level! This is such a big deal because you can not only keep up a very competent feild army, but you dont have to upgrade castles and your econemy will be MASSIVE! Also your 2hd axe units (avalible in a huge city) with there armor upgrade, are very very very good and can beat fudual footknights and even chiv knights a good ammount of times.Being able to have a very hard hitting army early on with just citys is something even Milan cant do untill LATE game, but you can feild a mix of troops that can be tayloerd to fight either other muslems, christans or whom ever it might be, because you can have both spears, heavy infantry and cav (archer and medium) all avalible to you easily and with out many upgrades.


So the bottom line is, play these guys like Milan. Keep one or two castles near where you want to produce the "bulk" of your cavalry, but other then that stick exclusivly to citys. The weakness of the egyptans is there lack of very heavy units, but more so there lack of archer units. However, with the citys you can easly out produce and win a ecnomic battle against anyone.

[Xehh]

What does Egypt start with?

[KingKnudthebloodthirsty]

I am playing egypt m/m and i had no crusades called at first. after two reloads, it finally called a crusade but then, nobody joined. Do i serioously need to play on vhvh to make the ai come. and how do they come? through asiaminor like during the first crusade in 1099(in actual history) or by sea? oh and i am playing 1.0. Thanks!

[Arcturus Mengsk]

I had experienced to this time (turn 60) in my egypt game on E/E ! one crusade on antioch leaded by Venice,HRE,Poland and Danes. All of them was wiped out by my mamluks archers. While HRE,Poland and Danes take it through Constantinopole, Venice surprisly take it from tripoli to my core regions of Cairo and Alexandria

[Agent Miles]

This is my campaign so far on VH/VH, huge units, no mods, but patched up to the Kingdoms pack.

I chose not to blitz more than one target with the first, or any other, jihad army, because the high chivalry of the Holy Warriors you get as a result is very useful. Each jihad had a different leader. If you plan the jihads well, then every ten turns or so you can expand just as well as if you gobbled up everything all at once. I did send a second jihad army to take Dongola when the main jihad went to Acre, and I did this again with Jeddah when the main jihad went to Damascus. This allows the second army to get to these distant targets at “jihad speed” and I had no desertion.

I also occupy each conquest rather than sack, as this yields one more point of chivalry and you don’t really need the loot. Then build a mosque and you get another point of chivalry for your Holy Warrior/Governor. Low taxes will quickly get you another. This allows me to create high chivalry governors that get small settlements to boom in population, as each point of chivalry adds a half of a percentage point to population growth. I convert all castles to cities and rapidly grow them up to minor cities too.

Cairo was my arsenal. I built both racetracks, got the Horsebreeder’s Guild, teched up the blacksmiths (to heavy armor improvement) and upgraded the town watch so that I was quickly able to produce Saracens, halberdiers and Mamluk archers. My typical field army is eight Saracens, two flanker halberdiers, three archer militia, six Mamluk archers and a general, although the jihad armies are just lots of Ghazis, Arab cavalry and whatever else is available.

In Jerusalem I built a Jama and got a Master Theologian’s Guild. Since the periodic ability to call a jihad is central to my strategy, I kept the starting imam in a city and brought him out only to call a jihad. If he is left wandering around he may become a heretic. It takes four points of piety to be able to call a jihad. Jerusalem was producing imams with two points and a short trip to Cyprus quickly boosts them up to four. I soon had five high piety imams.

The Byzantines continually land near Alexandria and every now and then lay siege. I leave the diplomat next to Alexandria because the Byz will immediately agree to a cease fire and then trade rights. This way, I am not entangled in a war with the Byz, who are free to fight the Turks, and each new trade rights agreement gets all of my settlements +10 points towards acquiring a Merchant’s Guild.

After forty turns, I have nine settlements, 80k florins more than I can spend and my faction is number one in each category.

[valiandw]

Well first post and on an old thread. After learning the game on english short campaign I thought I'd give Egypt a whirl. Note this is on M/M, so not too challenging. It's been interesting. After looking through peoples advice here's what I've done.

opening 10 turns: Jihad to Antioch via jerusalem and acre. Sacking those cities gave me a big cash injection to get started. I learned my first lesson there. Jihad mercenaries are cheap, plentiful and get the job done for seiges but they dive in droves. Also moved south to take Dongola but considering i didnt know where it was it took a few turns longer than it should have. City wise I'm building up economically and with high chivalry from the jihads cities grow smoothly. Guild-wise my goals were Cairo for theologans, Alexandria for merchants, gaza for builders and jerusalem for horsebreeders. Antioch became thives guild, I'm saving damscus later for alchemist and aleppi will be hashashims guild.

6~20 turns: Started fighting the Turks. They took aleppi about the time I finished my jihad to antioch and didnt have much left after the seige so i swooped in. My HA got lucky and ran into a big stack of Turkish infantry to shoot to bits. Using my economic advantage I was able to take cesaria. Turks paid Trezbond for a ceasefire! After that it was consoldate, build up and finall go on 2nd Jihad to Baghdad.

20~35 cleaned up turks and remaining rebels. Iconium went down first after a field battle outside I was able to lure most of their defenders out. The Baghdad Jihad then set sites on Eastern Turkish territories quickly taking mosul before the slow mountain slog north. Around this time I also put together ships to land and take nicolessia from byzantium.

35~45 building up infrastructure. Unfortunately the Turks had moved to Sarkel so it took a while to find and finish them off. Also sent a small detachment to take Jedda for completeness.

~51 4th Jihad swept Byzantines out of Turkey. Varotai are tough to fight, but at least I didnt run into Vargarian guard. Constantanople fell on turn 51 and I'm trying to decide what to do next. My next long term goal is to prepare for Mongols but I dont want to kill my economy with upkeep. Byzantines still have their Greek territories and Hungry is right next door in Sofia, but I'm more worried about the mongols....

Crusades havent been much of an issue, besides 1 venetian stack that I fought on the field with my cav I havent seen any others. I also just bought a papal alliance so I dont have to worry about crusaders when the mongols come. The mongols really scary me any ideas?