Age of Empires 2: DE: Hard: Saladin: 6) The Lion and the Demon

The Lion and the Demon is the 6th and last scenario of the Saladin campaign, where the aim is to either defeat all enemies (not recommended) or to make and defend a wonder. After figuring out what worked in the HD edition, the strategy also works in the DE version. That is, boom quickly, get your economy up and running, properly wall off your base and establish defences and then build the wonder and hold off enemy attacks to win. It may be beneficial to attack the Franks early on and either heavily cripple them or eliminate them to help defend your wonder later on. I think the Franks are the best to attack early on as you'd get rid of their bombard cannons and they are easier to attack in the earlier stages of the game as their castle doesn't defend their base properly. We start with a large amount of resources, a few villagers and fishing ships and a small navy and army. Use your resources to quickly start booming, all three docks should be producing fishing ships, while an extra town center can be made near the gold/stone and villagers should be farming, chopping wood or mining. If you're going to attack the franks, build a few trebuchets, knights and mamelukes and take your initial and attack them pronto. The trebuchets can start slowly knocking down the towers and town center and then finally the castle, while your units should be able to snipe their bombard cannons, hand cannoneers and your mamelukes can deal with their paladins. You will need a good deal of micro and attention on the army while to make sure your attack is successful. At the very least, this attack needs to be crippling to franks, such that it'll take them a long time to come back into the game. Anyway, preparing defences: Wall off all 3 passes with multiple walls and gates. On the left, wall up the cliff face as units can still somehow pass through here. Finally, the southeast of you base can still be accessed, even with these walls and towers so wall off this space as well a few times. Build two more castles inside the inner layers of your walls, as the trebuchets can snipe them if they are too close to your outer walls. Consider getting economic, blacksmith and unit line upgrades (for whatever units you want). Conscription is a must to be able to produce many units quickly, and a few towers need to go up on the west side to protect your gold and stone. Once ready, plonk down your wonder to the east of your gold and stone. As soon as you start building the wonder, all 5 enemies will start to attack you and potentially go nuts..... This spot is chosen as it is far enough from trebuchets and cannon galleon and is the longest distance away from land enemies reaching your base. 20-30 villagers building it is plenty, more is better if you are more secure but if not, that will do as you still need resources coming in. Mamelukes and knights are probably your best units. Knights are durable and tanky enough in numbers to go out and snipe God's own sling, Bad neighbour (both are hero trebuchets and you MUST destroy them as they have greater range than normal trebuchets) as well as other trebuchets, rams, mangonels and bombard cannons while mamelukes can fire over walls can snipe paladins very quickly without having to open the gates. Continue this process and wall up any little holes in your walls and add new layers of walls to help keep enemies at bay. Continue production as best as you can and don't be afraid to abandon an area to slow down the enemy advance. Building military buildings will distract units and siege weapons for a period of time and use the market to buy/sell if in need of a particular resource. After some time defending, your Persian allies will drop 5-6 war elephants for you to use. Use these guys to eliminate the most dangerous enemy units or siege weapons as their durability means they'll be able to inflict massive damage to raiders attacking your base. It's also best to try to eliminate small groups of enemies as large groups of enemies can seem like a tidal wave of momentum and that's really hard to stop once you get a gap in your walls or defences. Keep pumping out units and buildings walls and try to defend as best as you can. Once the timer hits 0 years, victory will be yours!