Once you've upgraded and bolstered your forces, send them north to attack the pirates. Gold and especially stone are in short supply, so you'll need to trade for a lot of it. Build another town center on the mainland to boost your economy, and a market to trade with the friendly red Saracens to the northwest. With them out of the way, the pirates shouldn't be too much of a threat just send a villager to repair the tower on the island and that and the castle will keep you clear. Now, build up your economy, while you take your military and sweep the southwest corner of the map, where you'll find reinforcements, a relic cart, and a few of the yellow bandits who will be annoying until you clear out all their camps in the south/southeastern part of the map. On the island, build up your economy, and use your starting stone and stone mines to build a wall up north by your lumber camp to keep out the enemy pirates, supported by a tower.

Use your military on the island to repulse the initial attack, then ferry them using the transport across the water to the desert, where you'll want to sweep through the desert, clearing out the nomads that will harass you here. First things first, while the game tells you you can't save your outlying areas. This map sticks you in an island, with a constellation of bases surrounding you. Once you've won, your first win with the Portuguese will net you: Once you've dealt enough damage to your enemy (you don't need to destroy the mills, just the military buildings), you'll win the mission.

In terms of your economy, there are two relics that are fairly easy to grab (one in the SE edge of the map on an island, the other just north of where the missionary was.) When you're ready to attack, I recommend trying to bait the enemies across the way with quick-moving cavalry, and then once you've thinned their ranks, head across with garrisoned rams. The most treacherous part of this effort is getting across the bridge itself there's a lot of enemies and you can't move that quickly. Once these camps are done, you'll be given control of a fortress, with the goal of destroying the Isabelistas' base directly across the river from you. After that, you'll need to head west and finish the final base. As with the previous one, trying to lure away units to be converted or picked off is helpful to soften up your target. With all the possible units left, assault the next encampment. Once you've demolished this base, recover and heal, then head north to destroy the other enemy group and grab the last of your reinforcements. Have your missionary convert a hardy unit from a safe distance to help bolster your forces. Use the ram to target the towers, lure out units to pick them off away from the rest of the forces, and make sure siege units go down before they can deal serious damage to your units. Once you have these units, assault the first central enemy base. My recommendation is to capture all the surrounded units save for the one in the far north corner of the map-they are defended by some Aragonese troops. You can use the missionary to heal your units, and on occasion, convert an enemy unit (you can even pick off the roaming cavalry to grab one.) You can always retreat to Toro to heal further, but you're under somewhat of a time crunch, because the enemy will continue to make small units to attack you, and at some point, they will wear you down with attrition unless you're stupendous at microing units.

There are a total of ten groups of units to capture, with the major units to keep track of a missionary (mounted priest) northwest of your starting position, and a ram a bit east of the missionary.

The key to succeeding here is to pick your battles-by which I mean avoid battles at all costs until you've gathered the maximum number of units. Once you've gathered them, you're set for the assaults on the enemy bases. The total location of troops are marked on the map. The first part of this mission requires you to gather up men from around the countryside. Once you've killed these attackers, you have a new goal. Usually, I'd end up with 8РІР‚вЂњ9, using my hero to tank most of the damage and then moving him back when surrounded while my ranged units sniped enemies and then retreated as well. If you end the battle with fewer than eight units, I'd recommend you just restart. You can take this battle wherever you want (there's a friendly priest who can heal you in the city itself), but the main goal should be to preserve units. As you start, you'll get a small group of units with a hero very shortly, you'll face an attack on the city.

Aoe 3 warchiefs campaign walkthrough