Black Guards is the fourth scenario in the El Cid campaign in Age of Empires II: The Conquerors. It is loosely based on the first two Almoravid campaigns in the Iberian Peninsula (1086-1089).
Scenario Instructions
Starting Conditions
- Starting Age:
Castle Age - Starting resources: 275 food, 200 gold, 200 stone
- Population limit: 100
- Starting units:
El Cid Campeador- 6 Knights
- 6 Pikemen
- 4 Conquistadors
- 4 Long Swordsmen
- 2 Monks
- 2 Scorpions
- Gaia units:
Objectives
- Follow the Knight in order to rescue King Alfonso.
- El Cid must survive.
- King Alfonso must survive.
Hints
- Save King Alfonso as quickly as possible.
- The sea can be an important battlefield and a good source of food. Including a navy in your strategy may prove useful.
Scouts
- Your scouts report: El Cid's forces (red) are allied with those of King Alfonso (blue).
- There are three enemies, the Black Guard Army (cyan), the Black Guard Navy (Yellow) and Yusuf's Elite Guard (Green). The two land armies field mostly Camel Rider and siege units. The navy trains Galleys and Spearmen.
- All three of your enemies have walled cities with many towers, so try using Trebuchets and garrisoned Battering Rams against them. Eventually, you may need to build a navy as well. You can construct your Docks within the city of a vanquished enemy or in the no man's land between the cities.
Players
Player
- Player (Saracens): The player starts with the starting army at the very north of the map.
Allies
- King Alfonso's Army (Spanish): King Alfonso's Army has a small fortified town in the west of the map. Cid must safely bring Alfonso there and gains control over the city once the job is done. King Alfonso's Army resigns shortly afterwards.
Enemies
- Black Guard Army (Saracens, Berbers in the Definitive Edition): The Black Guard Army has a sheltered base between the cliffs in the very south. They have a forward base in the Black Guard Navy's base, however. They mostly train Cavalry Archers.
- Black Guard Navy (Saracens, Berbers in the Definitive Edition): The Black Guard Navy has their base at the southern-central part of the map. They also have a Mosque in the western part of the map that is the key object for the optional objectives. As the name suggests, they have a strong navy.
- Yusuf (Saracens, Berbers in the Definitive Edition): Yusuf has his base at the eastern part of the map. He attacks with Camels, Mamelukes, Cavalry Archers, and Onagers.
Strategy
Bring El Cid and his army to follow King Alfonso's Knight to the battlefield in order to rescue King Alfonso (a Gaia unit who will immediately come to the player's control). Make sure both El Cid and the King survive the whole scenario.
The player needs not to engage in the battle between King Alfonso's Army with the enemies (the player's forces include Conquistadors which cannot be replaced as they are playing with the Saracen faction, so do not lose them in this battle if they are needed later), just group the King together with El Cid's army and bring them towards the king's base (blue), where the whole base will switch to the player's control.
Note that in this scenario, the Fortified Wall upgrade is disabled for the player.
As the player discovers the Black Guard Navy's Mosque, the Monks will request El Cid to meet them at the Mosque; they will ask El Cid to send a Monk to convert the mosque. Make sure that Redemption has been researched before converting the Mosque. Once the Mosque is converted, the Monks will suggest to destroy the Transport Ships of the Navy, and at the same time also invite the player's Monk to stay at the mosque so that they could teach all Monastery technologies for free, but obtained at a slow rate.
Destroying the Black Guard Army's Town Center in Africa will force them to resign, while forcing Yusuf to resign requires destroying his Town Center and his Castle.
Even though the player is asked to destroy all six Docks of the Black Guard Navy, they may actually choose to convert them instead.
Trivia
- The cutscenes make clear that Yusuf and the Black Guards are Berbers, but they were played by Saracens (and in Reconquista, by Turks) because the Berber civilization was not introduced until The African Kingdoms. In the Definitive Edition, all of their players are changed to Berbers.
- Yet, El Cid plays as Saracens in both versions despite coming back from exile, taking control of Alfonso's town (and Alfonso himself), and even having Conquistadors at his service in the beginning.
- The same general area is depicted in the first scenario of the Tariq ibn Ziyad campaign, but the environment is radically different, mostly green and with large oak forests.
Historical comparison
- The Black Guards are based on the Almoravids, a militant islamist movement in Medieval West Africa. The real Black Guard was just the personal guard of the Almoravid leader, and called such because it was made of slaves from the Ghana Empire. The current Moroccan Royal Guard claims descent from the Black Guard.
- The change could be for narrative purposes, or from confusion due to the Almoravids dressing in Tuareg style, which often uses dark veils and turbans (the Iberian Moors called them "the veiled ones" for this reason). In the 1961 movie El Cid, Yusuf and his followers dress completely in black.
- The Black Guard Army base corresponds with Ceuta (taken by the Almoravids in 1084), and the Black Guard Navy base with Tarifa, which the Almoravids took from Al-Mutamid of Seville in payment for fighting Alfonso in 1086, claiming they needed it to secure their crossing. For the 1089 campaign, the Almoravids landed in Gibraltar, east of Tarifa like Yusuf's base.
- Neither Alfonso nor El Cid fought the Almoravids in Tarifa, but Alfonso had occupied it during the earlier Toledo campaign against Al-Mutamid, in 1082.
- As in the scenario, the first battle between Alfonso and Yusuf at Sagrajas was a decisive Almoravid victory, but El Cid was not present as he was still exiled. Years later, El Cid sent a cavalry force under his son Diego to help Alfonso in the Battle of Consuegra (1097). The Almoravids won and Diego was killed.
- If the player defeats the Black Guard Army in the first battle, a stronger "second wave" under Yusuf will attack, forcing to flee to Alfonso's Castle. This combines Sagrajas (where Alfonso prevailed over Al-Mutamid early on, but was defeated by Yusuf's fresh forces), and Consuegra (where the Almoravids won the field battle and took the city, but Alfonso withstood the Castle's siege).
- A third inspiration is the Almoravid siege of Aledo (1089). Alfonso requested El Cid's help but he was delayed for unknown reasons; this enraged Alfonso to the point of treating El Cid like an outlaw, seizing his properties in Castile and imprisoning his wife and daughters (implied in the game to have happened during the first exile rather than the second).
- The Black Guard Navy Mosque sidequest doesn't fit well the Almoravids, a fundamentalist movement who defended all-out war with the Christians to the point of rejecting Dhimmah and persecuting their own Christian (and Jewish) communities. It better lines with Iberian Muslim rulers who decided that the Almoravids were more dangerous than Alfonso and started collaborating with him (like Ibn Rashiq of Murcia, who switched sides at Aledo and caused the failure of the siege). For their part, the Almoravids considered that the Iberian Muslims were corrupt and believers in name only, and started deposing them from 1090.
