Reconquista is the sixth and final scenario in the El Cid campaign in Age of Empires II: The Conquerors. It is based on the different Almoravid attempts to conquer Valencia (1094-1102) and the legend that El Cid won his last battle when he was already dead.
Scenario Instructions
Starting Conditions
- Starting Age:
Imperial Age - Starting resources: 500 wood, 500 food, 600 gold, 600 stone
- Population limit: 125
- Starting units:
- 8
Two-Handed Swordsmen - 6 Villagers
- 6 Cavaliers
- 6 Heavy Camel Riders
- 4 Pikemen4
- 3 War Galleys4
- 2 War Galleys3
- 3 Fire Ships2
- 2 Fire Ships3
- 3 Fast Fire Ships1
- 2 Battering Rams3
- 2 Capped Rams2
- 2 Siege Rams1
- 2 Fishing Ships
- 8
- Standard difficulty only
- Moderate difficulty only
- Hard difficulty only
- Standard and moderate difficulty only
Objectives
- Defeat the three armies of Yusuf so that Valencia will remain free.
- The body of The Cid (near the Castle) must come to no harm, lest the people of Valencia realize they have lost their leader.
Hints
- You will need to expand out from the Valencian fortress in order to procure more resources.
- Concentrate on fighting in Spain at first. Later you can attempt to sail across to Yusuf's base in Africa.
- Spanish Cannon Galleons are powerful. You should use them when attacking Yusuf in Africa.
Scouts
- Your scouts report: El Cid (red) has all the buildings he needs in Valencia to quickly field an army.
- There are three enemies: The Black Guard Army (cyan), Navy (yellow), and Yusuf's elite forces (green).
- The Black Guard Army is north of Valencia and the most immediate threat, but it can be dispatched by a series of quick raids. The Black Guard Army is composed mostly of Camels and Cavalry Archers.
- The Black Guard Navy is west of Valencia but can be reached by land. The Navy is better defended than the Army but can still be attacked early. In addition to cavalry, the Black Guard Navy has some Monks.
- Yusuf is the most dangerous enemy. His ships may attack Valencia early on and his fortress in Africa is dangerous. Yusuf trains Camels, Cavalry Archers, and Monks that he will attempt to transport across in addition to Fire Ships and Cannon Galleons.
Players
Player
- Player (Spanish): The player starts in Valencia in the center on the map with a sizeable starting army.
Allies
- Dead El Cid (Spanish): Dead El Cid only has one unit: El Cid Campeador. He stands in front of the Castle in Valencia. If this unit is killed the scenario will fail.
Enemies
- Black Guard Army (Turks, Berbers in the Definitive Edition): The Black Guard Army has two camps to the north and west of Valencia. They attack swiftly with Heavy Cavalry Archers and siege weaponry.
- Black Guard Navy (Turks, Berbers in the Definitive Edition): The Black Guard Navy has their base in the southwest. As the name suggests, they focus on navy, attacking mostly with Galleons and Cannon Galleons. They also train units on land, mostly Cavalry Archers, Camel Riders, and Capped Rams.
- Yusuf (Turks, Berbers in the Definitive Edition): Yusuf's base lies in the east across the Mediterranean Sea in Africa. The shore is guarded by Castles and a few towers on islands. He attacks with naval units and also drops off land units with Transport Ships (Siege Rams, cavalry, and Monks).
Strategy
The player starts in Valencia, which is at the central-northwestern part of the map. The Middle-Eastern Gaia walls and Castle (in reference to their Muslim builders) immediately turn to the player's control. The player also has several Fish Traps southwest of Valencia, which are exposed to the Black Guard Navy's attacks. There is also a Gaia Monastery west of Valencia (just as in the previous scenario), with a Relic outside.
Outside Valencia, there are gold mines in the Black Guard Army base to the north (thus it's best to defeat the Army first, to ensure the Villagers' safety), as well as the two islands in the sea northeast of Valencia.
The Black Guard Army's base is located northwest of Valencia. Their army is made of Heavy Cavalry Archers and Capped Rams. They start with 4-5 Cavalry Archers to the north, near their Archery Ranges. It is a viable strategy ro rush this zone early, since it has no defenses, and use Rams to destroy the buildings before they start mass-producing. If the player is quick, once they are done with the Cavalry Archers north, the AI will send the rest of its army, either to attack the player or to defend the north. The rest of the enemy army consists of 4-5 Cavalry Archers, 2 Capped Rams, and two Trebuchets. Their Castle should be destroyed while the army is away. The player can make a few Trebuchets to destroy the Castle and the remaining Archery Ranges.
The Black Guard Navy starts with a Town Center and a couple of Villagers, but no army, and all of their first resources go to ships, so it is a good strategy to raid their gold and wood economy. Watch out for Monks. There are also Gold Mines nearby, and if the player is fast enough, they may take all that gold for themselves. But be careful, because the Black Guard Navy also has a Castle near their Docks. To deal with their ships, it is recommended to construct a Castle near the player's Fish Traps, because that's their main initial focus.
Yusuf's base is protected by three special towers, which are renamed versions of The Accursed Tower and The Tower of Flies. Their attack and range is excellent overall, but their strength varies: the eastern tower is weakest, and the southern strongest. It is advisable to start taking down the weakest tower with Cannon Galleons, since they are able to attack beyond the range of the tower.
On the other hand, Cannon Galleons cannot outrange the other two towers. If the player wishes to take down the strongest tower, it is advised to use a Trebuchet to attack from Africa. As they have the same range, the tower will retaliate against it, but cause little damage compared to that dealt against ships.
Trivia
- This is the only scenario where El Cid cannot be controlled by the player.
- Northern Valencia (the location where the Wonder was built in the previous scenario) is now littered with Gold. This might be a reference to the Wonder's real counterpart's name, Torre del Oro, which means "Tower of Gold".
- Originally, Yusuf's forces were played by Turks even though they appeared previously as Saracens. It is possible that the civilization was changed due to the Spanish tech tree being ill-suited to fight massed Mamelukes (El Cid also used the Saracen tech tree in Black Guards). Alternatively, it could be because the additional range of Turkish Cannon Galleons presents a greater challenge to their fast-firing Spanish counterparts as well as the Spanish's fully upgraded Castles, Keeps, and Bombard Towers.
- However, in the Definitive Edition, Yusuf and his allies are all played by Berbers, which were first introduced in The African Kingdoms.
Historical comparison
- Reconquista is a Spanish and Portuguese word meaning "Reconquest", that is used in the history of the Iberian Peninsula to name the period between the Battle of Covadonga (c. 718-722), in the aftermath of the Muslim conquest of the Visigoths by Tariq ibn Ziyad and Musa ibn Nusayr, and the Castilian-Aragonese conquest of the last Iberian Muslim state, Granada, in 1492. It is sometimes extended to include the Frankish conquest of southeastern France - which had been part of the Visigothic Kingdom and was also conquered by the Muslims - following Charles Martel's victory at the Battle of Tours (732), but not other parts of France (e.g. Fraxinetum, Corsica) nor Italy (Sardinia, Sicily, Bari) that were also conquered by North African Muslims. In addition, the Reconquista was not a single military campaign with a grand, unified plan of conquest as it might seem (at least until the later centuries). Indeed there were countless wars between Christian rulers, between Muslim rulers, and between opposing Christian-Muslim alliances while it lasted.
- The scenario's name is not without irony, because the Spanish players are not trying to (re)conquer territory, but to keep it from falling to the attacking Berbers. Rather, it is the Berbers who are doing a "Reconquista" of Muslim territories fallen to El Cid.
- The legend that El Cid won his last battle after death arised from the evacuation of Valencia by Alfonso VI in 1102. The departing took El Cid's embalmed body with them, raising claims that the Almoravids could have crushed them, but froze or fled at the sight of El Cid (d. 1099). In modern retellings, this is usually changed to El Cid being mortally wounded in a skirmish with the Almoravids and having his body propped at a following decisive battle to keep his men from learning of his death and affecting their morale.
- The actual cause of death of El Cid is unknown, but is believed natural. As in the game, his wife succeeded him as Lady of Valencia and nominal vassal to Alfonso. Following the fall of Valencia, she returned to Castile and was buried with her husband in Cardeña's monastery around 1116. Their graves were later destroyed by Napoleon's troops in 1808.
- The main premise of fighting the Almoravids alone was true early on only - e.g. the Battle of Quart (1094). Later they were helped by Peter I of Aragon (who with El Cid, defeated the Almoravids at Bairen in 1097; Aragon is said to be too far away to provide help in the intro); by Ramon Berenguer III of Barcelona, and finally by Alfonso VI, who ordered the city's evacuation after deeming it untenable.
- Motamid's fate is based on Al-Mutamid of Seville, who died in exile in southern Morocco in 1095. Zaragoza, however, remained free of Almoravid rule until 1110.
