Age of Empires II: The Conquerors/Walls of Constantinople

Objectives

 * 1) Stockpile 10,000 Gold in tribute from Rome.

Map
Available on the Steam website.

Walkthrough
This mission is a question of reading your instructions. Your goal is to amass 10,000 gold. Attacking Constantinople is incredibly difficult but mostly irrelevant to the mission. As the intro indicates, it pays barbarians and barbarians don't successfully attack it. It is entirely possible to win the scenario without ever scouting close enough to Constantinople to see the walls.

This is also a mission where being fast makes things much easier. If you can destroy Green and Red rapidly with few forces, you will amass your gold much more quickly because you're not spending it on casualties. And you can.

You will be immediately and frequently attacked by harassing efforts from Marcianopolis (Green). Kill off the first wave with your town center, monk and Tarkens while you are training some knights. Those knights will make short work of anything Green sends out. You can send one cavalry south to wait for a trade cart, which pays 500 gold when killed. Spawn villagers and amass 650 stone as quickly as you can, then get a castle up on the east side of your base within range of the Green gate. You will also receive 500 gold in protection money for the castle and now can make supplemental Tarkens. Let your castle cut down Green's gate, then sack their military buildings, docks and town center with a mix of Tarkens and knights. Build a monastery at some point while Green is getting burned. Receive large tribute from Constantinople.

Now wheel your cavalry southwest and flatten Philippopolis (Red), again taking out the economic buildings systematically before torching the Town Center. As your hint indicates, Red's only real "defense" early on are light towers, which your Tarkens mow down. Receive another large round of tribute from Constantinople. There is a relic almost directly to the north of Red's Town Centre at the edge of the map and one in the very corner of the map at the back of reds base both of which can be garrisoned for gold in your monastery.

You'll find a Constantinople monastery with another relic near the middle of the map. Torch it for protection money with your raiding force and poach the relic.

Now send your raiding force along the south coast until they find a peninsula with a gold mine and a monk who was hoping to see only a couple horses. Kill the monk and send villagers to build a mining camp to loot the gold. Wait for 10,000 gold.

Tips

 * You can also generate gold via building docks and trade cogs in Green's base and trading with Constantinople along the eastern sea.