Age of Empires II: The Conquerors/El Cid

Spain is divided between Christian kingdoms to the north and Moorish kingdoms to the south. In the barren borderlands of Castille, Rodrigo Diaz, called El Cid, gains notoriety as a brilliant general and heroic crusader. The Cid is so popular among soldier and peasant alike that the distrustful King of Castille sends him into exile. The Cid must join forces with his former enemies, the Moors, and fight against his beloved Castille. But an even greater threat waits across the sea in Africa, where fanatical Berber horsemen are eager to seize what the Moors could not.

Mission 1
Move to the King, fight the opponents and get the horse by walking up behind the king close towards the stable. After the dialogue finishes, you will get an army and a few villagers. The mission will end if you have entered the enemy town and defeated its defenses, then return with the blue king back to the area where you did the fighting in the beginning.

Tips
You start with a lot of units and not much wood, so you will be hindered building houses to cope with the population limit. So with your El Cid unit, ride towards the town int he north, they will cheer at you and give you a few houses for free. Then ride the road south toward the center of the map, behind the bridge a village will join your cause, so you get a few more houses and a mill with fields.

You can take your time with the build-up because the enemy will neither attack you nor rebuild units (on standard difficulty).

Although you won't need many ressources, you might want (maybe just as a matter of principle) to hurry grabbing stones before the others take too much of it. Your ally (yellow) has a quarry in the northeast, between your starting area and his town. And your enemy's quarry is in front of his town walls. A good idea is to kill his villagers there, use only the El Cid unit. That will lure out most of his army, but you can pull them toward one of your ally's castles in the southwest or southeast and let them be killed while you recover inside.

You will encounter two small groups of conquistadors who join you, but you might want to stay away from them until you have built enough houses so that the extra units don't block the creation of villagers.

In the west is a large forest, hidden behind it is a monastery, six monks and four relics that will join you when you managed to hack your way through the woods and explore the area with the El Cid unit.

It is a good idea to waste the infantry units you start with by razing the towers in the west, so they don't hamper your villager production any longer.

There is way enough gold on the map, but if you want to build a market, the northern corner seems to be ideal, if put on the edge the ally's market will yield 25 gold and the carts can drive a straight line.

Just a castle as production building should be enough, you can grind away the town defenses with conquistadors and petards as you please.

Mission 2
You start with 4 Villagers and a handful of cavalry and archers. Set up a town hall and start collecting wood and food from farms. You will find gold just west of the start point just off a cliff and Motamid will later let you know about a stone quarry down in the southwest corner. Resources seem to be sparse on this mission. Fish can be fished from the lake in the northern most corner and there are a few sheep about too.

Once you are set up, you will find a transport ship waiting for you on the lake, get on it and travel northeast onto the island where you will find the Monk (Imam). He will tell you that you need to collect all four relics and bring them to him for him to restore peace within the city. The Relic locations will become visible.

You will obviously need some monks for this part. You're best capturing all four at once, so 4 Monks are needed. If you return them one at a time the rebels will start to attack you. If all four relics are returned at once you will win without them going on the attack.