How to beatByzantineas Ayyubid

Put on pressure with horsemen and archers against Byzantine, delay their berry expansion, and use that to go for an early Castle timing.

Consider one Stable into double Archery Range as Ayyubid to abuse the fact that Byzantines might overcommit to spearmen.

As Ayyubid, aim to make the Byzantine overinvest in Feudal, then hit a timing with Camel Lancers and archers with level two ranged armor/attack; that can be very scary.

A Mangonel is very scary against buildings; parking it on the Grand Winery can be almost game-winning for Ayyubid.

Especially against Byzantines you can put a lot of early pressure on those berries. Byzantines are already naturally slowed down due to the investment into cisterns and then later needing to get berries, which gather very slowly and provide oil. The extra distance to the berries makes it even more inefficient. All of these factors can be abused by a well-placed early Desert Raider.

When Byzantines don't open Imperial Hippodrome, they have no early cavalry threat. Any spears they make will be used for defense against the raider, so the Ayyubid doesn't need to worry about counter-aggression and can skip defensive towers.

Limitanei are a safe answer to many things, but if the Ayyubid goes for Ghulams, suddenly the Limitanei can't do much damage because of the Ghulams' heavy armor.

With ranged armor upgrades, Ghulams become nearly unkillable by Longbows.

Byzantines struggle against early aggression, especially because their age-up is usually a bit later and they have to reinvest after getting cisterns up.

The idea going desert raiders is very awkward because if your opponent just builds javelins, desert raiders actually get melted.

If it's only five longbows shooting at villagers, the dervish can pretty much just keep healing them.

Cataphracts are such ridiculous castle age tanks. They kind of don't care about camel lancers, and they stop the opponent from rushing up a mangonel to deal with your longbows.

Does Growth Wing feel good against cisterns? I guess the thought is just use it to rush castle faster... I'll get castle much quicker than you'll be able to get cistern value.

Camel Lancers, you think they'd be great against Cataphracts because the debuff, but Cataphracts are just neverending tanks that don't die. And even if you get close, they always have the reposition tool that Camel Lancers can't mirror.

Castle dervish doesn't feel that great because Longbowmen can snipe you out.