The Wazir

The Wazir is a skirmish and campaign enemy in Stronghold Crusader and Extreme.
==Appearance and Character==
Little is known about the Wazir. His face is covered, meaning his true age and appearance is unknown. However his character and personality is much clearer. In this regard, he appears to be a lord who is somewhat similar in character to the Caliph; a cruel ruler, who emphasises effectiveness and does not tolerate mistakes. He does not get angry as often as the Caliph does, and is perhaps not quite as arrogant as he is towards his allies. He often does agree to send his troops to his allies' aid and attack an enemy for them on request, unlike the Caliph. The Wazir is also a little more generous than him in agreeing to send goods, sending wood and a small amount of stone. He will also usually agree to send a moderate amount of bread, which makes him useful to have as an ally if you run out of food.
However, like the Caliph, the Wazir is cruel to his own people, working them to the limit of human ability, allowing him to generate more goods, which he sells for gold to fund his armies. 
He does seem a rather superstitious lord, and he often takes a keen interest in what has been foretold, using this to plan his strategies.
The Wazir always wields his trademark pair of scimitars, which he lifts and swipes if he is angry for a moment. He particularly likes to vent his frustration during his night-time walks in the desert just outside his castle, the Wazir not being a lazy lord.
==Castle and strategies==
The Wazir is an extremely cruel ruler. He can be somewhat weak starting out, especially if lacking in starting gold, but progressively becomes a dangerous force.
===Economy===
The Wazir is a good but not a great economist. While he has a good stone production and a decent iron and wood production, using negative fear factor to boost this further, his weakness is relying too much upon his bread production. Unlike the other bread producing AI lords in the game, these being Saladin, The Emir, The Nizar and The Abbot, he has no breweries or inns alongside his bread production buildings to produce Ale and boost popularity, and also uses negative Fear Factor, meaning he has to use higher rations of bread than they do to maintain his popularity and obtain taxes. Alongside this, the Wazir is the only AI lord in the game that never buys in food. He only buys in wheat and a small amount of flour, meaning if he runs out of bread, or if his granary is destroyed by an enemy, and he has not enough gold to bribe his peasants, he will take a long time to replenish his supplies and popularity, which will decrease quickly as he has no inns.  
However the bread production that he specialises in, as a result of him using negative fear factor, is often massive, resulting in him having the highest food production of any AI lord in the game. This results in large surpluses, even on double rations, allowing him to constantly sell off excess bread for gold. So if he has enough access to oasis space for his all important wheat production near his castle he can produce a lot of gold and be able to attack his enemies frequently,
===Offense===
The Wazir is fond of using horse archers and will not hesitate to use them in numbers. After he has built up an initial defense, he almost always focuses on building up horse raids and send them one by one. When not low on gold, The Wazir constructs numerous fire ballistae and rolls them slowly to burn buildings to ashes.
However, the true strength seems to lay in the siege attacks. The Wazir brings many Arab swordsmen and horse archers, backed up with a small squad of fire throwers. Slaves are also brought if an enemy moat is present. Engineers will construct fire ballistae, but also, uniquely for an Arabian lord, trebuchets which will pound any buildings to destruction. Swordsmen and horse archers like to break in, while the fire throwers burn any buildings they can reach.
===Defense===
Star-shaped and big-sized, yet well-defended castles are The Wazir's trademarks. Each castle has a varying number of points, where two lookout towers and a round tower is present with Arab bowmen and fire throwers. The interior is filled with the most important buildings, sometimes a huge number of hovels and bakeries are placed outside, which are protected by large pools of pitch. Fire ballistae are deployed in various spots, but the Wazir, like the Nizar and the Pig, does not use mangonels or tower ballistae despite having large enough towers to support them. However the Wazir does use water and pitch defences very effectively, digging numerous small patches of moat to direct enemies into areas of pitch and wooden spike traps.
His horse archers also patrol outlying farms and industrial buildings until he decides to send them after the enemy. They will respond swiftly to any attacks on these buildings, and if they are killed, they will quickly be replaced. When his castle is under siege, the Wazir likes to send these horse archers, along with sometimes those inside his castle, just outside his castle walls in big numbers, and these constantly move about in a few groups, inflicting damage on besieging forces. He can do this because he usually has multiple gates and so not all are closed. He may also send a small group of Arabian swordsmen out to deal with besieging armies.
==Tips==
===Defense===
The Wazir's armies may look threatening, but they are defenseless against crossbow bolts. So, a large number of crossbowmen (backed up with archers) will pretty hold back anything, even fire ballistae, but trebuchets may be a problem. For these, make sure you have a few square/round towers with ballistae on top and manually aim them at the trebuchets. Have some hardier troops in case the Wazir finds a hole in your defenses.
If the Wazir is doing particularly well, he may send a large enough number of horse archers in his attack that may pose a threat to even crossbowmen. For this make sure you have some macemen that can move out from your gates to catch them and kill them hand to hand. The horse archers should not move about enough to make it hard for macemen to catch them. 
===Offense===
Crippling the Wazir's economy is quite easy. Target his wheat farms, as the Wazir does not buy in food and having no wheat supply will significantly impact his food production. Stone quarries and iron mines can also be repeatedly destroyed, ideally with catapults, to stop the Wazir from generating income and producing large armies. The Wazir will not take this meekly, sometimes defending his outside buildings with large groups of horse archers, so make sure you have enough missile troops, ideally crossbowmen or fire ballistae to counter these. 
In terms of his castle itself, it is usually quite well defended. Not only he has patrolling horse archer groups, but he surrounds his castle with pitch, making it impossible (or at least without casualties) to get near. A good option therefore is to tear down his castle from a distance.
Gather horse archers, numerous fire ballistae, catapults and melee troops. Work your way through his wheat farms and territory until you get to the castle. Try to wipe out any overseeing fire ballistae with your catapults, hopefully demolishing some buildings in the process. Then target round towers and deflect the small waves of horse archers and swordsmen that may come to your catapults. You may also roll your fire ballistae in to pick off bowmen and fire throwers. When you can close his gatehouse, target units on the keep with your horse archers and fire ballistae. Finally, create a breach and move in for the kill.
This method is effective, however it is slow and will diminish your stone supplies (as the Wazir will try and rebuild towers and walls). If you want a quicker method, a group of 100 horse archers (150 if he is doing particularly well) and 20 assassins should be enough to kill him if you make sure the horse archers are constantly moving and make sure your assassins are hidden well enough away to avoid being spotted by the Wazir's patrolling horse archers. Once all the Wazir's wall and keep troops have been killed by the horse archers (you will need to be careful with range, only get just within firing range of one tower at a time), you can kill the lord with your assassins after climbing one of his gatehouses.
==Quotes==
For the Wazir's quotes see: /Quotes
==Trivia==
*Wazir in Arabic (وزير) means "Vizier", high-ranking political advisors.
**As such, he may be based off of (at least in title and demeanor) Ja'far ibn Yahya, the vizier to Caliph Harun al-Rashid, and popularized by his numerous depictions as a villain in works such as Prince of Persia and Disney's Aladdin.
de:Der Wazir
ru:Визирь
Category:Characters