Wow... just wow. The pure win in the first 3 turns was absolutely awesome. Of course it's been a while since I took pictures while playing the game so I don't have many pictures, but here we go.
((This was at the end of the 3 turns, but you can see just about all the action on this picture. I'll try and remember to take a picture of the other areas as discovered and necessary.))
There's one of the armies, both have about the same make up, so you can see they're pretty sizable. They appear after turn one so you definitely should prepare for them on your first turn, if not, you could very well lose Baelin of Ibelin (who is usually your highest ranked starting general)
That was the battle for Banyas. The army was primarily made up of enemy horsemen and horse archers with three or four units of infantry to back them up. It was actually a fairly hard battle as many of they were able to hold the entrance against my Squires of Tripoli and Templar Sergeants. Eventually I had my knights run around and smash into the horsemen from behind. The battle was more or less over at that point. (The spy managed to open the gates so no process of breaking down the gates even
)
That is my first battle against the Egyptians of what is sure to be many. The advantage held by my forces is not too great and I expected to pay dearly to eliminate one of their Jihad armies this early in the game. Surprisingly, I was able to beat them with only a hundred-some casualties most of them sustained by a unit of archers and one of my units of Squires of Tripoli. I wish I could show you how I did it but I didn't take pictures
Ultimately it boiled down to they weren't able to approach because the barrage of flaming missiles would catch many of them on fire and drive them back before they got close enough to do any damage.
If you're wondering why I'm not doing this in character, mostly I'm feeling a bit lazy and under the weather. As you can see though, things are going well for us.