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Slave Driver on his own is relatively weak - he's fairly expensive, and he can't hold his own in combat even against weaker units. If the enemy is cramping his/her buildings tightly, setting them ablaze can end the whole match - there's nothing more demotivating as watching dozens of buildings burning and being unable to do anything about that. Slaves are made to make the lives of your enemies miserable - most of the maps in the game won't let them protect their whole bases with a wall (especially Stone Quarries and Iron Mines, very often oases too), meaning that a small group of Slaves can cause some huge resource losses to the enemy. All you have to do is to force your way through and watch as the enemy buildings burn to the ground. The reason is simple - they are able to set fire to buildings. In high numbers, which is easy to achieve, given their extremely low costs, they can cause some turmoil, if the enemy won't be able to stop their advances.
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Alone, Slaves can't do anything - their nonexistent durability makes them die from a single attack.
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The cheapest unit available at the Mercenary Post. Mercenary units are hired at a Mercenary Post. Those are: Slave, Slave Driver, Arabian Archer, Horse Archer, Oil Pot Thrower, Healer, Arabian Swordsman, Whirling Dervish and Sassanid Knight. There are 10 different mercenary units in the game. It means that you will have more numerous, though weaker, armies at your command. Mercenary units are relatively weaken than those of Crusaders (especially the most expensive ones), but they are easier to recruit, because you don't have to manufacture weapons for them. In one way it limits the player, who does not have enough gold, but it also allows you to recruit huge armies in a matter of seconds, provided that you have enough gold in your treasury. The biggest difference between them and the units available to Crusaders is the fact that they don't need weapons for recruitment - all they need is gold, but they need it several times more. Mercenaries are the only units available to the Arabic side of the conflict.