Help with the Bari Campaign, Scenario #2

I’ve finished the Tamerlane Campaign, and now I am trying to figure out what campaign I want to do next. I started the Bari Campaign sometime before I started the Tamerlane Campaign. My question is, is that a good choice? I have a fascination with the Byzantines/Eastern Roman Empire.
Furthermore, I finished the first campaign, but I am now stuck on the second scenario. What route(s) do I take to ensure the survival of most of my troops. Afterwards, how do I deal with the attacking enemies?

You need to explore, try to save a bit before escaping from the city so that you can proceed by trials and errors. Each time you try a different route until you succeed.

I would suggest you to go for the city in the south, which is the closer to Bari, but you can go to the other one if you like to conquer the second one after. Though, in my opinion this one gives you a bit more time to boom, but also make the scenario way more grindy.

As for any other scenario. You boom, go to castle age, build multiple TCs and then attract. Cataprhacts are your friends in this scenario, since the enemy is goth and most likely will build only infantry. Also, having just 150 pop limit, you need pop efficient units, like catas. Build multiple castles to mass them and ensure constant production, and build the castles more and more closer to Bari as you gain terrain, so that you secure your new position.

A world of advice, Bari is one of my favorite campaigns, but its fifth mission, is considered the most difficult mission of all campaigns. It was patched for making it more easy if I’m not mistaken, but I think that it’s still really difficult.