I ran out of wood playing this one. How?
Well allow me to explain, first of all you cannot create villagers in this campaign, meaning that every villager you lose is irreplaceable, the same design blunder we see in ivaylo 3. After two hours of waging war I was able to take the three flags in the city, I received messages saying that the tributes I would get from Shirvan would increase and that they would start fighting the turkomans. However the turkomans had already destroyed the 4 caravanserai with their ships. The tribute I was getting was 75 gold, wood and food plus 25 stone. I built a castle in front of Yurys camp, after destroying one of his castles and one town center. This was akin to kicking a hornets nest, an avalanche of fully upgraded cuman paladins started flooding my castle, with the occasional two siege rams. I managed to hold them off for a while with halberdiers but there was no end to them. Yury probably has infinite resources because I must have killed 200 to 300 paladins. Finally my resources were drained and I lost many villagers trying to repair the castle that Yury was attacking, IRREPLACEABLE villagers mind you. By this time the turkoman navy had wiped out my ally’s starting camp, town center, everything.
Possible fixes:
Instead of not allowing the player to create villagers, cap them at 15. This ensures the mechanic of depending on shirvans tributes remains but allows the player to transition to a late game army composition of trash units and siege rams.
Improve the defensive capabilities of your Shirvan ally in the water. I did not see a single ship created by them in my two hours of gameplay.
Revise the amount of resources given to Yury and the Turkomans. I had an army of about 70 monaspas and a couple trebuchet and the turkomans melted it completely when I attacked their camp, mostly because of the same hornest nest mechanic where they ramp up production to the max when attacked.
Balance the punishment for losing Caravanserai with the reward for capturing the flags. I was able to win the battle on land but lost on sea and I ended up receiving tribute that was not enough to sustain my economy while being pressured by Yury and the Turkomans.
Make it clear in the hints that the mission is not achievable if all caravanserai are lost, or straight up failing, since after that happens your economy basically grinds to a halt.
Improve the fighting capabilities of Shirvan once you take the 3 flags. My ally was not tributing enough and was completely unable to win any engagement agains the turkomans. This meant I was alone with limited population, no villagers and two AIs attacking me with fully upgraded units, which is unwinnable.