Sandy Castles

General tips:
If you make the first attack on sandy castles, for example you earthquake part of the enemy's base, you put yourself at risk because the victim will want revenge. This attack could be bigger than you expected, so be careful. Instead wait (if you're not rushing) for the enemy to attack the other player. This means they will both fight it out, while you stay un-scratched. You could take advantage of the situation and attack one of their bases. This means two players could be taken out with only one attack made by you. Think about it, be patient, eventually players will try to get revenge on each other. THAT is when you strike. Sandy Castles is one of my favourite levels, it provides plenty of building space and wood for towers and huts, which can be used to your advantage.

First take off fireball and only charge convert. Send your shaman towards the pool of water in the middle of the map, here there are around 30 - 40 wild men waiting to be converted, so get there quick. While convert is charging build your firewarrior, temple then warrior training huts. By the time these are constructed you can have anything between 30 - 60 braves depending on how many converted. Charge either earthquake or lightning spells

Attacking:
I wouldn't normally say this but now is the time to rush at least one team, assuming you know how to rush, but make sure you have a few spare firewarriors for counter-attacks and shaman attacks from the enemy shamans and make sure your building hut upon huts at the same time. The reason for this is sandy castles can last Hours upon Hours, even with volcano and firestorm spells, because of the amount of rebuilding space you can gain, I have been in a 3 hour sandy castles game, eventually we all allied or quit, because no matter what we did, no-one was dying. Now one team are gone (assuming a successful rush) you have the other to deal with. Personally, I try to rush the person of most threat, which will make the second battle much easier for you.

Defence:
I find the best way to defend is to put guard towers with firewarriors in them, all around the raised land, but the problem with this level there are so many places to get around defence's, normally they just walk around the back with no problem. So here's what I do: In a line I hold CTRL & ALT and patrol the grounds leading to the back of my base with firewarriors, lots of them! Then around 5 or 6 preachers running back and forth behind the firewarriors, followed by 5 or 6 warriors, this can breached with a firestorm but it's a waste for the enemy so seeing these defence's will cause them to back off and charge full spells. When your done with defence's and rushing the first enemy, kill the second before he has chance to charge all spells, I find a few firestorms followed by a huge amount of warriors and preachers kills them off, get around 10 firewarriors circling the enemy CoR to stop the shaman interfering with your plans.

It is up to you whether you build defence's before attacking or not, but if you don't want to spend hours on this level, rush the first team, defend and build, followed by the final attack on the last base.