This guide is a constantly updated compilation of strategies, tips and information about Age of Mythology. All info includes and is based on Titans expansion unless otherwise stated. The ESG is different from other guides in that its content is supplied by the forumers of AoMH (while I will do my best to write basic knowledge in). The success and comprehensiveness of this guide is reliant on how much people give me.
If you think you have something to contribute then post it. I might cut/paste it in or rephrase for clarity. I'm not promising to include everything people post but if it's good I will. Please double check if you're writing an article/submitting a strat that it is accurate and up to date.
Also feel free beside suggesting content to suggest topics, categories, something I haven’t thought of?
So yeah, go ahead and post in this topic anything from a sentence to a paragraph. Sorry for the bad text, I don't know how to bold and italicize stuff.
THE EVERLASTING STRATEGY GUIDE
Compiled by HighbulpIII
ECONOMY:
Overview: The economy in Age of Mythology is the collective term for all your resources, your villagers, improvements, and the way you spend resources. You need an economy to buy units, upgrades, buildings, and pretty much anything.
Resources: These are almost always collected by your villagers, and the different resources are: Food, Wood, Gold, and Favor. Use them to buy stuff. Food is used on units and upgrades (mainly), Wood is used for buildings, ships and archers, and gold is required for ALL human units (except the villager and ox cart). Favor is required for mythological units, upgrades and buildings.
Food- Gathered from huntable animals, herdable animals, berries, chickens, farms and fish schools.
Wood- Gathered from (gasp) trees.
Gold- Gathered from gold mines and trading caravans.
Favor- depends. Greek: Pray at temple. Egypt: Build monuments. Norse: any fighting+hersir, Atlantean: Own Town Centers.
Villagers: called “villagers” with Greece, “laborers” in Egypt, “gatherers” with Norse, and “citizens” with Atlanteans. The Norse also have dwarves. The villager is your single most important unit. They gather resources, construct buildings (except for Norse) and make great cannon fodder (just kidding). They are trained at the town center for 50 food (except Atlantean citizens which cost 125 food and 25 wood). As new players are apt to ask: “how many do I need?”. I answer: “Well sonny, there’s this here thing called a villager limit, and you should become well-acquainted with it.” Simply: you should usually NEVER stop making them until the button is grayed out around villager #80. If possible make them out of two or three town centers. A handy button is in the lower right of the screen, that’s the repeat build button and that means if you have one villager training and you click the repeat build it will automatically train another and keep doing that forever. Atlantean Citizens: These are uber-villagers that gather about three times as fast as other villagers. That said, they cost three times as much and they’re slower than normal. The Norse Dwarf is deficient in food and wood gathering but excels at gold gathering. They cost 70 gold and you should always have 5-7 of them for gold gathering.
Drop Sites: These are the places where villagers drop resources. As a villager chops at a tree, they are gathering wood, but it doesn’t end up in your store of resources till they drop it off at the nearest drop site. After the villager gathers a certain amount they will automatically head to the nearest drop site and go back to work. Certain resources require specific sites to be dropped off. Each culture differs in this.
Greek: Food-at Granary, Wood and Gold-at storehouse
Egypt: Food-at Granary, Wood-at lumber camp, Gold-at mining camp
Norse: Everything-at Ox Cart
Atlantean: Atlantean citizens are unique in that they have their own personal pack donkeys so they can drop any gathered resources off immediately- they require no drop site.
Drop sites for Greeks cost 50 wood, for Egypt they’re free, and the Norse Ox Cart costs 50 food, 50 wood. Drop sites are also the place where you may research economic improvements.
Improvements: Economic Improvements are researched at drop sites (for the Atlanteans, research them at the Economic Guild). How many you should get is dependant on how aggressive your strategy is (if you’re rushing then don’t get any. If you’re booming get as many as you can). Here’s a list of the improvements available to all cultures:
Food: Husbandry (increases herdable fattening rate+villager gathering from herdables), Hunting Dogs (Increases villager gathering from huntables), Plow (increases farming rate), Irrigation Ditches (farming), Flood Control (farming), Purse Seine (fishing), Salt Amphora (fishing)
Wood: Hand Axe, Bow Axe, Carpenters
Gold: Pick Axe, Shaft Mine, Quarry
Most of these improvements give a 10% increase to gathering rate as well as increasing the amount a villager can hold before dropping at a drop site.
MILITARY:
Overview: The military is your soldiers, unit producing buildings, and fortifications. Use your army to attack the enemy base, raid the enemy economy or defend your own base. Read on to learn how to best maximize your soldiers and how to win more battles.
Counter Units: This is THE most important thing to understand about your military. Certain units “counter” others in that they fight particularly well against them. The counter works on a rock-paper-scissors basis. The three different types of soldiers, infantry, cavalry and archers work like this: Infantry counters Cavalry which counter archers which counter infantry. If you’re new it won’t take that long to memorize. In addition to this simple counter-layout (which most mainline units adhere to) many if not most units in AoM “break the rules” in some way. For example: the Greek Hypasist unit counters OTHER infantry. There is no concrete rule for which units counter what, so you’ll have to learn as you go. Having played AoM for years, I could tell you instantly what each unit counters if you asked me, but if you’re new then try this: if you’ve selected a unit and you don’t know what they counter, hold your mouse over their portrait (in bottom center of screen). On the left words will appear which tell you who they counter. If you click on the portraits themselves then you’ll be treated to even more comprehensive information, such as what to counter it with. The one ABSOLUTELY CONCRETE rule about counters is that heroes always counter myth units.
Combined Arms: “Combined Arms” is the term for mixing many units into your army instead of going all-one unit. So the next time you’re thinking about sending in all one unit, click on their portrait. If the info says that this unit is countered by infantry, be sure to include some archers with your unit. The best armies are ones where every unit is protected by another type in the army. For instance, a good combination is Hoplites and Peltasts. Hoplites are countered by archers, but the Peltasts happen to counter archers, so they’re protected. The Peltasts have to watch out for cavalry, which would kill them, but fortunately Hoplites counter cavalry. It’s a self-contained system and the enemy doesn’t have any way to really “counter” your army.
Siege Weapons: These (often) slow, lumbering engines of destruction will help to destroy all your opponents buildings- if they’re allowed to. Because siege weapons also have very weak hack armor, meaning any infantry or especially cavalry is going to take it down faster than you can say “combined arms”. So protect your siege weapons with some infantry. Please note that siege weapons do nothing to regular units, who generally have 95-99% crush armor.
GREEK-SPECIFIC SECTION:
Overview: The Greeks have strong but expensive units. They are also the most similar to Age of Empires’ games and civilizations. The Greeks are probably the most wood-hungry civilization. They have the most expensive houses at 50 wood, require three different barracks to get the full range of units which each cost 100 wood, and all their drop sites cost 50 wood. That’s a lotta wood.
Favor Gathering as Greek: To get favor as Greek have villagers pray at a temple. No need to pile em’ on, as each successive villager makes less favor (ie, adding a villager with 1 already praying isn’t the same as adding one with 3 already praying). Two prayers is enough for most strategies, but a heavy-myth might require as many as five.
Greek Heroes: Greeks are at a disadvantage in that they cannot mass heroes like other cultures. They have only four heroes available (five for Poseidon) to them. But each one is about the most population-effective unit out there. A new hero is available in each age and in the Mythic age Poseidon gets a naval hero as well as a land hero. Though each major god gets a different set of heroes, often heroes in the same age bear resemblance (for instance: all classical-age heroes are archers). Below is a list of heroes in order of age available.
ZEUS:
Jason, Odysseus, Heracles, Bellerophon
POSEDION:
Theseus, Hippolyta, Atalanta, Polyphemus, Argo (naval hero)
HADES:
Ajax, Chiron, Achilles, Perseus
The heroes get more powerful with each advance (Bellerophon is possibly the best counter to myth in the game).
Upgrades to heroes: Olympic Parentage (Zeus): Upgrades hero hitpoints
Unique about the Greek:
-Three-villager start. Though this may not seem like much, at the advanced levels it really makes a difference.
-Free scout: the Kataskopos is an excellent archaic-classical scout with long line of site, good hit points and it’s fast. If you lose it to town center fire there is no way to get another one.
-Pegasus scouting: For 50 food and 2 favor you can get a flying scout from the temple. The Pegasus is invaluable for scouting enemy positions and resource gathering. Leave one over every gold mine or at least the ones nearest to your opponent so you know where he will be mining.
-Fortress Units in Mythic: The Greek get a Major God Specific special unit in the mythic age that can be produced at the fortress or respective military building.
Zeus- Zeus gets the Myrmidon, which is a powerful infantry unit that gets bonus damage against all non-Greek units.
Poseidon- Poseidon gets the Hetairoi cavalry unit. This unit does major bonus damage against buildings but is useless against units.
Hades- Hades gets the Gastraphete, an archer with a crossbow. It also does bonus damage against buildings, but fares well against infantry also. It is extremely inaccurate however and hopeless against cavalry.
EGYPTIAN-SPECIFIC SECTION:
Overview: The Egyptians have weak but cheap units (the opposite of the Greek). Most of their units will lose to other equivalent units (spearmen will lose to the hoplite etc.). Egyptian economies Are totally reliant on gold. Most of their buildings cost only gold or are free. Houses and drop sites are free, which means you should build all your houses right away.
Major Gods:
Ra:
Rain (Archaic God Power)
Target anywhere on the map for all villagers to farm faster. Your villagers farm the fastest.
A common misconception,
Rain affects the gather rate of farmers BUT NOT fishing ships. Your villagers gather 300% faster, others gather 200%.
Lasts for 60 seconds and is affected by:
-Husbandry: This allows for your villagers to carry more food and can increase gathering time by lessening villiger drop off time.
-Pharoah/Priest Empowerment: Adds the empowering bonus to the location you are using it. Whether it be dock or town center or granary.
-Shaduf: Ptah's technology concerning cost and build time of farms. Farms are reduced from 75 gold to 47 gold. Build time is halved. This technology can easily be researched and can greatly increase the rate at which you can create farms, giving you an earlier rain, less benefiting your enemies.
NORSE-SPECIFIC SECTION:
Overview: The Norse have weak buildings. Their culture is naturally encouraged towards a nomadic, aggressive style because to get favor they must fight. In addition, one of the defining characteristics of the Norse is that their infantry build buildings and their gatherers can not. This means it is easy to set up a forward base.
Strangely, the Norse do not have any human archers. Their classical age counter-infantry are throwing axemen, they have ranged attack and are good against infantry, but are considered infantry themselves because they do hack damage.
Norse Heroes: Norse Heroes are called hersir. They are infantry with hammers, and you can make as many as you want. They cost 80 food, 40 gold, and 3 population. Having hersir and fighting are how Norse gather their favor. Like all heroes, hersir have bonus damage against myth units. In addition, they generate double the amount of favor while fighting that other units do. Hersir attack and health increases with each age, like the Egyptian Pharaoh and Priests.
Economy: Norse gatherers don't have to waste time building things because that's what their infantry do. The drop-off site for the Norse is a mobile ox cart, which cost 50 food, 50 wood, and one population. If you're Loki, the carts cost 25 food, 25 wood, and 1 population, and they are faster and weaker than other ox carts. All resources (except favor, of course) can be dropped off there.
The Norse have another villager besides their gatherers: it is called a dwarf. Dwarves are better than gatherers at mining gold, but worse at gathering other resources. Thor's dwarves are extra-good at collecting gold and better than normal dwarves at collecting other resources (but still worse than gatherers).
Favor Gathering: Norse get favor from dealing damage to anything. Even if it’s only a villagers shooting at a deer, the damage dealt dictates how much favor you receive. Hersir get double the amount of favor of normal units. Also, hersir automatically generate a small trickle of favor just for being on the map. The advantages of this favor generation method is that favor comes in extremely fast and Is 100% FREE in time of war and constant fighting. However, the downside is that aside from killing a huntable animal here and there, there is no way to get favor when there’s no fighting aside from waiting for a little bit to trickle in from that hersir.
ATLANTEAN-SPECIFIC SECTION:
MISCELLANEOUS TIPS:
- Double Click on a unit to select every other unit of that same type in the area. Useful for selecting all your villagers or military units in a crowded base, or microing units in a battle (ie: double click infantry to attack cavalry)
-
HOW TO WIN:
In supremecy, there are 4 ways to win.
1. Your enemy resigns.
This will often happen if you are totally uber awesome compared to your opponent. Some players get so frustrated enough at losing a major battle, town center, or forward base that they resign (but dont' count on it).
2. You take over all settlements on the map.
If your enemy is stubborn and refuses to surrender, you might end up destroying all of his town centers and building over them. If you (or your team) controls all of the settlements, a 2 minute countdown starts. If the countdown reaches zero, you win. The only way your enemy has a chance is if he destroys one of your town centers.
3. No survivors.
If you destroy all enemy military production buildings, all enemy town centers, and all enemy units that have an attack, you win.
4. Wonder.
Once you reach the mythic age, you can consider making a wonder. The wonder costs different amounts of different resources depending on your civilization, but it costs a few thousand resources total + 50 favor. Building a Wonder takes a long time, but you can speed up the process by tasking more builders to build it. Once the Wonder is completed, a message will be sent to all players in the game saying that you have a wonder and a 10 minute countdown will begin. The countdown will only stop if your opponent destroys your Wonder. If the countdown reaches 0, the person with the wonder wins. If the wonder is destroyed, the countdown disappears, and you continue to play the game like normal. The person whos wonder has been destroyed now has a distinct disadvantage now, since he probably put all of his economy into making that wonder and building defenses, and all of his military into protecting it.
NOTES TO THE PUBLIC: Have added to Norse and Egyptian sections as well as added “how to win” article. It would be nice if someone wrote a description of different game types (Supremacy, Conquest etc.).
List of Contributors:
-SilentAssasin7
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- SSJVegetaTrunks*
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[This message has been edited by HighbulpIII (edited 08-27-2006 @ 09:57 PM).]