Frequently Asked Questions: General

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Here in our frequently asked questions page you’ll find answers to the most common questions that come up with regards to Age of Mythology. If you have a question that you think should be a part of our FAQ, please let us know in the website comments forum.

How do I disable the intro cinematics?

Download this file, unzip it and save the user.cfg file to your Age of Mythology/Startup folder. If you already have a user.cfg file in your startup folder, then edit it to include the line ‘+noIntroCinematics‘ instead.

How do I zoom and rotate?

Press + and – to zoom the camera in and out. To rotate the camera, you must first enable camera rotation at the options menu, then use the mousewheel or hold down Ctrl and use the cursor keys.

How do I build gates?

To build a gate, you must first build a wall. Then, select a long section of wall, and you will see a gate icon on the interface. Click this to convert the wall section into a gate.

How do I change the game speed?

Simple answer: sorry, you can’t. AoM has no game speed settings. The closest you can get is to use one of two cheat codes. “CONSIDER THE INTERNET” makes everything in the game slower, while “LETS GO!  NOW!” (Two spaces) makes everything in the game faster. To enter these codes, hit enter while in the game, type the code in (it must be in all caps) and hit enter again.

How can I heal my units when playing Norse and Greek? Is there a monk like AoK?

While the all Egyptian players get priests, as Greeks and Norse if you want healing, you must worship certain gods. For the Greeks, Athena’s god power ‘Restoration’ will heal a large number of friendly units in the target area, but you can only use it once. If you worship Apollo, you can research the Healing Temple technology, which causes temples to heal idle units within their radius, one at a time. As Norse, if you worship Forseti you’ll gain the Healing Spring god power, and if you worship Freyja, her MU – the Valkyrie – can heal units in the same manner as the egyptian priest.

How do I pick up relics?

Greek Heroes, Egyptian Pharaohs and Norse Hersir pick up and move relics. To pick up a relic, select your hero and right click on the relic. To utilise its bonus, select the hero carrying the relic and right click on a temple. While Egyptian Priests are heroes, they cannot pick up relics, and you can only store five relics in one temple.

I can’t repair siege weapons or ships!

You don’t repair siege or ships in AoM, instead you heal them. Anything that can heal normal units also heals ships and siege weapons. This includes Athena’s Restoration god power, Apollo’s Healing Temple technology, Egyptian priests and pharaohs, Forseti’s Healing Spring god power, and Freyja’s Valkyrie myth unit.

How do I show scores like in AoK?

Hit the F4 button to display player scores.

How do I take screenshots and full map screenshots like in AoK?

Hit Ctrl F12 to save a screenshot. This will be saved in .jpg format in your Age of Mythology/screenshots directory.

To take a full map screenshot, hit Ctrl Alt F12 – but be warned, this takes a very long time even if you have a powerful system, and generates a huge .jpg file. (20 MB is not unreasonable.) The image will be saved in your Age of Mythology/screenshots directory.

Why can’t I build more than 10 houses?

The population limit works a bit different than AoE and AoK. In AoM, you can increase your pop cap in three ways.

  • Houses boost your pop cap by 10, but you can only have 10 houses.
  • Town Centers boost your pop cap by 15, but you can only build Town Centers on settlements, and you can only have one Town Center until you reach the third age.
  • Researching the Fortified Town Cetner upgrade in the third age increases the population supported by your Town Centers to 20.

This makes a maximum pop cap of 115 until the third age – and then the highest population goes to whoever can take the most settlements! Even if you could capture an insanely large amount of settlements though, your pop cap can never go above 300.

How exactly does empowering work?

Empowering doesn’t really speed up gathering like it says in the manual. Instead, whenever a villager goes to a building being empowered to drop his resources, you get an extra 20% resources for free. So if he gathers 10 food and goes to an empowered granary, you get 12 food.

Empowering speeds up the construction of buildings, research of technologies and training of units by 30%. It does not affect villager training or age advance. Finally, Empowering makes Town Centers, Towers and Fortresses attack twice as fast.

The text stays on the screen too long! Can I get rid of it?

Yep. Hit the pagedown key to clear the announcements and chat on the screen.

How do I play custom random maps and scenarios?

To play a custom random map, place the random map files into your Age of Mythology/rm directory. Then start a game as normal, and where you would choose from the normal maps, look for the custom map you just added.

To play a custom scenario in singleplayer, place the scenario file in your Age of Mythology/scenario directory. Open the game and hit the ‘Single Player’ button on the main menu, then hit ‘Load Scenario’. Choose the scenario you’re looking for, select the difficulty and hit start.

To play a custom scenario in multiplayer, place the scenario file in your Age of Mythology/scenario directory. Open the game and start a multiplayer game. Where you have the dropdown box to choose your game mode (Supremacy, by default) select custom scenario and pick the scenario you’re looking for. Any players who join your game who do not have the scenario will have it automatically transferred to them on joining.

How do load a multiplayer saved game?

Start a multiplayer game as normal. Under game type (by default, Supremacy) select ‘Restore game’.

How do I watch recorded games?

Place the recorded game (*.rec files) into your Age of Mythology/savegame folder. On the main menu, click ‘More’ then click ‘Recorded games’ and open the file you are looking for.

When I am watching a recorded game and leave fixed view on, it just stays over the player’s Town Center all the time! Why?

Recorded games only record camera movements for the player who recorded the game. For any other players, fixed view will not function correctly.

Can I play multiplayer with only one CD?

Up to three players can play in a local area network (LAN) game on the one CD-Key. You can do this by starting AoM normally, taking the CD out, and then taking it to the next computer to start the game. To play on Ensemble Studios Online, (ESO) you must have a unique CD-Key

I’m having a problem using ESO or playing by direct IP

Check out the official FAQ for ESO. It contains tips for solving commonly encountered problems.

I have a question that isn’t part of this FAQ

Then it’s not a question that gets asked very frequently. Try asking in the forums, and we’ll see what we can do to help you! 🙂