A place in my dreams
The final showdown between Arkantos and Gargarensis occurs at the Temple of Poseidon in Atlantis.
Starting objective: Advance to the Mythic Age and build a wonder. Zeus will then reward you with his blessing.
Difficulty levels:
- Easy:
- Start with +400 Food, Wood and Gold
- Start with more upgrades
- Gargarensis’ forces have less upgrades
- Hard:
- Start with -400 Food, Wood and Gold
- Start with no upgrades
- Gargarensis’ forces have more upgrades
- Titan:
- Gargarensis’ forces have even more upgrades
This scenario opens at your camp in the southwest of the map. (1) Your starting situation is fairly sparse, and you’re going to want to build up as rapidly as possible in order to survive. This is after all the final scenario, so it stands to reason it’ll be one of the hardest. If you can survive long enough to build up effectively though, this should not be an overly challenging mission.
You have two allies for the first part of this mission – Lothbrok’s Clan (2a) to the northwest, and the Abydos Vanguard (2b) to the southeast. Lothbrok’s Clan will give you some giants four times throughout the mission. They also invoke the Healing Spring god power nearby. Gargarensis’ forces often attack them, but unless you have gold miners working in this area, there’s no real reason to defend them. Gargarensis will wipe them out 20 minutes into the scenario, which means you’ll no longer get Giants, but you can claim their settlement.
The Abydos Vanguard supplies you with four Anubites – again, for a total of four times during the mission. In addition, the second time they give you units, you will also get a Son of Osiris – which is going to be your most critical unit on this mission until you get the Blessing of Zeus. (If killed, he will also respawn – only once.) The Abydos Vanguard has four priests who can heal your units if you move them into the area. Gargarensis wipes out the Abydos Vanguard at the 25 minute mark.
Particularly on Titan, survival will be tough at the start of the mission. Put up a stable straight away and begin training cavalry. While you face a lot of infantry on this mission, Hippikons have a high gold, low food cost – making it easy to mass them quickly. (Gold is the fastest resource to gather, food is the slowest.) You will want to supplement these with Toxotes to protect them from enemy Infantry. Finally a handful of Prodromos – since you’re upgrading your cavalry – will help you deal with Gargarensis’ own cavalry. The AI employs heroes extensively on this scenario, and you are going to be reliant on the MU’s you are given from your allies early on, so it would not be wise to rely even more on them.
When facing attacks, stay close to your Town Center and Towers. Kill heroes first – use Bolt on any you won’t be able to get quickly – and get injured giants out of the fight to heal them later. Try let your MU’s deal with Hoplites and focus your Cavalry on enemy Archers and Heroes. Training some additional Heroes to supplement Arkantos and your Son of Osiris may help you deal with enemy MU’s easily. Expect to see Cyclopes, Nemean Lions and Colossi.
Keep training villagers right throughout this mission. You will need a strong economy to sustain your army, and of course to build a wonder.
Gargarensis’ forces have production buildings scattered all over the map. There’s no point waiting until you have the Blessing of Zeus to begin wiping them out, because each building you take out is less units being produced, which means attacks are less frequent. However while you can do this at the start of the game – thanks to your Giants – it wouldn’t be a wise idea, because the AI doesn’t begin launching attacks to its full potential until you’ve taken out one of its forward Fortresses. (3) Attacking as you build up also has another advantage – there are four Plenty vaults around the map, (4) each of which is worth about 10 villagers’ gathering capacity.
While your objective for the moment is to build a wonder, do not just do this at the first possible opportunity. (Nor should you make advancing ages your immediate objective – particularly on harder difficulties.) The Blessing of Zeus makes Arkantos nigh-invincible, but the time and resources you lose in order to put a wonder up will cripple your army, meaning you will be overrun if you did not judge your strength accurately. When you have a strong, well upgraded army, then focus on age advancing and Wonder construction, but not before.
Once you complete construction of a wonder, you will receive your next objective.
New objective: Use the Blessing of Zeus on Arkantos, then defeat the living statue of Poseidon at the Temple. (5)
A tip is to use your god powers before you complete your wonder, as they get cleared in order for you to access the Blessing of Zeus power. But not to worry, because now whenever you destroy one of Gargarensis’ temples, you get a Meteor god power!
The Blessing of Zeus god power turns Arkantos into a one man army – though on harder difficultues, you’re still going to need the weight of numbers behind him to be effective. (He CAN be killed. Just not very easily.) And of course, the Blessing of Zeus also makes him the only unit capable of realistically taking on the living statue of Poseidon, which you need to defeat this mission.
Remember, you don’t need to wipe out Gargarensis forces unless you want to for kicks and giggles. Just head straight to the Temple complex. (5) Now all you have to do is get Arkantos to the statue of Poseidon and have him attack it. As the statue’s HP decreases, units will be rapidly spawned in the area, but don’t worry. You just need to kill the statue – and Arkantos’ godlike HP and armor mean he can take quite a beating – so just leave Arkantos focused on the statue.
Once the Statue of Poseidon goes down, you’ll be rewarded with victory, and the credits will roll. Congratulations. You just beat the game.