Cerberus

By Nemanja Isailovic
Published 8/26/10, orig 1/18/09

STARTING AGE: Heroic
AGE LIMIT: Mythic
GOD CHOICES: I usually don’t bother upgrading, but Horus for the Avenger if I do. With all the Priests you’ll have, the best MU is the one that’s going to survive each battle to get healed, and that’s the Avenger.

MAP LAYOUT: Your base is in the N corner of the map. The Guardian and Son of Osiris whom you need to defend are S-SW of your base. An Allied TC is in the E corner. Some Hunting is in your base, but no Gold Mines are available. Relics are scattered around the map, but you’ll have more important things to do. The enemy attacks will come from five directions: from W of the Guardian, from S of the Guardian, from E of the Guardian and through the two passes at the NE middle of the map.

WALLS: Wall off the N of the two passes at the NE. Also build Walls to the W and E of the Guardian to channel all attacks to a chokepoint in the S. Building these Walls is the absolute first priority, as they will become immensely difficult to build shortly into the mission due to attacks.

WALKTHROUGH: Welcome to the most difficult mission of the campaign. There are a few things you need to do to secure your position. Doing them while being attacked every few seconds on multiple fronts is the trick. Here is what needs to be done, not necessarily in order:

  1. Wall off the N of the two passes at the NE.
  2. Build Walls around the Guardian to funnel all attacks to a small chokepoint to the S.
  3. Upgrade your Walls at least once.
  4. No Gold Mines are available to you, and you can’t build Caravans, so you have to find stray Caravans on the map and send them to the Allied TC for gold. They will, however, provide plenty of gold. Here are their locations:
    • Three Caravans E of TC (in small shaded area)
    • Two Caravans at NE middle of map (again in small shaded area)
    • Two Caravans on raised plateau just SW of Temple at NE middle of map
    • Four Caravans NE of W corner
    • Two Caravans a bit SW of the Guardian
  5. Get Ajax to the far E pass, and get Kastor and Amanra to the Guardian.
  6. Build five Monuments.
  7. Put up two Temples just N of the Guardian to train defenders.
  8. And, of course, build an economy.

Once the Walls are up, your life becomes much easier, but the AI loves to attack your Villagers while they’re building Walls. You’ll be hit by plenty of MU’s, but later on they’ll send masses of human units. So get some Priests early, but be sure to get those Monuments up so you can get Scorpion Men, particularly in the W. Once you have all your defenses up and plenty of defenders at both chokepoints, the mission is a breeze, so don’t be shy about using the Son of Osiris for defense early. You won’t need him later, so he’ll have plenty of time to awaken the Guardian.

On Hard difficulty, they’ll fly in three Rocs with some MU’s to your TC at some point. Four Priests are adequate to handle this (along with the Town Bell), but if you don’t get them there in time, just ring the Town Bell anyway to stall.

Well before the Guardian awakens, Cerberus will start marching towards him. However, it’s very easy to use a Priest to draw Cerberus all the way to the W corner, which stalls him adequately. The Guardian beats Cerberus one on one, so just finish off the Titan once your bad boy awakens.

On to Titans mission 9

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