Defeating Greece With Norse

By ZhaZ
Published 3/11/03, AoM v1.04

Introduction

How to defeat Greece with Norse? This is a question that has been juggled around in my head for a few weeks now. At water there really isn’t much of a problem as you have the advantage at sea but at land. At land the Greece player has the formidable combo of Hippikons and Toxotes, trashing Norse armies badly. Problem seems to be that Toxotes are better vs. Raiders and Toxotes than Throwing Axemen are. Sure Raiders are now after the patches a counter to Toxotes. But with Hippikons, they dominate both Raiders and Toxotes, in front of them it’s almost impossible to reach and take out the Toxotes. This little article will aim to give a few solutions for the Norse player. But most likely be interesting for a Greece one as well to learn the weaknesses of Norse and how to deal with the counters. Enjoy!

Loki Hersir Rush – Not a Good Idea

Perhaps the most popular civilization and strat out there; for good reasons. But rushing a Greece is not as easy as it may sound. First of all the God Powers, with Hades you got Sentinels covering the surrounding area; being very hard to take down due to them being covered by the Town Center fire. But this isn’t the worst God Powers for the Loki rusher to face. A well thrown Pestilence will enable the user to get a bigger army and simply go out and take the forward base down. But the most secure God Power of them all, Cease Fire is the natural rush killer, giving the user lots of time to build up a sizeable army without having to worry about Hersirs gaining favor taking down buildings.

But if this was all, then you’d still have chance. Unfortunately for you, it isn’t. Greece got the formidable Toxotes that can shoot down your army in safety behind the TC fire. As long as the Greece buildings and eco is close to the economy it’s very hard to touch. Challenging the Toxotes is impossible unless you got some trolls but even problematic. Also, as I’ve said before, once he got a good sized army of Hippikons and Toxotes it’s very hard to defeat him. The game will mostly end with that army for the Loki player and he’ll be defeated.

Thundering Hooves Raiders – Popular

A very popular counter from Thor and Odin users. Basically what you do is to try to outmass him with the cheaper Raiders and get the Thundering Hooves (Boosts your Cavalry and +10% speed, +20% HP) upgrade to better stand up vs. his army in the fights; preferably followed by more upgrades. With this strat you really want to keep your opponent busy with your raids. Perhaps even succeeding in taking out a few villagers. It’s defensively a better opening of the game than him raiding you. So try to quickly get you raids started. But avoid the Hippikons!

Eventually he will face the problem of his Hippikons taking one more population slot. Enabling you to really outmass him and for the first time really seek a battle which should result in your victory. Failing to crush his economy or army here though will disastrous results. He’ll upgrade to Heroic and upgrades his army as well as getting those Podromos who will slaughter your army badly.

Note: In the early raid wars depending on how easily defend your map is you might sometimes want to upgrade your Towers and get the Crennelations technology to easier repel Hippikons.

Pure Defense – Feasible

Defensively this is the one I enjoy the most. And it sure seems to work quite okay as well. I’ve seen and heard quite a number of other people do variants on this as well; and that at very high levels. Basically what you do here is to try to avoid open battle with the Greece army, boom and then use you great Hill Fort units to gain the upper hand in the game. Therefore defensively works best with Odin, but ok for all Norse civs.

First, get up with 3-4 economy upgrades and 24-26 population to classical. Make sure you have a lot of woodcutters. No need for a lot of gold, 3-4 is enough. Make 2 barracks and upgrade your towers. Possibly also Crennelations if you feel the need. Keep making Throwing Axemen. Build around the towers so that they won’t be destroyed so easily. Get a few more economy upgrades (I often get the ones for wood, farm and gold here). Your enemy will probably try to raid you now. Avoid him fooling you into sending all of your army to one side of your base while his other troops hit the other. Just send enough army to repel him whenever you see him around. With the help of the towers you shouldn’t run into trouble.

It is important not to rush too fast into Heroic, turning this into a Fast Heroic. You want more economy and more troops before you get up. Or he may well overwhelm you while you go up and you won’t be able to take full use of your Heroic God Power and units. It is very different from game to game. But perhaps at population 60-70 or so I generally go up to next age. Skadi being a prime choice due to her excellent God Power that can save you while create your Hill Fort as well as enable you to take out a good chunk of your opponent’s army. Cease Fire is always a problem here though as it totally counters these two if used. But Skadi’s Huntress’ Axe is also a good reason to choose this god as you already have so many Throwing Axemen (20% Attack). As fast as possible, get a Hill Fort or two up and mass out Huskarls or possibly Jarls if your economy or your opponent forces you to. Keep upgrading your economy; get more Town Centers, trade going. All the usual stuff. But keep using your Hill Fort units as those are superior to anything else.

Possible problems for this strat: You run out of protected gold mines before Heroic Age. Either then don’t start this strat at all if you see that you got little protected gold, or try to get some towers and defense at a new gold mine. Then you might get the Safeguard tech (Double HP and -25% cost for Towers) as well if you happen to be Heimdall. Alternative, Ulfsarks instead of TA.

Raiders and Ulfsark combo – Micro heavy

Since Raiders and TA don’t seem to work the logical next try is to make a combo out of Raiders and Ulfsarks. This however is very heavy on micro and tends to assume you do better than your opponent. First of all, Ulfsarks are underpowered until the next patch. They don’t make short work of Hippikons and still die horribly to Toxotes. So what you need to do is to try to manipulate the battles into open areas so that your Raiders can use their superior speed to run from the Hippikons and attack the Toxotes in the rear. All while you’re Ulfsarks go straight for the Hippikons forcing your opponent to let the Hippikons defend themselves or suffer losses while chasing after the Raiders. It is as you can see all very dependent on the faster Norse units.

End

As you can see there are many options for you. Watch the recorded games and try the strats out. See what works best for you. Good luck! By the way, here are a couple recorded games to give you an idea of how to use what was stated in this article:

Me vs. StorM_Sheeplover, Defense
Most Zeus and Poseidon users get Cease Fire God surprisingly Sheeplover didn’t this game. Think it was a bit of a mistake of him. At this map Defense vs. Greece is hard. But worked quite decent this game imo. Still, Sheeplover made very good use of Zeus favor bonus and I had quite some trouble with those Hydras.

Mats (the_Dragon) vs. Shmeker, Raiders
Mats uses walls to a very good effect. Shmeker has the advantage though with his heavy Hippikons. As the game progresses Mats takes over that advantage very impressively.

Mozory vs. pG_Fire, Raiders + Ulfsarks
Mozory uses some amazing control of units and great micro here. His units darting with all over the map demanding Fire to use his superior forces at home.