Newbie Guides

Strategy:

Units:

Gameplay Basics

General:
How do I pick up relics?
Greek and Atlantean Heroes, Norse Hersir, Egyptian Pharaoh's and Egyptian Priests with the Hand of the Pharaoh upgrade have the ability to pick up and move relics. To pick up a relic, select your hero and right click on the relic. To utilize its bonus, select the hero carrying the relic and right click on a temple. You can only store five relics in one temple.

For more information, consult the Relic Guide.

How exactly does empowering work?
Empowering doesn't really speed up gathering like it says in the manual. Instead, whenever a villager goes to drop off 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 also speeds up the construction of buildings by 50% research of technologies and training of units by 30%. It does not affect Villager training or Age advance. Finally, Empowering gives Town Centers, Towers and Fortresses an additional 50% attack rate.

Note: Ra Pharaohs empower resources at 15% instead of 20%. Speed up construction by 30%, research time by 50% and building fire rate by 50%.

Why can't I build more than 10 houses?
The population limit in AoM works differently than it did in AoE and AoK. In AoM, you can increase your pop cap in three ways.

Note: Your pop cap cannot go above 300.

How can I 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, Pharaoh's, the Son of Osiris, Forseti's Healing Spring god power, and Freyja's Valkyrie myth unit.

How can I heal my units?
The Egyptian Priests and Pharaoh have the ability to heal. If you wish to heal with Greek, Atlantean or Norse, you must worship certain gods.

For the Greek, 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; if you worship Freyja, her MU - the Valkyrie - can heal units in the same manner as the Egyptian Priest. Atlanteans can worship Oceanus and get Caladria MU, a flying unit who only serves as a scout and healer. Oceanus also gets a water MU, the Servant, which can fight and heal.

The Titan:

I have researched the "Secrets of the Titans" technology, but the Titan Gate button doesn't show up beneath my God Powers bar!
The older versions of mods like Enhanced Tooltips don't support certain features in AoM:TT. Get rid of the mods, and replace them with versions compatible with AoM:TT.

Is there any way I can move my Titan across the water?
No. Titans cannot go in Transport Ships, Underworld Passage, Sky Passages or anything else that would transport other units readily.

Can I get a second Titan?
No, not in normal gameplay. This would require an added trigger in a Random Map or Scenario.

The Manual:

Aren’t Thor’s cavalry supposed to generate gold?
No. This bonus was taken out prior to the original release of the game.

Game Interface

Miscellaneous:

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 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. Gates cost 15 gold apiece, Atlantean ones cost 23 gold.

Multiplayer:

What do the Colored dots and the Red Turtle next to players names mean?
The Yellow Dot indicates a Moderate latency, the red, High. The red turtle indicates that this player's computer is causing the game to slow down.

Hotkeys:

How do I pause/unpause?
Use the "Pause - Break" key located in the upper right hand corner of your keyboard. In Multiplayer games, the player who pauses the game need not be the one to unpause it.

How do I take screenshots and full map screenshots like in AoK?
Hit Ctrl+ F12 to save a screenshot. They will be saved in .jpg format in your Age of Mythology/screenshots directory. For the Titans Expansion Pack, they are stored at My Documents/My Games/Age of Mythology/screenshots.

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. Expect file sizes of around 20 MB (minimum.) The image will be saved in the same directory as a normal screenshot.

How do I show Scores, like in AoK?
Hit the F4 button to display Player Scores.

How do I show the game clock?
Hit the F11 button.

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 mouse wheel or hold down Ctrl and use the cursor keys.

How do I rotate the camera?
Make sure camera rotation is enabled in the Options tab. Once it's enabled, you can use your mouse wheel or CTRL+ arrow keys to rotate the camera.

How do I minimize the Interface?
Press Ctrl+Down Arrow.

Strategy

[This message has been edited by Flammifer (edited 03-21-2004 @ 08:41 AM).]

General Multiplayer

How do load a multiplayer saved game?
Start a multiplayer game as normal. Under game type (by default, Supremacy) select 'Restore game'.

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.

How do I play custom random maps and scenarios?
To play a custom random map, place the Random Map files (*.xml & .xs) into your Age of Mythology/rm directory for AoM and Age of Mythology/rm2 for AoM: TT. 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 Single Player, 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 upon joining.

Does it matter who hosts the game?
If you are hosting a game with 4 or more players, a fast connection will help. If your game crashes, the original host must be the one to host the restored game. Again, it can be useful to have a host with a fast connection to distribute the saved game. If the host is the one who crashed then someone else from the game will have to send the saved game from their "savegame" folder. If there are any AI players in the gamem they will be run from the host’s machine. AI players can make the Host's Computer unable to keep up with the normal pace of the game, causing lag.

Other than these cases, it doesn't really matter who hosts. All the computers in the game run all of the calculations regarding interactions in the game. This is to ensure that no one is cheating (a difference causes an Out of Sync). So the game runs at the pace of the slowest computer.

What ports do I need to forward on my router in order to play online?
You must have UDP ports 2300-2400 and 6073 forwarded in order to play. For more see Microsofts FAQ page about this

ESO Specific

How do I whisper to someone on ESO?
Type "/name Message", i.e. "/GloryOfSparta Can you hear me now?"

Stats:
Where can I find a stats tracker for original AoM, since Holbert was taken down?
Try PAoM's Stats Tracker.

Where can I find the overall AoM:TT Community stats, such as most Common God, etc?
The DoC Clan Site.

[This message has been edited by Flammifer (edited 08-10-2004 @ 11:05 AM).]

Where are the hotkeys that I change in-game saved?
They are saved in your player profile (a .prf file). It can be found in Age of Mythology/Users for AoM and My Documents/My Games/Age of Mythology/Users for AoM: TT. You can use a text editor to open and edit these files.

How can I get rid of the intro cinimatics?
Right click on the AoM icon, select Preferences.
Add “+noIntoCinematics” to the command line.

Like so: "...aomx.exe +noIntroCinematics"

How can I rotate buildings in game?
You have to go into game.con or gamex.con and find the line:

//map ("mousez", "building", "uiWheelRotatePlacedUnit")

Simply delete the '//' and it then enables you to rotate a building foundation with the mouse wheel.
thanks Mickey T

Downloads

[This message has been edited by Flammifer (edited 06-01-2004 @ 01:32 PM).]