Because it is x500 text I have skipped the -ly/mein/ein.





A basic understanding of the game’s mechanics is very important when you’re trying to improve. Whether it is analyzing your recorded games, other’s recorded games or developing a new strat, you will always need to have a basic understanding.

If you are an observant person (like me) you won’t be having too much problems with increasing your level of skill. If you are not an observant person (I won’t drop any names but I’m sure you can guess who) you will not increase in skill, or hit your skill cap very fast or just improve very, very slowly. Sadly enough, there is little you can do to increase your ‘observing skill’ as this is mostly decided at your birth. Some people grow up to be physic geniuses, others learn 6 languages, and some become professional soccer players and whatnot.

However, there is a difference. If you are given a Math’s test and somebody whispers you all the answers you can ace the test (assuming they are correct). If you could freeze time and exactly tell a soccer player what he has to do in a game and then unfreeze time, he might not be able to do it. You are giving him the correct information. If he is unable to use the input (for example, you tell him that he must run past player X and pass the ball to player Y but he cannot do this because of fatigue/him being slower/whatever) then the answer is not of much use.

However, in the Math’s test you only need to write down the answer. If you are able to write down numbers you are able to use all the input you are given. Now I ask you, can you use a mouse and a keyboard? If yes, you can use all the input I am about to give you that is related to AoT. Of course, if you do not know basic things (e.g. if I say ‘go FH’ and you do not know how to FH (which can be compared to the Math’s test where I say ‘the answer is 682’ and you reply with ‘I do not know how to write down 682’)) you have bigger fundamental problems that can be solved without advice, such as watching recs or usually just playing the game a lot. Unless you have Down’s syndrome or something you should be able to develop these skills.

If I say ‘go FH’ and you reply ‘I can’t’ this can also be compared to soccer, where I go ‘run forward’ and get an answer like ‘I don’t know how to run’.

If you are somehow unable to learn basic things in AoT, please stop reading right now and play something that requires less brainpower, such as Cindy’s Magical Dollhouse.


There are multiple ways of playing this game. Or, which is probably a better phrase, multiple ways of winning the game.

1)Raiding
2)Attacking/Damaging
3)Booming

This might be a little confusing. How can you win a game by only booming (save Wonder)? Surely you have to use those resources eventually, thus attacking… Right? Yes. So winning the game always has to be a combination if you boom, right? Technically, yes. However, if you are brutally outbooming your opponent he has already lost (because of the inevitable win). Look at it this way, you have erased your opponent from the map and he hides a villager in the corner. Technically, he has not lost yet. However, it is safe to say that he has lost. If your opponent masses an army and neglects economy upgrades whereas you get them ASAP and he is not able to use his army effectively (whether this is because you have fortified, the map is in your advantage, your resources cannot be reached by him without taking massive losses or just because he doesn’t use his army) he will most likely lose. If he fails to use his army effectively early on his only hope is to prevent you from getting your second gold mine.

Raiding is essentially the reverse. If I luck out and find my opponent’s hunting party early on and manage to kill 7 villagers he will most likely resign. Because raiding won you the game? Yes, but technically no, him pushing the resign button made you win. But once again, what happened is that he foresaw himself getting beaten. So it is safe to say that the raid won you the game.

Another example is getting goldstarved, especially in classical when you cannot use the market for trading. Even though your base is still intact, you probably have an (inferior) army, you having lots of villagers etc., you will resign because you realize that he can keep producing military units whereas you cannot (save MUs).

Now how you play is up to you. There are different styles. Pick one you like. Most people love games packed with lots of action and raiding. Believe it or not, but if I had the chance I’d wall up, spam towers and Titan/Wonder myself to a win every single game. You might not see the fun in this and/or think it is really boring. You might be like me and think this is fun. These are called preferences. If everyone were the same it would be a very boring world. Or maybe it would not be boring if everyone liked everyone being the same. What if everyone played Thor and there was only 1 map? Would that be boring? Maybe. I think that would be boring. People have preferences. Deal with it. I cannot count the number of times I have been told that I should play Sim City when I start flooding Migdols all over the map, or have been called lame. I cannot count the number of times I have called someone a lamer or rag noob, either. The difference is that I use it to vent, not to rationalize my loss. Unless the map or match-up was somehow really unbalanced (an example is me not having a 3rd TC whereas the opponent does), I just got beaten by a legitimate strategy whether I like it or not. Usually, you can even decrease the gap of imbalance. In my example of not having a 3rd TC, I could rush and fast claim my opponent’s 3rd TC, making it a 3v2 TC situation. There are also gaps that cannot be decreased, for example your opponent having 10x your hunt in Archaic and having it hunted before you have reached Classical or even scouted it.

All in all I think this game is fairly balanced. Yes, there are match-ups that are very, very hard to beat at the same skill level at higher rates. Yes, some maps favor certain gods. No, Ra cannot counter Flaming Weapons effectively. No, your Locust Swarm will not always wipe out complete gathering parties and no, ES will not nerf mercenaries. Go to the store, buy a box of straws and suck it up. Life will not always be fair, neither will AoT.

Now we can move on to my tactics. What I do is basically waiting for my opponent to make a mistake, while trying to make as little as possible myself. Not all mistakes have to be game deciding, however. For example, my opponent can be Thor and make the following mistakes in Archaic:

He has a total of 4 seconds idle TC time because he did not queue a villager fast enough after he created a dwarf and had some idle TC time because he did not have enough food to up Classical.

He did not scout the map correctly.

He built his Temple in farm space (farm space is the space around your TC where you make farms).

Built his first house somewhere on the map where he cannot prevent it from being destroyed by my free Sphinx.

Cast his Dwarven Mine incorrectly, making 1 dwarf walk around the other dwarf when dropping off.

Had unnecessary long drop-off distance to Ox Cart at his start hunt due to bad micro

These, although many, are very minor mistakes and will not affect the game much. However, as soon as these things start to add up, they will. I try not to make such mistakes to give me an innate advantage.

Of course, he might make grave mistakes too, such as running RC through a crennelated base and losing tons of RC while doing 0 damage, or fighting a losing battle. This is the easiest way to boost your rate. It does not require you to think of a counterstrat, to think of what to do, is not map/civ/match-up dependant and can be used over and over without fail. Some examples:

Placing your farms correctly. Your farms will always want to ‘touch’ a TC or granary. If you are Norse, you might place a few farms next to farms that are next to your TC, as your villagers cannot build TCs/granaries and Ox Carts are generally not worth it, but if you are Greek you have no excuse. Farms are 70 wood and granaries are 50 wood and it is more beneficial to spend 50 wood on a granary to decrease drop-off distance for multiple farms than spending 70 wood on another farm. You also save a villager. If you are Egyptian you have no excuses either as granaries are free. The longer the game goes on, the more a bad placed farm will hurt you.

Correct mining camp placement. Unlike wood, you’ll be mining from the same location for a while. Don’t think that because you can squeeze villagers inbetween the mine and camp it is placed correctly. You have to take the long side for your first camp and for the second camp you will have to take the direction from where the vills are being sent from into account.

Re-docking. Fish like short drop-off distances too.

Now we have something that helps us in general it would also be helpful if we had something that we could use against specific gods. Usually, you link the god with your opinion. E.g. ‘Isis is so lame’. I think it is better to link to the units (or GPs/god bonuses) first and later when you have more skill you can always link back to the god. So you link to 2 things:

Units

GPs and god bonuses

You might play Loki and think Zeus is really strong/lame/op vs Loki. If you say ‘Zeus owns Loki’ you are linking to the god. You will want to link to the other 2 things. How do we do this? Just ask yourself what makes him own you. You will probably answer with ‘hop/tox’ or ‘restoration’ or whatever. So your phrase goes from ‘Zeus is OP’ to ‘hop/tox and restoration are OP’. Because we are now linking to units, I will analyze most common units here.

Turma
The Turma does not really have a counter, except for Centaurs (and even those can die to shockwave or hero turmae). Yes, in a pop-equivalent editor test the turmae lose to a lot of units. A real game is not an editor battle. We have 3 concepts:

Beat, army will win vs other army (Hoplite vs Turma, RC vs Cheiroballista)

Wall, army can run from other army without taking much damage (Turma vs Hoplite)

Lose, army loses and cannot run without taking severe damage (Cheiroballista vs RC)

In a battle, it is a combination of 2 of the above. Turma wall or beat everything.

VS RC: Turma runs to safety and takes little damage
Hippikon: See above, except that Hippikon is slower
Hoplite: See above, except that Turma takes 0 damage

So ranged units would be better vs the Turma, if not for a few things:

Turma gets bonus damage vs all ranged classical units that are not MUs, heroes or ships and beat them.

They outspeed them too

Oranos Turma move so fast that they cannot be hit by projectiles

So the Turma will kill you or run away. How do we deal with this unit? By forcing them to fight your (superior) army. For example, a few ways of forcing them to fight your army:

You attack the base and he is forced to fight or lose his everything

You trick him into thinking that he can win the battle

You do something innovative such freezing his army (Skadi’s GP) and blocking escape routes or whatever

So this is how you deal with only Turmae. Usually, however, they will be accompanied by Murmilloes. How do you deal with this? You will need an army that can deal with both units, even if the combination beats Turma/Murmillo. Hop/Tox is a bad choice because Tox do not beat Turma (they don’t even wall them either). Hoplites would be a good choice as they deal with both. Hippikons would be a good choice if you have more upgrades. Hip/Hop would be a good choice (in music too). For Thor and Odin it is much trickier because they need Hersir to deal with the Prometheans which cannot deal with either Murmillo or Turma. As Norse you will either need to outproduce Atlanteans or defend till heroic where you can win a battle with the GP.

Roc is following soon.