This article is really long, but it was necessary to get all the details in.

First I will start with some theoretical aspects of this strategy, then some of the things your teammates must do and then will finish with a suggested build order. This is probably my favorite strategy and luckily it is the most successful. I also liked Jurassic Park strategy, but it is really hard to win against any decent player with that strat. I have used Zeus Fast Mythic successfully in 1800-1900 team games, so it is not a newbie strat. I have like a 95% success rate with it, even when my opponents know it is coming. I played one last week against a bud who said “At the 7 min mark I knew that you were doing a FM, but I still couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

Before you even begin, you must have the consensus of your teammates that they want you to do this. This will result in them having to fight 2 people for 2-3 minutes. This strat works best in 3v3 games, but can work in 2v2 on specific maps. Your goal is to make an 11 min mythic time. You must have teammates that you can trust to cover you while you head mythic. This is essential.

Let’s start with the maps ideally suited for this strat. I am not talking about all the maps, but only the ones that you might pull in random. My favorite map is watering hole as you and your partners can wall up and buy everyone some time before you even might have to use your ceasefire. FM also works well on Savannah, as there is an abundance of hunting on this map. Actually the only map that I do not do FM on regularly is Oasis. Med, alfen, midgard are also great maps as the fishing really helps with your times.

Food is probably the single largest limiting factor in advancement times. Gold collected is usually of secondary concern as I usually have tons. With water maps, you should not build too many fishing boats (6-8 max) as these boats are usually throwaway units and you will not be fighting sea at all (a point your partners have to understand). Fishing is simply a way to collect more food in archaic and early classic till your opponent kills your dock.

It is important not to advance to classic too early, you should only go when you have 27 pop on land maps and 33-34 pop on water maps. If you go with less pop, it will really slow down your mythic time, and this is the whole point of this strat. You must get the first gold mining tech before you push the classic button and then gold will not be a problem.

Let’s first look at which gods to use. I first started using Hermes, Dionysus and then Hephaestus. I use to go this god route so I would get bronze, hydras and bacchanalia. I have found that the bronze is nice, but usually unnecessary and I am usually spending all my food on myrms so I was never able to afford any hydras anyways. And as far as bacchanalia, I have also found that the additional 5% hit points on my units is not the make or break tech. I have switched my middle god to Apollo. There are 2 main reasons for this; the first is underworld passage. Since one of your partners is going to be getting doubled, this is the best way to get troops over to help quickly once you are Mythic. Secondly you have to make archers with this strat as your opponents will ultimately be switching to hyps, axmen and tas in hopes of trying to stop you. So I have found that having super archers is way more advantageous than slightly more powerful myrms. Apollo’s Sun Ray tech gives you 10% more attack from your archers; whereas bacchanalia only gives your myrms 5 more hit points. With this tech, your archers can basically stand toe to toe with Hades’ archers. This is especially true since you will be rattling off the upgrades at such an extreme rate that any Hades players will not be able to catch you till it is too late as they will be spending all their gold and wood rebuilding tcs and trying to stop your push.

Now back to some theoretical stuff. Some players I have seen trying to use this strat are going with the wrong gods. It is essential that you get ceasefire as you will need it as soon as you hit mythic or you might need it to save your town in heroic. You may also need it as soon as you arrive in mythic so you can mass a few myrms in preparation for your first wave. You need to pick Hephaestus so you have the vault of plenty. Yes I know that it is really tempting to lightening storm a whole army, but it is a onetime gp, and the vault is perpetual. Plus you will need a few resources to make up for your smaller econy so you can pump out 10 myrms as soon as you hit mythic and also research your armory techs. The vault basically does the work of 9 villagers; you get 3 of each resource per second. The most important reason is that you need to have the Forge of Olympus and the Weapon of the Titans. Without the forge, it will be really difficult to afford all the techs at the armory and this is one of the key parts to this strat, as soon as you hit mythic research this tech after you have dropped your vault. And the Weapon of the Titans decreases myrm production time by 50% and gives them 20% more hack damage, this is really incredible and essential, as you need to be able to stream myrms into the battle field.

In archaic it is important that you use up your far resources first so if you are getting raided you can fall back to your resources protected by your tc. This is essential as you can not be spending time microing your vilis from raiders. Actually I use this strat in every game that I play. Why eat up your close gold and deer in archaic only to have to run your vilis from raiders in classic?

You will not be able to afford any military buildings till on the way to mythic. You will need the wood to build your fortress. As soon as your fortress up, I immediately build a barracks and archery range. As soon as the barracks is up, research med infantry. You should not build archers yet, build them after you start to see tas and axemen showing up. I also build 2 more armories as soon as I hit mythic so I can tech up really quick.

After the 2 god power tech’s I will get pierce armor if I am seeing archers, if not I will work on my attack upgrades as the bonus multiplier really makes this pay off. If no archers are being fielded, then by all means crank on the hack upgrades. If only against Norse players, then really focus on attack and hack upgrades till you are ready to start hitting tcs and forts, at this time some pierce armor is worthwhile. After getting the first 2 upgrades on each it is time to get the heavy infantry upgrade and get another fortress laid down.

Speaking of fortresses, build your first one during the transition to mythic. I usually build it with a space left for my vault of plenty between it and my fortress. This can be a bit risky, but there are no gp’s that can destroy both till your opponents are in mythic themselves, and that should be at least another 10-15 minutes, in which time, you should be taking their towns with 30 myrms as well as you will have the ability to build another fortress forward and they will probably try to destroy this fort instead of the one in your town. Another precaution is to get the building upgrades to help them survive meteor, tornado or earthquake. Set your hotkey to #3 for your first fort so you can keep queuing up myrms without having to go back to it, you will need to be microing your vilis and myrms. Set your second fortress as #4. This way you can set #1 to your myrms and #2 to your archers and queue from #3 and #4.

To protect your base, make sure you build your houses around your towers. Also put your armory and military buildings around them too. If necessary you can afford to upgrade your towers to protect against raiders. This might slow you down by 30 seconds, but not fatally.

Now let’s talk about your partners. This really is a team effort, not a single player strat. They have to understand that their responsibility is to keep the opponents off of your back. They have to play defensive and not lose their whole army while they are getting doubled. This really means that they have to raid on one front and to attack and withdraw on another. It is imperative that they do not lose their main force, as well as it is imperative that they keep harassing their guys. Now keeping the timelines in mind, they really only have to do this for 2-3 minutes. Most players will really not fully engage their opponents till the 7-8 min mark. It takes this long to mass any kind of full army. Very few games are over by the 14 min mark; true sometimes it happens, but not usually. And by the 14 min mark, if all has gone well, you will have 30 unstoppable myrms with some nice archers backing them up. Your partners need to make sure that your town is safe. If necessary they need to build on your ground and keep some military units in your town. They have to make sure that you do not lose your fortress, if you do, you are in big trouble and will have to rebuild the dam thing and waste much needed resources. To accomplish this, it is better if your partners build at home instead of forward building; this will allow them to head home and to your home quicker, as your guy might just be raiding them. If you have an Isis partner make sure they put the monument in your town so as to protect against the really nasty gp’s.

After you hit mythic, start streaming myrms to the non-Greek front, as your myrms get their bonus against non-Greek units. Later after you have your upgrades, there is no combo in the game that stands up to equal pop combo of myrms backed by archers. Remember to take tc’s as you need the pop and to prevent them falling into the enemies’ hands.

Some interesting things about myrms:

1) They have a base hack armor of 50% and attack of 10. This is devastating against Norse players.

2) Their base pierce armor is 20% while this is low; it is cheaply upgraded to 41% which means that 9 or 10 myrms can easily take out a fortified tc with 5 myrms left.

3) A fully upgraded myrm (and it should be fully upgraded by the 18 min mark while attacking the whole time) sits at 18 attack, 61% hack armor and 41% pierce armor…amazing unit.

4) Myrms benefit from the Zeus bonus given for hoplites…ie twice the damage against buildings. A fully upgraded myrm has a base attack of 18 so this means that they do 36 attack against a building…you will not need to build siege. Actually in a game, I rarely build siege except to take some hits from a group of archers so my myrms will get left alone till they slaughter them. But seriously you do not need siege; the myrms will rip through tcs and hill forts. Recently I killed 4 hillforts and a fortified tc with 15 myrms and had like 5or 6 left and this was with other units taking some hits at them too.

5) Myrms get a 1.5 damage multiplier against non-Greek units. This equated to an attack of 28 against other units. This is why nothing except axmen and hyps can stand toe to toe with them. But this is also why you back the myrms up with archers, not pelts. Your archers, with 10 attack, will be doing more damage to the axmen with 5% pierce armor than his slingers with 4 attack will be doing against your myrms with 41% armor. And once you are through the axmen, you are then going to mow down the slingers.

6) Myrms are very fast, almost as fast as cav, so they can really get around quick and do not need a ton of microing in battles.

7) Myrms stand up great to Greek units too. Most people say “ahh General I know you are going to FM and crank myrms, but I am Poseidon and my cav will crush you!” Well maybe not in those words exactly but similar, well 1v1 a fully upgraded myrm will beat a fu Pos hipp, and this is not taking into account the resources, pop slots or build times.

8) Against Hades, you might want to crank some pelts for a bit, but eventually switch back to toxes, as with the upgrades that you will be able to afford, they will also become building killers too.

After you have helped drive the main offensive back, trib some resources to your partners as they have been taking a beating to this point and you should have some spare resources to give, usually spare gold. Also you need to raid the crap out of their opponents’ tcs. Remember to keep your myrms in groups of 10 and attack 2 tcs at once. This will kill their pop as well as make them waste a ton of resources rebuilding, and it will draw their attention from the front. Kill some houses at the same time and this will really bugger them up. Make sure you build forward as you are able, especially archery ranges and fortresses. Sometimes if the battle isn’t going completely our way, I will also build some barracks forward, as all the upgrading that you have been doing also applies to your hopps. I never build stables, because there is nothing a hipp can do that a myrm can’t do better, except die. Again keep in mind that you have archers for backup…this is essential.

Make sure to use your bolt properly. Save it if there is an Isis, Ra or Loki player. You might need to kill a soo or a nid. I love using an archaic gp on a mythic gp. Also make sure to use your ceasefire proper. Keep it until you need it. Use it on frost, flaming weapons, ancestors or bronze.

As for your partners, make sure that they don’t cast rain, eclipse, prosperity, fimbal or ceasefire as you hit mythic, as you will not be able to drop your vault of plenty. This can hurt. See if they can hold off using frost till you have massed some myrms and are ready to do a “tc run”. Too many players waste frost by frosting an army and then spending the next min or so hacking at some units with 99% armor, don’t waste it, it is meant as an offensive gp, frost their army and then cream their town when they have no military available.

Greek heroes, there is never a reason not to build them. This is especially important in this strat. As soon as you have 400 gold immediately crank out Bellerophon and rebuild him every time he dies…no exceptions. The other heroes in FM are nice but not totally necessary, build them if you have extra resources and send them to your allies’ front to kill any myth units in their battles. Myrms fair pretty good against most myth units and this is why you build Bellerophon and keep him with your main army, just incase.

So these are the basic theories and the reason I came up with this strat, it really can only be countered by your opponent taking out your main base before the 11 min mark. And here is the sweetest part, if you are getting the crap raided out of you at the 8 min mark…well you are heroic now and can crank counter units that will decimate any hipps or rc (i.e. prods), and then you can then do the transition to mythic after you have taught them a lesson.

As a Zeus player even when I am not doing a FM, which is very often, I still have my myrms as my primary military unit once I am mythic, they are just that amazing. They are the only unit that can stand toe to toe to a fu Odin jarl too, actually pop wise they win. Now I know that camels and prods do too, but they are so useless against anything else it is a waste of resources. Actually on this point if you are Zeus, and are mythic, there should be no reason ever to build prods or hyps. Myrms will do any job that these 2 other units can plus be useful after and can kill buildings like they are going out of style. And even if you are not yet mythic, still don’t build these units as your main army as hopps, hipps and toxes do a better job against whatever you need them for.

Make sure to get a trade route established in mythic as you might need the gold, but usually you will be fine and you can trib it to your teammates as a thank you for surviving till you were up. If you have some great teammates, they could also tribe you 200-300 food once you hit heroic and then you can instantly push button after market is built, giving you a sub 10 min mythic. But I would advise that they keep their resources and just keep fighting and raiding to make sure you are protected.

Well this strat is really fun if played right and only slightly annoying if played wrong, because you usually can recover since you will have fully upgraded units against normal ones.

Build order: (I reluctantly put this in as most players know that this is subject to so many game conditions and food resources)

Villagers 1-9 on food get hunting dogs immediately, 10 on straggler trees 11 house then to wood 12-15 on wood and then immediately move these 6 to your closest 6000 gold pile, immediately get the gold mining upgrade. Villagers 16-20 on wood 21 house and then food. Villager 22 temple and leave him on the temple for the rest of the game. 23-25 on food and then head up. Once up 26 on armory then house and then barracks. 27-29 food and then up. Take 1 villager to build market and vilis 30-32 on food and then up to mythic.

Hope this is of interest to some,

KS_General