posted 23 August 2003 02:38 PM EDT (US)
Odin is a civ about hunting, scouting, raiding and the Heroic Age. He is centered on Cavalry and Hill Fort units, especially Jarls. Odin Jarls can get about -------------------- - Gathering hunted animals goes 10% faster Increases the amount of animals by 66-100%. No more than 750 food in total can be created with Great Hunt. Works better at low-food animals as GH can multiply up to 1 hippo (400 food) but up to 6 caribou (700 food), and controlling GH is easier on large groups of low-food animals. IMO, the ideal GH target is a group of 8+ caribou/elk/deer/gazelle, or 4+ giraffes, packed tight. Great Hunt helps you to stay at your hunting group longer, and therefore have a steadier income of food. This is why you should get Hunting Dogs right away, as long as you can see huntable animals when the game starts. As Odin, you should Costs 175 wood and 5 favor. Increases Ulfsark speed by 10%. Very good to get in Classical if you're up against Poseidon or another Odin and want/need to be ready for a cavalry attack. Classical - Freyja/Heimdall Going Freyja/Njord/Baldr gives you heaps of upgrades for your RC and Jarls. But you might get a problem with this if your enemy shows up with lots of anti-cavalry units. Going Heimdall/Skadi is a safe choise. You can be the agressor in Classical by using Einherjars, and when you reach Heroic, you can use the Frost/Undermine combo to take out a TC or a midgol/hill fort/fortress. Tyr helps your ulfsarks and huskarls, so consider choosing him if you have opposing cavalry or archers. Baldr gives you one upgrade each for RC, Portable Ram and Siege Ship. He also gives you the Fire Giant, a good normal soldier and also a good ranged siege weapon. I prefer to go Freyja/Skadi for a mix, then i go Tyr or Baldr after what i want (considering GPs, MUs and techs). -------------------- In Archaic, you have to decide what strategy you wanna use. After 2 minutes, you should have decided your economy setup. If lots of hunting exists, you can go for less villagers on food (6 with hunting dogs is used frequently by experts, 4 or 5 then adding more later can also be seen) for a quick classical time (under 5 minutes, 4:30 or maybe even lower is possible with a decent econ). This is a sample build order for land maps that new players could try out to get aquainted to Odin's econ in Archaic. 1 - Food + Ox cart, get Hunting Dogs and use Great Hunt if good hunting nearby Here, i first send 7 (you may send 6) to food, get Hunting Dogs if there's some hunting around. Then if i got Hunting Dogs, i can't make dwarves for gold in the beginning, i send a villager to gold (and an ox cart), then one to a straggler tree (the trees around your TC), then i should have 70 gold for a dwarf, that i send to gold (of course). If i didn't get Hunting Dogs, i have enough gold to make 2 Dwarves immediately and send them to gold (and an ox cart), then i send a villager to a straggler tree. From here on, i pretty much improvise the build order. All i gotta make sure is to have 7 (you may have 6) on food and 6 on gold and wood. I also have to make sure that i have 100 gold and 80 wood for my temple around 3:30 - preferably earlier. So (as you can see on the build order) i don't make a dwarf at one point, even if i could, to save the gold for the temple. Around 4:15 my temple should be complete, i advance to Classical as soon as i have 7/6/6 (7 on food, 6 on gold, 6 on wood, or F/G/W). The temple takes 45 seconds to build with one ulf, the Classical advance takes 1 minute. On water maps, you could try this template: 1 - Wood (Forest) + Ox Cart First i send my first 2 villagers to wood. Then i send 3 villagers to food to ensure steady villager production until i get solid fishing up, which takes a while. Then i go back to wood until i have 7 on wood, then take 2 dwarves on gold, 3 more villagers on wood, 3 on gold and the rest on wood. When you are building houses depends on how effectivly you mae fishing ships. Although my build order variates a lot between games, these are two simple templates that i started with. When you get the real feeling for AoM, you start not using build orders and play by ear like i do. You probably got the point of what is needed in your own archaic build order. If you're new to AoM, you can use the one i listed above until you are good enough and can find your own style. -------------------- As soon as the game started, you should've analysed your enemy. Did he use a GP right away? I.E. if he used Dwarven Mine right away, prepare for a 5:30 or earlier raid. If up against Thor or Odin, make 4-6 ulfs before making RC to protect from RC raiding. Vs Loki, you might want to consider getting ready for Hersirs, so make a few TA in the beginning. Vs Poseidon, he might consider going FH for Prodromos, make some ulfs just in case. Vs hades, go RC only in the start and get Copper Shields. Vs Zeus, be ready for a mix. Make RC, TA and ulfs until you see what he's making, then make the counter. Vs Egyptians, i like to be defencive until i reach Heroic (then i Fort spam, get more TCs and make siege), get a good econ and using my ravens for looking for raiders after they've scouted around the enemy base. As soon as you reach classical, have your 3 infantry (if you want to spare some resources, don't make Hersirs in Classical transition, make 2 ulfs right after you hit Classical) build 2 longhouses. Put 1 on the first longhouse and 2 on the other one. Click one and one of your ravens and shift-click multiple places that are black on the map. Note that ravens are MUs, so watch out for ranged heroes (priests, pharaoh, odysseus etc). As soon as one longhouse is completed, queue up 2-3 RC (or ulfs or TA, read above). When the other one is complete, queue up 2 RC and make your 3 infantry start on a third longhouse. If you're low on houses, make one of the infantry build a house instead. Keep a constant flow of villagers. If you need food and have lots of gold, make dwarves and take a few villagers off gold. As soon as you have 6-8 RC, send them to an estimated enemy gold mine (optional if vs Egyptians). In most cases, it will be the one closest to the enemy TC. As soon as an army arrives to fend the raiders off, run away. Later you can repeat the raiding. If you picked freyja for minor god, you should find their major wood source. If the forest is large, use forest fire on it. Else, just attack the villagers there until they garrison in the TC or an army arrives. Try to make your raider losses minimal. Replenish them when you have raided the villagers, sucessfully or not. You should avoid big battles until Heroic Age. Of course though, if you bump into a few of his raiders or other small groups of soldiers that you outnumber totally, you should charge at them. But otherwise, you should try to run away (unless they are attacking you). If you're up against greek, it's very vital that you rid heavily, so that they'll be unable to attack you in classical. Their classical soldiers is too powerful for Norse to handle until Heroic Age. Almost same strategy goes vs Egyptians, but this time you have to prevent them from going Heroic, as their Midgol units are very powerful vs Norse armies. The Undermine/Frost GP combo can come in handy to destroy their Midgol quickly. On Water maps: Once you've reached Classical, you should have 3+ docks up to make longboats. Pump them as fast as you can, make more villagers for wood and keep building houses. If you have 30+ longboats, you should consider getting Heimdall's Artic Wind (if you went Heimdall, of course). Remember, if your enemy has lost a sea battle, he might be making arrow ships and garrisoning them in the docks. Each dock can take up to 10 lonboats, so even though it seems like you might have won, keep pumping longboats. If you chose Heimdall as your minor god, make Einherjars whenever you can. Their special attack raises the attack of nearby soldiers by 50% for about 3 seconds, but the effect decays about 15% per second. Keep raiding, but make sure to keep making more soldiers from your longhouses and villagers from your TC. Get economic upgrades too, to make sure your income of resources is optimal. Once you've reached your pop limit (wich should be around 12 minutes), get econ upgrades for food and gold to try and get an ASAP Heroic time. Once you have enough resources to go Heroic, do so. But only after you've maxed out your population limit of 115! -------------------- Once you've reached Heroic, put down a Hill Fort near an enemy gold mine (if you can find 2+ ones close to eachother, that's even better) to prevent him from using it before taking down both your army and the hill fort. Start making a few Jarls/Huskarls (depending on what soldiers your enemy is using), then create 2-4 Portable Rams. If your hill fort is close to a settlement, use your infantry to build TC on it ASAP. Also make your ulfs/hersirs build TCs close to your home base, but only as second priority. Make sure that you have more than 15 (upgraded!) wood gatherers by this time - to build TCs, Hill Forts and Longhouses as often as you need them, and to build more farms later on. In Heroic you will need more wood, so make more villies for wood and get an extra wood upgrade to make sure you can build or rebuild TCs whenever you want to, and build extra hillforts. You will also need the Huskarl if up vs Greek, as they can't handle Huskarls properly. The only counter they have to huskarls are Hypaspists, so the Huskarl/TA combo will be very effective. If you went Njord, you should seriously consider getting Ring Giver (get Thundering Hooves too if you haven't already) to improve your Jarls to be a "Norse Elephant" (343 HP and heaps of attack and armor), as long as they aren't going heavy anti-cavalry, of course. Remember to get more econ upgrades if you need the resource(s), and produce villagers continiously until you have enough (normally around 60-70 villagers). Another thing overlooked by most players, get the Levy Hill Fort/Longhouse when you're at your pop limit. This will do amazingly much to help your military production later, especcially in battles near your military base. Get the Fortified Town Center upgrade when you're close to your pop limit. Whenever you have the resources, you can go to Mythic Age. -------------------- There's not really much important to say about this age, you just have to strategicly overrun your enemy, use your GPs wisely, get upgrades whenever you can, make MUs when you have the favor - and so on. But few 1v1's go to a point where both players are in Mythic Age anyways. -------------------- Vni_SaLsKa (lamFire) vs L_Clan_Chris on Meditterranean Chimp_CN vs Virus on Watering Hole -------------------- I'll be adding the recs soon. Comments (good and bad) would be really nice too. [This message has been edited by Angel Socvazius (edited 08-23-2003 @ 03:31 PM).]
- When hitting Classical, two Ravens for scouting will appear from your Temple, and if one is killed, it will respawn in 4 minutes.
- Soldiers always heal. 0.8 HP/sec if idle, less if not idle.
- Hill Fort units have +20% HP.
Heroic - Njord/Skadi
Mythic - Baldr/Tyr
2 - Food
3 - Food
4 - Food
5 - Food
6 - Food
7 - Food (if you hunt heavily with Hunting Dogs and want to, you can drop this one)
If i got hunting dogs
8 - Gold + Ox Cart
9 - Wood (Straggler)
10 - Gold (Dwarf)
If i didn't get hunting dogs
8 - Gold (Dwarf) + Ox Cart
9 - Gold (Dwarf)
10 - Wood (Straggler)
From here on no matter what
11 - Wood (Straggler), about this time: start building a house
12 - Wood (Straggler)
13 - Gold (Dwarf)
14 - Gold (NOT Dwarf, very important to save gold for the temple)
13 - Wood (Forest) + Ox Cart, move all wood gatherers to the forest except 1 if any straggler trees remains (these can be good to get out of the way when beginning to farm)
14 - Wood (Forest), about this time: start building the temple
15 - Gold (Dwarf if possible)
16 - Gold (Dwarf if possible)
17 - Wood (Forest), start advance to Classical
2 - Wood
3 - Food (Herdables)
4 - Food (Herdables)
5 - Food (Herdables)
6 - Wood
7 - Wood
8 - Wood
9 - Wood
10 - Wood
11 - Gold + Ox Cart
12 - Gold
13 - Wood
14 - Wood
15 - Wood
16 - Gold, start Temple
17 - Gold
18 - Gold
REST - Wood, finish Temple, advance to Classical
SaLsKa (my favorite Odin player) shows excellent playing on medit here. He micros his longboats well, and doesn't go too late on land.
Chimp here shows how to perform the Odin FH. A bit old rec from the time where the Ra FH was dominant, but still shows how to perform the Odin FH today. And if you should meet a Ra FH today, this rec will show you how to manage it too i guess...
Proud leader of Armageddon Team
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you rock
