I only play Set when it comes up on 'Random', but I always try to steal food off my enemy's porch when I do.

What a mean strategy. I never would have thought of using the bonus to steal hunting from people. Then again though I don't play Set.

I do this all the time. Stealing Hippos/Rhinos or the 2 Elephants on the Savannah-esque maps deals a HUGE blow. On a map like Marsh, you can force your enemy to hunt the boars in the middle of the map, meaning easy raiding or forcing the enemy to farm.

One other thing to note is that with big animals like elephants you can simply press the delete button and they will die. You dont have to spend the time having your vills shoot at them.

How did you have the time to convert SIX or so Zebras that were near his base before he even started hunting them? =/

ahhhhhhhhhhh nerf it now!!!!!!!! lol

this would completely murder an odin player, ill need to leave my ulf near huntables just to stay in the game.
it also looks like an awesome team strat, just steal animals and give them to like an odin or thor player. they will get food so fast and have no need to farm till late game it will make them like immortal. i haven't tried it but it might be possible to make animals with extra favor to keep you hunting for an eternity. enough of my rambling and good luck on your next guide.

ok strat but ya might as well kill em
that is 18 pop slots

for crappy animals .....
and a good few min in conversion
against a decent opponent you will not have time, be short on population, id find fast animals and use them for scouting

if you have time or find massive food animals then sure steal them .

Cool but i got some questions.

how long does it take to convert animals?

Is there a difference between pharos conversion speed and a prists?

does it take longer to convert a bigger animal like a elephant than a little animal like a baboon?

can you use more prists on one animal to convert it faster?

Does the food drop when you convert it?

that is all.

Can't answer all, but I'll answer some

It takes a long time to convert animals :P. Not sure of exact times, but it's longer depending on what animal it is.

Only priests can convert animals- pharaohs can't, but he can summon them at the cost of favour.

I'm pretty sure that using more priests = faster conversion...although I think it's only a marginal increase.

How tough/how much damage/how much food the animal gives DOES decrease when converted.

Stealing animals will only work vs a newbie/inter i think.. If I had 6 zebras near my base they´d be the first to be dinner, before the priest had even crossed the map.

Some animals like deer and those dumb little birds convert very quickly.

One might plop and Temple at the get go and pump another priest as soon as you have 100 gold............. perhaps a forward temple off to one side and near the herd. So, as soon as you have your 400 food, shift all vills to gold and pump priests during transition and follow up your annoying herd theftage with an massed priest raid (they heal each other when they fall back).

^hmmm, then go nephthys, get like 60 preists, use the free animals as a meatsheild and cast ancestors to kill their towers/tc with some seige!

instant noob strat!

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Man, it's already been nerfed so bad It takes like 45 seconds to convert a baboon, and almost a full minute or more for the bigger animals. Plus they suck in combat, and have less food than normal animals. It is viable though...

Well johnny deppig im assuming that he had a bit of hunting near his base so didnt need to go to the big patch of them so soon.

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like i said he must have had a few zebra near his base then he probably used the sheep or chickens near his base so that he could get the food to get to classical without walking time. By 5:30 i had converted them all.

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Yeah its quite a few pop slots but i was sending them back and eating them quite a bit and besides early on eggy has free houses so only a noob would get popped out doing this. It took a few minutes in conversion but it was oasis so there was nothing else for my priest to do. Later on i did find a 3 hyenas that i took another priest to convert and use for scouts. That was all there was though. As i said about the not having time, i think that he mustve used up the zebras near his base then gone to sheep so that he wouldnt have to walk there just to get food for classical (say you have 360 food, youre not gonna walk all the way over to the zebras youre going to use the chickens that are nearby). As i said i was not short on population since i this was in archaic (i had stolen them all by 5:30) and since i was eating them. And as for scouting i used the hyenas i found later as scouts.

Added to the list.

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On Oasis? I doubt it.. but stealing a Zebra or 2 should be possible, before he starts hunting them (since you usually have to go for chickens at first). All of them however, is really unlikely vs a good player.

I think you´ve found the best way to use Set´s animals though. They basically can´t fight, so unless you annoy builders or go for archaic docks, they should be food. In Vanilla I did a fast mythic in 12 mins using summoned gazelles mainly. But the micro is horrible..

add the animals the pharaoh can summon....principally giraffes as they are most cost effective, and u dont ever need run out of huntables

You need INTENSE micro to keep a constant supply of animals from the pharaoh AND a LOT of monuments

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Well i had some zebras in my original LOS so he probably did too. And yeah the micro is horrible for set animals. However jut summon like 6 of them at a time, kill them all with delete then put a vill or two on each one. That should last for a while.

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Yeah i dont want to get too into this because i am gonna have a whole guide to put this in but gazelles are the most food per favor in classical and in heroic giraffes are. I havent checked with the mythic ones yet.

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With the first two monuments up you can summom about 225-250 food per minute. So if you get the first one up very early and the second one up at classical you will be able to get up to 1200 extra food by 8 minutes. Thats the equivalent of like 6 zebra which is awesome. Set has a bad eco, I think not.

[This message has been edited by lessthanjakeman9 (edited 05-04-2004 @ 03:51 PM).]

But does that leave you with enough favor for MUs or Set Migdol spamming?! It is something I will try though, I can never manage microing my Slingers whilst microing my Pharaoh to summon and my villies to hunt the summons.

Right well i reaped the benefits of this bonus again in a game that i think was pretty much flawless on my part.

It was an alfheim game. I used vision at the very beginning of the game to find good animals like aurochs. However all i found were packs of deer. He had a few deer right in his base but i decided not to go for those since id end up getting my priest killed. So i went for some small packs of three elk. While i did have some hunting in my base, i didnt have much so by the time my first converted elk got back to my base my vills were gathering berries.

Basically i had a pretty steady flow of elk coming in and every time one would come in id put him right near the granary press delete then put a villager on him (I lessened the micro needed by shift clicking the vill to go back to berries when he was done). I converted 6 or 7 deer which was somewhere around 700 food (which was more food than i had from my starting deer). While there was a lot of hunting on this map i didnt have much near my base so this was crucial to the game that i did this. And my opponent also didnt have too much hunting right near his base so at the very least by taking the only remotely nearby food i slowed him down a bit. I also took my hyena and killed all the other deer that were closer to him than to me.

Ok so this food lasted me easily until classical. I got to classical at 5:50 with a great eco (no walking time for my food vills meant that i was able to keep the flow of vills constantly which wouldnt have happened otherwise). Once i got to classical i was suplemented by 3 gazelles (150 food). I immediately built 4 barracks and started pumping out units almost nonstop (from about 7 minutes onwards).

While i was building them i realized that i had an incredible amount of resources. So i decided to go to heroic. By this time i had an army of 24 guys (4 of which were apes). I got to heroic at about 9:30 with a load of resources and my food supply not even done. I immediately sent some vills over to take a middle tc. At the same time i was building up even more of an army (complete with crocs). My army quickly jumped to a total of 40 guys. I left 10 guys back at my gold mine to deal with any raids and took my other 30 over to the tc. At the same time i was building another tc close to his base. That tc was done a bit past 13 minutes. I put up a migdol and pumped a few CA out and started raids.

At this point i was booming and pumping out villagers like mad. I took a nearby tc to my base and pumped out an even larger army. By this time my field army totaled 60 guys (all with medium upgrade and with all clasical armory upgrades) but i still had 10 or so spearmen back to combat raids. I had had a few skirmishes with him earlier and won them all and in so doing stopped him from gaining any map control. I also had an animal at every gold mine and had killed most of his gold miners when they attempted to leave his base. Now i went for the main assault. I used ancestors and had a few rams. I also pumped out mercs out of my close tc and between that his army was crushed and his base was crushed and i NEVER went below full pop the whole time, thats how good my eco was.

Basically my point is that i was able to get to heroic before 10 minutes while still having more than 20 guys in my army and having the resources to be pumping out units and tc's constantly afterwards. Without the free animals my eco would have been slowed down a lot from walking time. Early on that walking time can and will kill you. I was also able to at the same time take his hunting. While i actually had very little animals in my army (2-3 crocs) the animals allowed me to find his gold vills every time they went somewhere and as i have said saved my eco (the extra food also gave me time to get all the favor to research shaduf before any farms went up).

As for sp3ctres point about favor, i usually dont make MU's (except anubites) and if there is such a little amount of food that i have to summon animals for it then i will go ptah anyways and wont be able to get anubites. By the time I'm migdol spamming i will have settled down used shaduf and have nothing else to use favor for.

i once had someone who was taking over 6 mintues to convert an elephant near my base... when he finished I bolted it to tease him

Mean = Hyena raid. Good strat on oasis. Get gold asap. Build 3 priests. Send them to 2 packs of hyenas and convert. You should have 9 hyenas by 2:50 or 3:00. Get his food vils and he lost 5 minutes. But keep a watch on your own econ too... Nice one jake, as always

That's the thing lol. Most of the time they'll have already started on the hunting, so you can't steal the animals. Could you post the rec?