posted 24 September 2007 01:48 PM EDT (US)
Guide Version: 1.03 (04/03/08)
I decided to write this guide as I had some free time last week and think that Shifting Sands is one of the most versatile God Powers in the game. It can have more devastating effects than some Heroic or even Mythic Age God Powers if used particularly well. This has nothing to do with winning Guide of the Month...
Shifting Sands is the God Power of the Egyptian Classical Minor God Ptah. Ptah can be worshipped by those playing the Major Gods Ra and Set. As most of you know, I am a Ra player so the majority of this guide will probably be biased to what he can do with the God Power, but most of the information and uses should apply to both Ra and Set. Set can actually use it more easily (with Vision), but Ra has access to Rocs, so both have one or two exclusive strategies.
What does Shifting Sands actually do, you might be asking?
- Instantly transports all allied units, up to 250HP of enemy villagers/caravans and up to 1000HP of enemy military units within 5 range from one area of the map to another.
The following units are not affected:
- Ships
- Bronzed Units
That is a short list, so this God Power has a lot of potential uses. The fact that it doesn’t work on Bronzed Units is probably a bug, but likely not one that hinders game play in any significant way.
This is obviously the primary section of the guide. I’ll split up the various uses of Shifting Sands that I can think of – you will probably have seen some or even all of these being used in recorded games or live games, but hopefully you can pick up something from the guide that you didn’t know before, be it a strategy, or just tips on how to actually perform a strategy you already know more efficiently.
This is the most direct, risky and hilarious use of Shifting Sands. It will also be the longest section since it requires its own Build Order and discussion of its effectiveness and tips for different opponents. Most people know what this is, so I’ll just start with a general Build Order for both Ra and Set. Set can actually perform the rush quicker because he doesn’t have to research Skin of the Rhino.
- 7 Villagers to hunt. Research Hunting Dogs ASAP. Pharaoh empowers food, Priest goes to scout and convert animals.
- 2-3 Villagers to gold.
- Villager builds house, then monument, then Temple, then to gold.
- All villagers to food until you have at least 550 Food. Click Advance (choose Ptah).
- Send all villagers to gold, and Pharaoh to empower Gold. Use 3-4 villagers to make 2 houses and then go back to gold. Start making Priests and use Pharaoh to summon Apes, but make sure you will have 400 Gold ready to build a Town Centre after you’ve finish Advancing. If you have some spare Gold, make a couple of mercenaries.
- Use Vision on enemy base, and shift all of your Villagers, Animals, Mercenaries, Priests and Pharaoh next to their Town Centre. Use Mercenaries, some Animals and Villagers on the Town Centre, and use some Animals, Pharaoh and Priests on enemy villagers. Auto-queue villagers at your home Town Centre.
- 7 Villagers to hunt. Research Hunting Dogs ASAP. Pharaoh empowers food, send Priest to scout around your base (you’re mainly looking for one or two Town Centres and a nearby source of food), then send him to the enemy’s base (as soon as you find any of their buildings, run away and hide so they don’t find you. Don’t worry about going too far away).
- 2-3 Villagers to gold.
- Villager builds house, then monument, then Temple, then to gold.
- All villagers to food until you have at least 600 Food and 5 Favour. Research Skin of the Rhino. Move your Pharaoh to the Town Centre to research it faster. Send all villagers to gold.
- Start making Priests (use the first one you make to Empower the Temple to get them out faster), but make sure you will have 400 Gold ready to build a Town Centre.
- Advance under Ptah as soon as Skin of the Rhino is researched, and move your Pharaoh to empower Gold. If you have some spare Gold, make a couple of mercenaries after advancing.
- Use 3-4 villagers to make 2 houses and then go back to gold.
- You need to move the Priest to their Town Centre, but if you move him too early he’ll die. You’ll need practice to get the timing right, but you want to be able to shift within 5s of advancing. Move him towards their town and shift as soon as you have LOSs adjacent to the Town Centre. Shift all of your Villagers, Wadjet, Mercenaries, Priests and Pharaoh next to their Town Centre. Use Mercenaries and Villagers on the Town Centre, and use your Pharaoh and Priests on enemy villagers. Auto-queue villagers at your home Town Centre.
Now, both strategies converge:
- Build a Town Centre once theirs is down. Empower with Pharaoh to get it up more quickly (70% quicker in fact). Once the Town Centre is up, get Villagers working on the enemy gold mine, herdables etc. Start auto-queuing villagers at your new Town Centre when you can. If you think the enemy will not resign, make a couple of Barracks and start pumping Spearmen to track down enemy villagers. Get a Priest to build Obelisks everywhere, especially near all of the Town Centres. Now it is just a matter of finding and killing as many villagers as possible – as long as you track each free Town Centre, he can never have a better economy than you. Also, if you feel they might get enough resources to rebuild, use a few villagers to take out all of their free towers in case they upgrade them – it won’t take long to kill all four.
Do not make the mistake of using all of your villagers to track down enemy military buildings if they are rebuilding – if they manage to hold you off with a small military force, you are dead. Instead, just keep your ~20 villagers and gather food and gold, and spam Spearmen to chase down enemy villagers. If they have no villagers and no Town Centre, they are dead. If you see them starting to make a Town Centre, attack the villagers building it before taking down the foundation.
This strategy is basically do or die. The point is to win the game early against opponents who don’t expect the strategy, or don’t know what to do to combat it. The general idea is to use Shifting Sands to transport all of your Villagers, Animals, free Wadjet, Pharaoh, Priests and Mercenaries to your enemy’s Town Centre, destroy it, and build your own on top of it. Your economy will be screwed up, but hopefully the opponent will either resign or be so crippled without a Town Centre that you will be able to beat them easily. It is not as effective as Ra because although the main attack is stronger (uber villagers are harder to counter than animals, considering your main foes are Villagers, Myth Units and Heroes), the main attack is also done slightly later. However, this may also mean it’s more of a surprise. Only practise will tell.
This strategy was probably designed to be used against Atlanteans – it works well against them because of their weak Town Centres, weak Villagers (in combat) and weak free Myth Unit. Gaia’s lush can cause problems because you will not be able to immediately build a Town Centre. The best thing to do in this case is to destroy any buildings whose lush covers the Town Centre (or Towers if there are none) with your Villagers while using your Priests/Wadjet/Pharaoh to track down enemy Villagers. Remember, Atlantean villagers are slow, so use this to your advantage.
I do like using this strategy against Norse. It doesn’t work against a Loki Rusher who attacks before you get a chance to Shift your troops - but as long as he doesn't attack until after you've Shifted, you'll be fine. He might start taking out buildings in your base, but because of his early Advance and poor economy, he will not survive after his Town Centre goes down. If you ever have to abandon a Villager Rush, it can be a real pain because your economy will be screwed (too much Gold, not enough of anything else) and it will be hard to combat normally. Anyway, this strategy works awesomely against Norse. Once their Town Centre is down and you’ve built on top of it, all that remains is to track down their Ox Carts. If you destroy them all, they have no economy – and even if they have enough Wood and Gold for a Town Centre, you should have them all covered with an Obelisk, so they simply cannot win.
This strategy is far harder to perform against other Egyptians (free Towers, Mercenaries, Priests), Hades (Sentinels, +25% Building HP, Heroes and possible Restoration) or Zeus (Bolt, Heroes and Restoration/Ceasefire). Poseidon can also be difficult because of the possible Ceasefire and Heroes. For Ceasefire, they might use it straight away and start making Barracks and units, or they could use it just before the Town Centre is razed so they can spend the minute repairing it. Anyway, it is not impossible, however, to Villager Rush these civilisations (see the third recorded game below). The thing to remember is that some opponents will persevere and survive, whereas some will be so annoyed or not know what to do so they will resign straight away. Sometimes it is easy to defeat Isis with it, and very hard to beat an Oranos. It all depends on the personality and skill of the opponent.
Also, a Villager Rush is very hard to pull off on low hunt maps. On Oasis, I would hardly ever do it. On Mediterranean, you could send a villager and Priest to make a Dock and two fishing ships before the Priest goes scouting (instead of getting Hunting Dogs), but you’ll still get a fairly rubbish advance time. It works best on high hunt maps.
Well, 95% of the time, you’re dead. If you fail to raze their Town Centre (because of cleverly microed archers for example), then you have almost no chance. If they send their villagers to attack yours, pick them off with your Priests/Pharaoh/Wadjet, and use a small group of villagers that are under attack to fight back – they will have to hit each villager once to try to stop you attacking the Town Centre, so if you focus fire and kill them one by one you’ll be fine. Once the Town Centre is down, just kill their villagers if they are still attacking you. If almost all of their villagers die they will resign anyway, no matter if you have 2 Town Centres or not.
This is a simple one. Basically, if you find your gold miners are idle, and the nearest gold mine is very far away, but you need gold fast, then you can use Shifting Sands to send them all to the new mine instantly (you need LOS though, so use a Mercenary or any nearby unit). This is good in games with a lot going on (so you need a lot of micro for military), and you can’t see any better use for the God Power.
Shifting Sands can be a life saver in this situation. If your gold miners (or hunting party) are under attack by a raiding force and they have no protection, you can simply shift them to safety – either a Town Centre, or even another hunting patch or gold mine. Remember all of your units will be shifted but only a few of theirs, so after shifting use your villagers to kill the units that came with you, then continue working. Sorted – raid foiled.
This is a great tactic in some situations – for example, you’ve fully switched to trade and you have a lot of spare miners. Sure, some of them can build Towers, but you still have a lot left. Use Shifting Sands to transport them behind enemy lines, and erect Towers near their Market to harass their trade route, or, on a map like Watering Hole, you could shift them to one side of their main town and set up a military base there. Attacking from two fronts is always useful – even if one army is only attacking their economy.
This is again fairly obvious – you can use Shifting Sands to perform a surprise attack on an enemy camp. If you see their army moving away from their forward base for example, or you see enemy villagers creating a second base, you can shift all (or most) of your main army to take the base out usually before help arrives. Another use is to shift a group of Chariots to a location that will trap enemy Villagers, effectively killing them all. However, this is not that hard to do without Shifting Sands (even without Rocs), so it would be a bit of a waste.
This is very useful if you’re in a jam – you see an enemy army converging on a vulnerable spot, while your army is busy elsewhere. Shift your entire army to that spot to foil an enemy plan to sneakily attack you from behind.
This is a Ra-only strategy (unless it’s a team game and you know your team mate well enough to know what is in his Roc). Yep, you might think that a Roc drop of a large raiding party (say 10 Chariots and 2 Petsuchos) is a genius idea, and it is...unless you are caught. If you run into a group of Toxotes or Towers and your Roc is seriously in danger of dying, do not be afraid to use Shifting Sands to get him to safety (even if it’s just the quickest place you could think of before he died). This is a bit risky because if you get it too late, you lose a Roc full of expensive units plus a God Power. And yes, all subsequent lesser-thought-of strategies have an Operation name.
Another funny tactic, but cannot be used very often. It involves teleporting a chunk of an enemy army to a place where they are no longer a threat. The best example is a cliff on Alfheim. Your opponent will either have to delete them or have them take up population space (better for you). Of course, this doesn’t work against a player that has access to Rocs. Other areas could be a little prison with walls made of trees and...walls. They will escape, but perhaps in the time it takes them to rejoin their army, you have already taken some advantage from it. If the prison is placed strategically, perhaps some of them can be picked off with a few Towers or a Migdol. Most useful against a rusher – losing 6 or 7 Hersir at 7:00 can give you enough time to take out some houses or a Longhouse in a Hersir rusher’s forward base. Other places to teleport the enemy units are in the centre Oasis on an Oasis map, the opposite side to the main action on Mediterranean, or a plateau on Ghost Lake.
Similar to the above, but teleporting enemy villagers into a pre-made prison. It is a shame that you can only teleport 250HP’s worth of villagers though (3 Villagers or 1 Atlantean Citizen), because if it was more you could trap lots of enemy villagers in a prison and then use Locust Swarm (as Ra) to eliminate them all. As it stands, this is probably the worst use of Shifting Sands. If the prison was near a tower, you basically get an insta-kill of 3 enemy Villagers. But then you could do that with 2 Chariots really. I can’t really think of a situation where it would be a better use of the God Power than any of the other uses listed here, but leaving it out would be a bit pointless.
This is another funny strategy. Works best on high herdable maps like Mediterranean, Oasis or Tundra (although it isn’t really devastating on Tundra unless it is coupled with heavy hunt raiding). I don't know whether sheep/goats/cows count as military or economic units (or neither), but because of their low HP, you always get all of them in an area. As an example, on Oasis you should send your Pharaoh to find herdables at the beginning, and once you reach Classical you could send him to their Town Centre, and teleport some of their Herdables (and probably Villagers) to your base. You starve them of food at a vital stage, and kill 2 or 3 Villagers in the process. This strategy is extremely lame, so should be used to maximum effect against Oranos or Thor
. Won’t work against Isis though 
This is a Set-only strategy, unless as Ra you went Sekhmet. It’s also a strategy that only works on Alfheim (or perhaps on Ghost Lake, but less effectively). This can be pretty cool if you get a lucky map. You can gather a group of 4-6 Catapults, and shift them onto an Alfheim cliff or Ghost Lake plateau and just wreak havoc before the enemy reacts – all they can use is other Siege or Archers, both of which will take a while to destroy them all, which means you will have time to destroy a couple of Fortresses or Barracks. If the map is really nice to you, you’ll be able to get in range of an enemy Town Centre, which can turn the tide of a battle (losing 20 population hurts). Of course, if you are Ra and went Hathor, this is a waste of a God Power because you could do the same multiple times with a Roc.
This is probably one of the most common uses of Shifting Sands – transporting Siege and an army near to an enemy Wonder or Titan Gate before it is built. This is usually easy to do – use a Roc or Phoenix to get LOS if you have either, otherwise use a couple of Chariots or Camels to get there. As Ra, this also works well in combination with Locust Swarm to stop Villagers building or repairing. As Set, you could use Meteor just before your last units die if your attempt is unsuccessful. Tornado does the same for Ra.
This is the sneakiest use of Shifting Sands. Transport a group of your Villagers to an unclaimed Town Centre behind enemy lines, and take the Town Centre before the enemy even realises where you transported to. You'll of course need Line of Sight to transport there in the first place, maybe from an Obelisk or Roc. Of course you could do this with a Roc, but if you travel through anywhere that they have Line of Sight to, you may be caught and lose a lot of Villagers. You'll probably want to teleport your Pharaoh or at least a Ra Priest along with your Villagers in order to get the Town Centre up as fast as possible.
They will figure it out where you are eventually, or if not they'll start scouting foggy parts of the map, but you should have enough time to claim the Town Centre and perhaps get a Migdol or a few Seige Works up so you can harass your enemy's economy or main base from behind (whilst also having 40 more population than him, assuming you didn't lose any of your 3 Town Centres). Don't forget to make Mercenaries if your Town Centre gets attacked - and at the same time get your main army and march in to his unprotected forward base and start dealing damage.
Well, not great, but very good. I won’t spend long on this as it hasn’t got much to do with Shifting Sands, but it does show that the chances of a Ra or Set player having Shifting Sands in a game is good. Let’s compare:
Bast’s Myth Unit is better, easily. Two upgrades, plus bonus damage vs Buildings is far more useful than the ranged attack and useless regeneration of the Wadjet (which also is superseded by the Petsuchos if Hathor is later chosen). Bast’s two economic technologies are good, there’s no denying that, but compared to -33% Farm Cost, Ptah is the better choice in most situations. Ptah’s Barracks Upgrades come in handy against rushers, or when combined with Horus late-game. Eclipse is only really good when used on Ancestors or a Titan. In other cases, its effects are not that noticeable. For Ra, the choice is fairly equal. Ptah is better in 1vs1 games and against rushers in general, and against other FHers or in team games, Bast is a nice choice for the possibility of an Eclipsed Titan and the long-term economic boost.
I really don’t like Anubis. His Myth Unit is a big “meh” – jumping is a poor imitation of that quality known as “ranged” that other Myth Units, such as the Wadjet, posses. +10% Monument Favour Rate is nice, but wouldn’t be noticed that much in a game. The Spearmen technology is good, but Ptah has two Barracks technologies. God Power is an easy choice – except on water, Plague at Serpents is a bad God Power. Set players choosing Anubis is fairly rare in my experience, Ptah is better in most situations.
Remember the best thing about Shifting Sands is its surprise element. If you can shock your opponent into not knowing what to do for a few seconds, that is a few seconds where you can wreak havoc. Never think a use of Shifting Sands is a waste – saving a group of villagers or killing/trapping a few of their army units is a perfectly valid use of this God Power. The list of situations where this God Power is wasted is small – just use it when you need it or suddenly think you can get a quick advantage from using one of the strategies above.
I don't care, I'm still free, you can't take the sky from me.
Take me out to the black, tell them I ain't comin' back.
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me.
There's no place I can be, since I found Serenity.
But you can't take the sky from me...
[This message has been edited by DragonQ (edited 03-04-2008 @ 03:37 PM).]
