josey wales
March 2003
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Anatolia

Anatolia

23.03.03

Anatolia: Anatolia

Food

You will always start with a berry patch or near your home base, as well usually fairly close will be 3+ boars. very close to your tc, as well there are usually a decent amount of sheep to be found early on. There is also a lot more hunting to be found on the map, there is usually one big pile of deer in one of the two corners you start near, as well there is usually at least 1 big pile of deer in the middle. However all of these deer usually won’t play a big part in your game due to the great fishing on this map. As I said there is great fishing but only on two sides of the map, this makes things tricky as you may end up fighting on both sides of the water. As well there are also wolves on this map, these are the only animals on the map that would be really useful as aggressive animals to a set user. Usually there are two groups of them, and very often they are in 1 corner of each players maps, this being the case it’s always important to watch your villager who is going to build a dock to make sure they are not going to be running through a pack of wolves.

Relics

There always seems to be 2 relics on this map, I can’t remember seeing more or less ever. The two relics are generally set in the corners of the map, one in one of your corners, and one in your opponents corner of the map. Sometimes these relics will wander closer to the middle of the map, but they can almost always be found on the outer edges it seems.

Terrain

There are usually several large ridges near your base and the enemies base, with the middle in general being more of an open space crowded in by ridges. You can use these to your advantage as there are only a few places that attacks can come from if you control important parts of the map. You can usually get away with walling portions of the map to divert his troops or at the least slow them down on this map, however it is possible to use the water for transportation around those walls so you have to be careful about that.

Gold

This one is very important. You will always (so far as I can remember) start out with 2 small gold mines within the perimeter of your starting base, for a total of 6000 starting gold, beyond this all of the gold is in the centre of the map between the two players. It’s very important to make sure you can claim some of this gold, as trading on this map is not the most optimal of ways to get gold.

Settlements

Usually the settlements are pretty fair on this map, you should always have one extra one in a corner near you, and there will be two up for grabs in the central part of this map, occasionally settlement screws will occur as the ridges make a certain settlement more accessible to you than to your opponent.

How To Play The Map

Greek

To start with I wouldn’t build a mill by your berries/chickens, these are slow sources of food and not really worth it, instead I’d use my starting sheep and eat them up early. With your superior scout you may be able to find enough sheep to keep your tc flowing nicely just using sheep. If you happen to not find enough sheep however it is likely you will have found your boars by then, you should then build your mill by them. In general you should need about 5 vils on food for a fishing start. Remember the longer you can delay building a mill the better off your dock boom will be. The rest of the starting you should be able to figure out on your own.

Tip: If you are Zeus try to pull a fast one on norse opponents, they will almost always be building their dock right off the start, if you send your scout along one of the shorlines you have a 50/50 chance of being on the same side as their ulfsark. If you can use lightning bolt on their ulfsark that early it will gain you a HUGE advantage, especially if they don’t have their dock fully built by the time you find them. If you want to be super agressive you can send your scout along one shoreline and a villager along the other, this will garuntee you to find their ulfsark if they go for a dock right away (which most people do).

Tip: Again if you are Zeus remember that you have the ultimate building destroyer in hoplites. This means if you can hit fast enough you can win the water battle simply by taking their docks out with hoplites, beyond that it won’t take many ships to take him out on water as he now has to worry about a mass of hoplites on top of water.

Norse

Try to build your dock towards the centre of the map, this way you should be able to claim more fishing than your opponent if you both fish the same side. I’d suggest getting two ulfsarks out before you are even ready to start building a temple, you’ll need both of them for the buildings you’ll need to put up. Other than that this is a pretty straightforward starting for norse.

Egypt

The egyptians get the nice option of being able to build two docks right off the bat without hurting their dock boom at all, I’d suggest building one on each side, but don’t do them both too early as you won’t have the res necessary for fishing ships from both and therefore are wasting early vil seconds.

Tip: As Set if you can find the wolves fast enough converting a couple will give you a very large advantage, enemy docks not being near to their base should make them an easy kill for your converted animals early on.

In General

You’ll want to get a dock up as early as you can without sacrificing your vil flow from the tc, remember to look out for those wolves on the way to the water as they will kill your vil pretty fast if you just try to blitz past them. Fishing can be very important on this map, however the middle of the map is far more important in general. It’s never a bad idea to fight on both sides of the water if your enemy has fishing on both sides, however don’t forget about the land, I can’t stress this enough as the middle of the map is so incredibly important. If you find that you are going to lose the water battle eventually then keep defensive and start your forward base, make sure to use everything available to you, as norse you should gain favor fairly quickly fighting on water so try to get some myth units out. Make sure you are always scouting out your enemy to see if they are starting to gear up for a land attack. If they get a good headstart on you, you may be sunk before you even start to build a land army.

Gold control can play a big part on this map. Keep in mind where the gold on the map is, as well look at your own gold piles, if they are starting to run low then chances are your enemies gold mines are depleting as well, time to check those gold mines, keeping your opponent off of the middle gold mines is an easy way to win, although still not a sure fire win. An easy way to keep track of the gold mines is to simply place a building down next to the ones most likely to be used by your enemy, it’s a relatively cheap way to keep track of the gold mines and where to concentrate your attack on. Egypt of course can build obelisks all over at a much cheaper price than norse and greek, this can be very handy even if the obelisks are easily destroyed.

Going all out land can be a valid option on this map, always fish in the first place however, and don’t strike until you have a sufficient army to do some damage to your undefended opponent, there is absolutely no point in giving away your plan by attacking with your first 4 units that you get out, these units will do very little damage to their econ, as well they will give enough of a warning that you will lose your advantage of surprise. Even if he does have tons of fishing it is relatively easy to destroy their docks as they are very limited to their placement, as well as the fact that the docks are so far away from your home base.

The key to this map is definitely the middle, I know I’ve mentioned it several times throughout this post already, but I really can’t stress it enough, if you can control the middle of the map fairly well, chances are very good that you will win the game.

What Not To Do

Don’t walls yourself in early on, yes wall key points, divert his army, but you don’t want to go water and get a great econ only to find that you’ve given up so much map control and gold that you can’t support a decent army for long.

Don’t be overly passive, aggression is a big key on this map, taking the initiative on this map very often decides the winner as the agressor can keep their opponent of forward gold piles with relative ease.

Don’t get hunting dogs early on. Yes there is tons of hunting on this map in general, however it’s just too much of a waste of resources early on to be worthwhile. Fishing is far more important to your econ than a bit of faster hunting. Even as Thor it’s not advisable to get his Myth Tech for hunting as the gold could be better used to keep your tc running early on.

1 comment ksjoseywales@shaw.ca

Alfheim: A guide to the maps Alfheim.

Well I think I’ll just do one map at a time to keep things simple for myself, when I’m done them all I put them all together in one grand post and put it up on my site or something. Anyways I’ll start out with a fairly simple map Alfheim.

Keep in mind that a lot of what I’m putting down here is meant for new players to the game, and might be fairly obvious to many of you.

Here are some quick basics on the map

Everything stated here is assuming you are playing 1v1, for higher amounts of players things change a bit on this map I think.

-usually lots of food, the amount of hunting varies a fair amount on this map, and very often it isn’t really worth getting the hunting tech at all. This game having as random of maps generated as it does it’s rather hard to predict what you are going to get, so I wouldn’t suggest ever getting the hunting tech unless you know for sure there are two decent sized groups of animals near enough to hunt. For set players attempting to convert animals, sometimes there are aurochs on this map, but usually not so I wouldn’t count on this map being your best friend for offensive animals being found. On top of any hunting there is always a berry bush that is usually fair sized, as well as at least 6 chickens, so there should be plenty of food every time you play this map to make it to classical in a decent time.

-4 relics every time. I don’t remember ever seeing an alfheim map with less than 4 relics, most often they are spread right across the map in the middle, you can usually find one in each of the corners farthest from you and your enemies tc, but sometimes it scatters them crooked.

-there are lots of mountains on this map, this can be both a blessing and a curse. All those mountain ranges make it difficult to properly scout the map at times, however they also make it very easy to wall off portions of the map.

-wolves and bears are the only agressive animals that mother nature has control of on this map, and usually they don’t come in to play, however you still better watch out for them. As well there can aurochs which can be deadly in the hands of a set player

How to play the map.

Well this map is your basic land map, but the map does have a few little quirks to it such as the hills. So about the only thing I can suggest is to use those hills to your advantage whenever possible. If your opponent is trying to do lots of raids and hit and runs, make him go through some walls to get to you from undefended areas. It’s often very easy and cheap to do so as you really don’t need more than a couple pieces of wall in most areas to slow down raiding. At the same time make sure not to wall out things that might be important to you later such as settlements or some valuable gold mines. Trade very often isn’t very effective on this map due to all the trees and hills, as well your settlements aren’t usually close to the edge which of course makes for better trading, so it’s important to hold on to those gold mines whenever you can.

Find a good spot for your military base. Very often this map can be tight with all the hills and trees around making it hard to place all your military buildings in a good spot. In general it’s a good idea to keep your military buildings close together so you can rally a new army to one spot very quickly if your enemy tries to take over your military base. Make sure to find a decent place where you won’t have to have your barracks touching trees or hills, I remember some of my early games I got very mad when I’d find that my placement of buildings was poor because to have a good setpoint my barracks would place the unit inbetween some trees and the barracks making it useless. As well if you see your opponent is norse try not to build too closely to the trees in general as they may get the forest fire God Power which kills buildings touching the trees in no time flat.

The settlements on this map are very often spread very randomly, there ussually doesn’t seem to be any real pattern to it, very often you will see tc screws on this map it seems like though. By tc screw I mean where your opponent has 2 extra tc’s in and around their starting area, but you only have one near your starting area and the other one is just as close to him as it is to you.

What not to do

Don’t wall yourself in completely and hope to just boom your way through the start of the game, in general this is a bad idea. It’s so very tempting on this map at times but don’t give in to temptation. I know that if I got some of the maps that alfheim ends up with aok/c I would have been happier than anything due to their easy wallability. The problem is that walls are so very weak in this, and walling yourself in early gives up lots of valuable map.

Don’t just assume that because there is a nice group of hunting near your tc that there will be lots more on the map for you and you should therefore get the hunting upgrade right away. I see many players make the mistake of just getting this tech automatically. While it is worthwhile on some maps to get this every time, this isn’t one of them where it’s a guarantee that it will be worth the resources you spend. Scout first upgrade later is my rule of thumb on this map, I’ve been burned a couple of times where that big group of hunting near my tc is the only hunting on the map that’s worth walking for and building a mill.

1 comment ksjoseywales@shaw.ca

Home archives: Guide to the Maps returns…

Well after a long long break I decided to start doing my map guides again, this time I did Mediterranean, which I had started on over a month ago but it just never felt right before, so I redid a lot of it. Anyways you can find the link to it on the right side of the page, I hope it helps somewhat, but I think a lot of it is common knowledge stuff. As well I have posted my Alfheim and Anatolia map guides with very minor revisions.

no comments ksjoseywales@shaw.ca

Mediterranean: Mediterranean

The Basics:

Layout:

The basic layout of the map is fairly simple, you on one side, your opponent on the other side, and a large lake between you.

Food:

There is plenty of food to be had on the map, however you likely won’t end up using most of it in a given game due to the fact one of the major sources is fishing of which is very plentiful on this particular map. Aside from the fishing however you will find within your starting town several goats, a decent sized berry patch, and ussually some wild boars. As well there are ussually plenty of stray goats to be found on the map through scouting. The fish in the middle of the map are the most important, but depending on your civ you might be able to take advantage of all those spare goats around the map. For offensive animals there are boars as well as bears to be found, sometimes there will be aurochs I believe but not ussually.

Gold:

Your starting town will always have 1 gold pile of 3000 gold in it, the rest of the gold is ussually spread pretty evenly around the outside of the map, make sure you know where your next gold source is after your initial gold runs out. If your opponent land rushes you and you can’t get to any gold from one entire side of the map make sure you know this beforehand. In most cases the gold will be out of range from ships until at least the third age, so controlling the water isn’t ussually essential to controlling the gold.

Relics:

There are always two relics on this map ussually one on each side of the map. Sometimes there is one near to you and one near to your enemy but ussually they tend to be spread out pretty much across the middle of the map.

Terrain:

There really aren’t any ridges to speak of on this map, so the only things that are going to affect how the game is played are the trees and of course the lake in the middle of the map. Sometimes settlements will be close enough to the water that siege ships can stop them from being built, so that can be a factor in some games. In almost all cases the water is far enough from the edge of the map that ships won’t be able to hold a chokepoint on their own, so the sea is ussually not overly valuable in the late game. There are always lots of trees, but not to the point where you can’t find a good open spot to build your base.

How to play the map:

Greeks.

Try to avoid building a mill at all in archaic, there are plenty of sheep to be found on this map most of the time and they should do the trick until you are ready to go classical. As Zeus you likely won’t be able to get to a norse dock fast enough to stop their dock from going up, however if you try you might find their ulfsark building a house either near the dock or in their base.

Norse:

This map was built for norse I think, it should be fairly easy for a norse player to take over the water as well as building hersir from their temple. As Thor or Odin a quick forest fire can gain you a big edge on water, as well try to use the excess food you gain on valkyries as they are quite powerful. As Loki try to do a hersir rush at the same time as fighting on water, once the water favor bug is fixed however it’s going to become a lot more difficult to perform.

Egypt:

Well there are two options on this map, as Isis and Ra you can try to FH, and with your faster farming (with Bast) hopefully pull a decent econ out of the works or go for the water basically, if you do happen to be trying to FH I would suggest putting up several extra docks anyways just to distract your enemy into thinking you are going to try for water in heroic, you can do that, but taking control of the map with chariot archers and camels might be a better idea. The second option would be to fight on water, use those serpents as Set and Isis to gain an advantage hopefully, and take things from there.

In General:

I would suggest going for the water in a galley war, on this map you can likely go all out with 3 docks pumping, make sure to get the gold and wood upgrades as soon as you can afford them. Also try to scout out what your opponent is likely doing either by scouting the water with a fishing ship to see how many docks he has up, if you see only 1 dock then it’s not really nessessary to go all out on gallies and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get some military buildings up early instead. If you do fight on the water and start to lose it by say the 10th minute or so, don’t worry about it, water isn’t all important due to the fact that farming is actually a fair amount faster for 6 of the 9 civs. The only civs that don’t get a mythilogical technology to help farming are Loki, Zeus, and Set. As long as you kept a constant flow of villagers from the start of classical on, you should have enough villagers that your economy can function well even without the fishing.

This map can turn into a big fight for map control very often so losing water isn’t the end of the world. If you look at the map and see that all the gold is on one side, it might not be a bad idea to go for a small grush to waste some of their gold off on ships, then go for mostly map control taking away the extra gold mines around the map, here’s a good example game, I started off slow so decided that controlling the map was my only chance DOWNLOAD.

What not to do.

Don’t ignore the water completely, I think it would be pretty foolish to not even build fishing ships, if you ignore the sea completely you will lose pretty quickly due to the fact your opponent won’t even bother fighting on water but will go straight for you on land, only he’ll have a much much larger economy than you do.

Don’t forget to find your next source of gold, in fact find a couple that are pretty separated because you never know if your opponent will go for map control.

Don’t forget that if settlements are very close to water, water could be more important later in the game than it is early on.

KS_Josey_Wales

10 comments ksjoseywales@shaw.ca




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