Isis Priest Spam

[Renowned Sigher]

Hello,


just a small entry: I have been playing AoM since its release on which I was 7 years old. I have multiple friends who play the game with me on a regular basis and some of them are actually pretty good RTS players and also AoM players who sunk in quite a few hours into the game.

Now, we are having a discussion, because one of us developped a priest spamming strat with Isis: You pick Isis, take whatever in Classical and then need Nephtys in Heroic. By this point your priests cost only 70 Gold. Before you build up a strong economy, focusing heavily, REALLY heavily on gold gathering. For the first attack you might recieve you have a few priests and get help from allies (we usually play 2v2 or 3v3). Once you're in heroic you won the game. You don't need barracks, Midgols or any of that ♥♥♥♥. Just temples. You spam priests and easily get huge armies because of their low unit cost. Their shots are basically homing missiles and never miss, they have a really big range, myth units are a joke and they scale with the armory. They heal up after every fight. And they have no counter because they are heroes, not archers or anything.

Some of my friends actually refuse to play against Isis now and the discussion is pretty heated. My question is: How do you beat the priests? Because I don't believe that it is OP, if so, competitive players would use that strat aswell. But I myself don't know how to counter it. It would not work in a 1v1 scenario because you get finished before you even get to the point, but in a team PvP game, the player pretty much always manages to pull it off.



Thanks for your ideas/help in advance,

Berserkr

[[KeeN] Flame]

we do use this strategy thou it's a litttle bit different we also build siege towers in combination with the priests. here's a guide on it (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5M4yD-Tcpk ), it's a common strategy :P only used against atlantean really though. if you're playing atty against this strategy you need to do the following:

go 4:30 classic open up with like 6 turmas and a few murms, raid their hunt. then take a second tc at 7/8 min. put a lot on farms and spam a ton of barracks. autoque murmillos and focus those on the priests. around 10-12 min you need to get heroic(Try to get it as fast as possible) make 2 palaces and autoque destroyers. destroyers will be impossible to kill for the priest. then you can go mythic and tartarian gate their base and build a titan. hope this helps. if you're playing other civs just spam upgraded horses or units with high pierce armor.

[Renowned Sigher]

Neither Tartarian Gate, nor a Titan will do anything against priests, as 50 of them easily take out a Titan and instantly get replaced once dead. I see the weakness in a 1v1 scenario, yes. But in group pvp?

[leg]

Isis has always been OP for the eclipse and ancestors. The priest/siege tower spam is really old.. like 2003 strategies. Egypt/Greek are pretty much going to win if you let them boom, they are just way stronger all around.

[EvolveReaver]

This strategy has been used for ages, but like Currylord said, with siege towers. People also added chariots into the mix to deal with atlantian mass valor/hero armies. Sadly this strategy is countered by a lot of early play like double counter barracks turma rush. Proxy toxotes/hoplites, foward tower rush, Set animal rush (DOD Magyar's), Loki hersir rush which comes way before you can age up to heroic (cannot wall against it without walling with armories, longhouses, and temples.) Any sort of gold raiding by poseidon's cavalry rush, Hades classical mythicalunit/archer rush (shades will reinforce.) Thor's heroic upgraded throwing axemen rush (throwing axemen + heroic upgrades by the time you're thinking of clicking to heroic.) As for the multiplayer half these that I mention are overly abused in higher ratings by flanks, side, aggresives. You would need to be a pocket position to make your strategy work, however, turma and poseidon's rush can still easily get to you.

Egyptians rely on markets late game siginificantly, the whole reason is because if the Egyptians get enough gold they can do. Mercenaries, priest, siege tower, chairot, elephant spam all day. Your strategy will actually work well in a 1 v 1 scennario but do add on these units to your army. Through experimentation, practice, and observing others play you should be able to get the proper add-ons to make this army fight effective.

[Renowned Sigher]

I understand that this strategy struggles and fails in 1v1 scenarios, but in 2v2 or 3v3 the player has enough help by his allies to survive into heroic age. What would 2 or 3 players have to do, in order to beat the enemy team on which one player is spamming priests.

[EvolveReaver]

Raid you with turma, murmilo turma. It comes to your base pretty quickly if the players are good.

[Julmust__]

I think you only met noobs, because you can't rely on help from allies to get to a certain point vs strong players as they will gain upper hand real fast with your playstyle

[Renowned Sigher]

It's always players out of the same friend pool. Some are good, some aren't. But the teams are mostly fair everytime.