Help a newbie out?

[: D]

Hi! I'm (not exactly) new to the AoM scene, so just a couple of questions I need answered if you'd be kind.

Is there like a general build order at the beginning? Because the resources seem a bit all over the place: as in, I don't really know which is more important, or how many workers to put on a resource.

And is there a better way to take towns n stuff? Because one Town center absolutely demolishes a decent-sized army. Like really, 10 Hoplites and 10 archers were killed by a single center.

[Exanthos]

A good start is two villagers on every resource, and one builder. As soon as you get enough resources, go to the next age (click on the town center) I think by the third you can build a new town center. You also need a lot of houses, maybe even your max if you can't seem to get enough resources.
Play the toutorial, it will help.

[Grunt]

Originally posted by Mal.ex:

A good start is two villagers on every resource, and one builder. As soon as you get enough resources, go to the next age (click on the town center) I think by the third you can build a new town center. You also need a lot of houses, maybe even your max if you can't seem to get enough resources.
Play the toutorial, it will help.

Don't listen to this advice, it's bad, early on you want to focus mainly on food, because it's needed to produce more villagers and advance to the classical age. Basically sent all the villagers at start to gather food and use all starting food to queue up villagers in town center.

[RR]

Yeah there is kind of a specific build order for every god. It's important, as the previous poster stated, that you keep villagers queued on your town center and send the first villagers to food sources. Watching records will help a lot! ( try http://www.rts-sanctuary.com/index.php?portal=RTS&portal=RTS&portal=AOT&showforum=493 )

[Seti]

depends who u worship, overall u need lots of food for training more villagers & advancing Age II

the following is just how i play, i'm not saying its 100% correct,

i send first 6-8 Greek villagers for food, then 1-2 gold & 1-2 wood. (send 1 to build houses be4 using up populations), then focus more on food.

(may send few more to gold & wood depends on how much each resources i've got & depends what units i'm going to focus on after Age II)

i send first 4 Norse to food, build 2 dwarfs for gold, then 2 villagers for wood....
i can care less about wood when i play Egyptian coz their houses are free of charge.

if u play Set, u may want favour at the beginning so ur pharaoh can give birth to apes for scouting. (but being good at Set is not easy)

Hunting is the fastest way to get food

don't forget the green button to train units (include villagers) automatically.
http://postimg.org/image/czods2lyr/

[RR]

Yeah I have to post again because of the replies above. A decent player will neither build a monument to spawn an ape with the pharaoh (Set has by far the best scouting anyway with the Hyena and the priest (that can convert animals)), nor will he 'try to get to the classical age as soon as possible'.
With a proper build order, you'll get to the Classical Age between ~4 and 5 minutes, your goal is to have your TC always producing villagers until you have enough food to actually advance (saving food and leaving your TC idle to advance at 3 minutes is bad). I'd strongly advise you to watch some of the replays from my link above, you'll understand what the players are doing within a short amount of time.
The other posters hints are decent for casual players, but if you want to improve quickly and discover all aspects of the game, I'd recommend you records of top-tier players.

[Seti]

Originally posted by RR:

Yeah I have to post again because of the replies above. A decent player will neither build a monument to spawn an ape with the pharaoh (Set has by far the best scouting anyway with the Hyena and the priest (that can convert animals)), nor will he 'try to get to the classical age as soon as possible'.
With a proper build order, you'll get to the Classical Age between ~4 and 5 minutes, your goal is to have your TC always producing villagers until you have enough food to actually advance (saving food and leaving your TC idle to advance at 3 minutes is bad). I'd strongly advise you to watch some of the replays from my link above, you'll understand what the players are doing within a short amount of time.
The other posters hints are decent for casual players, but if you want to improve quickly and discover all aspects of the game, I'd recommend you records of top-tier players.

i'm happy with the way how i play Set. not "spawn an ape", i spawn more than an ape to open the map even faster so my priest can find more valuable animals easier. i also use the apes as living obelisks.

okay, decent player, how would u make use of Set's animal bonus if u don't send apes for scouting? just rely on Hyena can cost extra time to find valuable animals, can't rely too much on vision coz u may not be able to target good animals & gotta give up god power combination in later Age.

btw, i'm not the only one play in that way (build monument at the beginning)
http://aom.heavengames.com/strategy/articles/21
http://z1.invisionfree.com/The_tGo_AoM_Clan/index.php?showtopic=60

maybe all of us (me & those article writers) are rubbish at this game, then i apologize for any inconvenience that have been caused to decent player.

[RR]

I'm sorry if you felt offended, but I've seen plenty of people giving bad advice in this forum (can we at least agree that the first replay is bad advice?...), thinking they know a lot about the game. With the further explanation, you justified your points that seemed quite fishy for me at first - it's just that I'm really pissed at the game and the community at the moment (ELOs are bugged, devs aren't keeping their promises, etc.).

For the scouting: Depending on the map, you can use Vision at the beginning to reveal a large part of the map (I'm talking about 1v1 Supremacy where the maps are kinda small).
Another hint: If you read a guide and use that build order, make sure you always question the suggested actions to take (also map & matchup). It's just that I rarely build my monument very early with Set (compared to Ra & Isis) and therefore never use Pharaoh animals to scout since the map is already revealed.

[Seti]

apologise if my last comment sounds offensive as well.

(yes that first reply is... no comment)

well, its microsoft, they hv taken our money & the devs' job is done. i won't be surprised if they don't keep their promises.

i use vision at the beginning (depend on maps), but even in 1v1 map, 1/3 of the time i end up seeing stupid animals (deers, zebra).
but at least that can save my priest's & hyena's time not to travel there.

saving it up to combine with other god powers can be quite handy, i used to combine it with Ancestors / Meteor to destroy Titan Gate in few seconds (but stopped doing that since its kind of cheating, almost 100% winning if i build my Titan. there are few ways to counter the Vision-Meteor bomb though).
People also suggest combine vision with shifting sand but i personally prefer Anubis.

in my opinion, spawning apes is quite useful (much quicker to open the map than just relying on priest's animals, steal all the cattles, and use as living obelisks). but requires lots of micro.

i believe that doesn't work on water maps. i can't think of many matchup would disfavour Apes Spawning on land maps (unless Zeus really hate your pharaoh?), but its true that matchup would affect in many cases :)