The Hot Gates (help)

[Medve]

Can somebody give me tips how to beat this lvl? I just get overwhelmed by persian ships.

[erik9595]

I advice you to spam galley with all avaliable upgrades. from ships into 2 fleets. 1 will defend the strait 1 will defend your buildings. I easily beated the level this way.

[NyX]

Special naval technologies you researched in the previous scenario are all available to buy (I am not sure if they are always available or just the ones you unlocked in the previous stage transfer over but I was going for the achievement in the previous mission so I did them all and then I had them all for this mission as well)

As Erik said, Galley spam is the way to go, with all special upgrades. It literally makes your ships unsinkable. They get riddicolus dmg, HP even auto regen. I had to manually destroy my fleet in order to progress with the stage at the end.

[frontovika]

Don't forget that once Artemisia shows up, you aren't supposed to win the naval battle.

[BirbNotBird]

You ain't supposed to win after the Athenian part too. However, I advise hunting the achievement in later part as easy or moderate.

[Bob Barnsen]

Great Tip with just spamming Galleys with their upgrades!

[Plokmijnuh]

The Hot Gates section with Themistocles is meant to be difficult because both the Athenians and Spartans lose this battle. The Spartans were overwhelmed at Thermopylae.

And while Themistocles has a strong navy, he was simply overwhelmed by numbers. The special naval techs give you a chance but you basically just make Galley's and split the forces to defend the shipyards/port and sink the transports going to Thermopylae.

[James3157]

Originally posted by BirbNotBird:

You ain't supposed to win after the Athenian part too. However, I advise hunting the achievement in later part as easy or moderate.

I did the opposite of this. Played on standard difficulty first for getting achievement instead of hard difficulty, but I plan on playing hard difficulty sometime later. I overall had fun with this mission, but the point was not about winning. It was about losing. For the first part you are supposed to survive until the female hero unit from Artemesians attacks before surrender. The second part I think you are supposed to survive until losing the ability to loot from soldiers.

[Meneldil]

Originally posted by James3157:

I did the opposite of this. Played on standard difficulty first for getting achievement instead of hard difficulty, but I plan on playing hard difficulty sometime later. I overall had fun with this mission, but the point was not about winning. It was about losing. For the first part you are supposed to survive until the female hero unit from Artemesians attacks before surrender. The second part I think you are supposed to survive until losing the ability to loot from soldiers.

The second part really isn't that hard, even on hard difficulty. Buff your infantry as much as possible (so Elite Hippies become killing machines), take the three outposts, spend all your remaining ressources on hippies plus a few strategos to buff, try to defend the first two days at the third, westernmost outpost. First two days are easy and your infantry blob will just wreck everything.

Third day is where it gets hairy, cause your Hippies will start to get killed because the persians send better/upgraded units. Send around 20 units (I sent a mix of hippies, hoplites and archers) to defend the other path, reinforce the main path with what you have left and hold out for as long as you can. When you see it's hopeless, fall back to the second outpost with what you can while some units stay back to slow down the onslaught. And then to the first, closest outpost. Keep making units. You'll get the achievement easily.

[James3157]

Originally posted by Meneldil:

The second part really isn't that hard, even on hard difficulty. Buff your infantry as much as possible (so Elite Hippies become killing machines), take the three outposts, spend all your remaining ressources on hippies plus a few strategos to buff, try to defend the first two days at the third, westernmost outpost. First two days are easy and your infantry blob will just wreck everything.

Third day is where it gets hairy, cause your Hippies will start to get killed because the persians send better/upgraded units. Send around 20 units (I sent a mix of hippies, hoplites and archers) to defend the other path, reinforce the main path with what you have left and hold out for as long as you can. When you see it's hopeless, fall back to the second outpost with what you can while some units stay back to slow down the onslaught. And then to the first, closest outpost. Keep making units. You'll get the achievement easily.

I watched Ornlu the Wolf's video and noticed that the hard part on hard difficulty is only the naval part, but thanks for the advice. Like I said before I plan on getting the gold medal later.

[Crossil]

I think that Lembos are also a good pick, since you're spending a lot of gold on tech, and not as much on wood and food. So you can spend those on lembos as they're the only trash naval unit.

That being said, I think it slightly depends on what aura bonuses you gave to Themistocles. I wanted to play with archers as Athenians are the only one of the three that actually play into archers, so I kept Themistocles at the ports and had him use his Lembos bonus quite a lot, while Galleys focused on the pass.