Age of Mythology: An Introduction

This guide covers the basic concepts of Age of Mythology, like selecting a major god, gathering resources and using god powers. Within the guide names of units and buildings are display in bold, names of technologies and god powers are displayed in italic and names of major and minor gods are displayed in bold italic.

Introduction

Age of Mythology is a real-time strategy game within the Age of Empires franchise. It is based on the mythology of the Greek, Norse and Egyptian older empires, with the possibility to also add the Chinese mythology with the Tale of the Dragon expansion pack. The main goal of the game is to defeat enemies in various game types, but it also includes several campaigns to play through.

In each game you will be able to select a major god from one of five civilizations. Your selected major god determines which abilities (like god powers) you will get, as well as which minor gods you will be able to worship. Like the other Age of Empires games, you will need to advance to new ages as the game progresses. The game knowns five ages, being the Archaic Age, Classic Age, Heroic Age, Mythic Age and Titan Age.

Choosing your type of game

There are several game types that you can play in Age of Mythology. Each game type has its own rules and victory conditions. Although it is not seen as a game type by most players, campaigns are one of the many ways of playing the game. The base game offers you three campaigns, as well as a learn to play campaign. The campaigns are a great way of learning the basics of every civilization and general gameplay mechanics.

Even though the campaigns are a great way to learn the game, most players will end up in free play matches. These free play matches, as mentioned before, can be played in many ways (or game types). The first of these types is Supremacy, which is also the ‘standard’ game type. The player may win the game by either defeating all enemies, constructing a Wonder and defending it for 10 minutes, or holding all Settlements on the map for 2 minutes. Like Supremacy, the Deathmatch game type knows these victory conditions. Deathmatch however, differs in the fact that you start with more resources and gain most technologies for free.

Also very similar to Supremacy, the Conquest game type requires players to defeat all enemies. It however differs in the fact that this is the only valid way of winning the game (constructing a Wonder or capturing all Settlements will not work). Another game type is Treaty, which yet again is related to Supremacy. When playing in this game type, you will have a 15-minute period of peace before being able to attack your enemies. There as well is a restriction for building too close to starting Town Centers. A last Supremacy-like game type is Lightning. Lightning has the same game rules and victory conditions as Supremacy, but is played at twice the normal speed.

Besides these more basic game types, the game also offers somewhat more special ways of playing. The first being the King of the Hill game type, in which the player has to control a certain building (for example a Plenty Vault) for a certain amount of time. The game type is playable by selecting the ‘King of the Hill’ map (or using custom made maps). The second more special game type is called Regicide. In this game type you will start with a Regent (a hero-type unit) which they have to defend. If the Regent dies, the player will lose. Like King of the Hill, this game type is playable by selecting certain maps.

Selecting a major god

Selecting a major god is the first step for each game. Each major god has its own specialties and path of minor gods to choose from. The major gods are grouped according to their native civilization. Each civilization has its unique way of playing, with its own buildings, units and upgrades.

The Greek civilization offers you the major gods Zeus, Hades and Poseidon. When playing as the Greek civilization, you will be able to train unique heroes based of the Greek mythology. Every god has its own set of heroes to train. The Greeks by default start with three Villagers and a Kataskopos. The Kataskopos is a unique scout unit that cannot be trained by the player. The Greek civilization is seen as a great starting civilization for new players, as its way of playing is easy to learn.

The Egyptian civilization offers you the major gods Ra, Isis and Set. The hero units of the Egyptian civilization are rather special. Egyptians will be granted a Pharaoh (a hero unit), which has the ability to heal other units and empower buildings. Empowering improves the speed of the building itself, training of units, researching of upgrades, favor generation of Monuments, and also gives a 20% bonus for drop sites. When the Pharaoh dies, a new one will spawn after some time at your Town Center. Besides a Pharaoh, you will start with one Priest (which is a hero unit) and two Laborers (Egyptian villager unit). Egyptians may build Houses and storage buildings for free, and have a unique way of scouting using its Obelisks.

The Norse civilization offers you the major gods Thor, Odin and Loki. The Norse only have one hero-type unit which you can train: the Hersir. Unique to the Norse civilization is that most of its military units (excluding cavalry) are able to create buildings. Besides this, they also have the Ox Cart unit instead of economic buildings. The Norse by default start with Ulfsark (a military unit with the ability to build), and Ox Cart and two Gatherers (Norse villager unit). When playing as the major god Thor, the two Gatherers are replaced by two Dwarves.

The Atlantean civilization offers you the major gods Kronos, Oranos and Gaia. When playing as the Atlantean civilization you will have to possibility to transform nearly all units into heroes. They also have higher amounts of resources when starting. Resource collection is rather unique, as were the Citizens (Atlantean villager unit) do not need to drop off resources like the other civilizations. The Atlanteans by default start with one Citizen and three Oracles (scout unit). However, the Oracles will come in ten-second intervals. They are unique in scouting, as their line of sight increases while they are standing still.

The Chinese civilization offers you the major gods Fu Xi, Nü Wa and Shennong. The Chinese civilization knows two hero units, being the Monk and Immortal. The Monk unit is able to convert enemy human-like military units and may heal friendly units like the Egyptian Pharaoh. When playing as the Chinese, you by default will start with two Scout Cavalry and four Peasants (Chinse villager unit). The Chinese have a unique extra way of gathering resources, as they are able to build Gardens. Gardens provide a steady flow of one type of resource.

Gathering resources

Like most strategy games, resources play a key factor in advancing through the game. Age of Mythology has four types of resources: food, wood, gold and favor. These resources are needed to train units, create buildings, get upgrades and progress to the next age. The amount of resources you have, as well as the amount of units gathering are shown at the bottom section of your screen (see picture).

Resources are mainly collected by Villagers, which can also be called Laborers, Gatherers, Peasants or Citizens depending on your civilization. After gathering food, wood or gold, the Villager will need to bring the resource to your Town Center or an economic-type building like a Storehouse. This does not apply to Citizens (the villager-type unit of the Atlanteans), as they instantly store all gathered resources. The Norse civilization has the Ox Cart instead of economic-type building, in which its Gatherers can store their resources. It is possible to improve gathering speeds of Villagers by getting upgrades, which can be found in the economic-type buildings (or in the Ox Cart for the Norse civilization).

Food is an important resource in the early game, as it is needed to train new Villagers and to get to the next age. There are four major ways of gathering food, being farming, hunting, fishing and picking. Animals (hunting) and berry bushes (picking) only give you a limited amounts of food, where fish and farms provide infinite amounts of food. Unlike the other food sources, fish can only be gathered by Fishing Ships. Fishing Ships can be created in Docks, were they will also store their collected resources.

Wood is a resource that is mostly used for the creation of buildings and ranged units. Wood is gathered by chopping down trees. Trees mostly occur in forests, but may also spawn in smaller proportions. When choosing the major goddess Gaia, you will be able to use the Gaia Forest god power. Trees from the Gaia Forest contain more wood and Citizens do gather wood somewhat faster from them.

Gold is an important resource that is mostly used for the creation of units and major upgrades. Its importance rises throughout the progression of the game. Gold is collected through gold mines (or jade mines in Chinese themed maps). There are three different types of gold mines in the game: small (containing 1.500 gold), medium (containing 3.000 gold) and large (containing 6.000 gold). The Norse civilization the Dwarf unit, which is a special villager-like unit that is better in collecting gold than regular Villagers. When choosing the major god Thor, you will get the god power Dwarven Mine. This god power provides a free gold mine, which gets a higher gold yield in later ages.

Favor is a unique resource in Age of Mythology that is used for training mythical units and to get special upgrades. You can only collect up to 100 favor at a time, with the exclusion when selecting Zeus as your major god (this will increase your maximum to 200 favor). Every civilization has its own way of collecting favor. The Greeks collect favor by letting a Villager pray at a Temple, where letting more Villagers pray will grant favor faster. The Atlanteans collect favor through Town Centers and thus will automatically start to collect favor when the game starts. The Egyptian civilization collects favor through building Monuments. They can build five Monuments in total, each adding a different amount of favor per minute. The Norse collect favor by doing damage to buildings and untis from other civilizations. They also earn a small amount of favor per minute for each Hersir that is alive. The Chinese can collect favor through Gardens, although these can also be used for collecting other resources.

Besides the default ways of collecting resources, there are a few other ways of gaining them. The Greek minor god Hephaestus gives you the god power Plenty, which makes you able to spawn a Plenty Vault (see picture at the left) generating 15 wood, gold and food every five seconds). Plenty Vaults are also included in some maps by default and can get overclaimed by other players. There are also two major god-exclusive upgrades that generate a small amount of resources. This being Flood of the Nile (food), exclusive to the goddess Isis, and Vaults of Erebus (gold), exclusive to the god Hades. A couple of relics also generate some resources. Those being the Ring of the Nibelung (gold), Ship of Fingernails (food) and Ankh of Ra (favor).

Building up your town

There are a couple of buildings that you can create throughout to expand your empire. Most buildings can be build by villager-type units, with the exception of the Norse civilization where most of the human, non-cavalry military units are builders. Buildings have various functions and are the most common place to get upgrades.

The most important building of your town is the Town Center. The Town Center is used to train your villagers and may be used as an storage facility for your resources. It is also used to advance to the next age and is used to research some basic technologies. Additional technologies to research may be found, depending on your selected major god and minor gods. Town Centers do also grant you population slots, with a default Town Center giving you 15 slots. Additional Town Centers can be build after advancing to the Classic Age, with the exception of the Atlantean civilization being able to build them right away. Town Centers, unlike other buildings, can only be build on existing Settlements (see picture on the right).

When playing as the Greek civilization, the Town Center may also be used to train heroes (after a Temple has been constructed). The Egyptian civilization may also train Mercenary and Mercenary Cavalry. Mercenaries are trained extremely quick, but will die after 40 seconds. Egyptians can also train Priests in their Town Center, after they have constructed a Temple. For the Norse civilization, the Town Center also gives them the possibility to train their Ox Cart unit, as well as their basic military and building unit the Ulfsark. If you are playing as the Chinese you will be able to train up to eight Immortals, which are one of the two basic hero units of their civilization.

Probably one of the first buildings you will expand your town with are Houses. Houses provide additional population slots (10 per each) and may also be used for defensive purposes. You are able to build up to ten Houses in a game, after which you will need to claim Settlements to gain more population slots. Atlanteans have the Manor building instead of the House building, which will grant 20 population slots each and have a built limit of five per game. Manors also have the possibility to garrison up to five human-like untis, which Houses cannot.

As mentioned in the previous section, gathering resources is one of the most important aspects of the game. After collecting resources, villagers of the Greek, Egyptian and Chinese civilizations will need to bring them to either your Town Center or a storage building. They also function as the place to research technologies to improve your gathering abilities. There are several types of these storage buildings, depending on your selected civilization. The Greek have the Storehouse, in which they can store both gold and wood, and the Granary, in which they can store food. The Egyptian civilization also has a Granary building, but has a separate storage building for both wood and gold. Those being the Lumber Camp (for wood) and Mining Camp (for gold). The Chinese civilization has access to building the Storage Pit building, where food, wood and gold may be stored. The Norse and Atlantean civilizations have a rather unique way of gaining economic upgrades. The Norse have the Ox Cart unit (which also functions as a mobile storing facility) and the Atlanteans have the Economic Guild.

When playing on water based maps, it also important to effectively make use of the water area. In order to be able to explore and actively make use of the water area, you will need to create a Dock. A Dock needs to be placed on the border area of a landmass and water area (see picture on the left) and can be used to create water units like the Fishing Ship. In some water-based maps you will need to build a Dock to create a Transport Ship, in order to progress to the next island/landmass. Docks also give you to possibility to upgrade your ships and train navel-type myth units. They, besides, function as a storage place for food gathered by Fishing Ships.

Another important aspect of the game is to defend your town from enemy attacks. There are a couple of buildings that can help you with that. Although the Town Center has the ability to fire arrows, its range is not big enough to cover your complete town. To further defend your town, you may build Walls and Towers. Walls are used to shield certain areas and can be upgraded by researching technologies that can be found by clicking on it. It is not possible for units to, including your own, to get through a Wall, so you will need to build a Gate. A Gate can be created by clicking on the ‘build a gate’ button when selecting a non-corner piece of Wall. Towers provide a certain amount of protection, as they allow units to garrison into them. In the first age you will only be able to build a Sentry Tower, which does not fire arrows. When advancing through the Classic Age you will be able to upgrade your Sentry Tower to a Watch Tower (this upgrade will be automatically applied when playing as the Egyptian civilization). Watch Towers will fire arrows towards enemy units (and buildings) in their line of sight. You will need to get Boiling Oil upgrade in order to allow them to also damage units which are in close range. Depending on your civilization, you will be able to further upgrade your Tower to other types.

After gathering enough resources, you may advance to the next age. To advance to the Classic Age, you will need to build a Temple first. A Temple is a building that allows you to train myth units and research technologies to upgrade them. Temples also work as a storage place for Relics, which have to be transported using a hero unit. After advancing to a next age, the oldest built Temple will grant you a free myth unit from the worship you chose. In the Mythic Age you will be able to research the Omniscience technology, which grants you vision of all enemy buildings and units.

Advancing to the next age

By far the most important step in the game is to find your way to the Titan Age (or Mythic Age, when playing without Titans). As mentioned in the previous section, you may advance to the next age by researching it in your Town Center. Each age requires a certain building to be present in your town and a certain amount of gold and food in order to be able to research it. A Temple is needed to advance to the Classic Age, an Armory to advance to Heroic Age and a Market to advance to the Mythic Age. Getting to the Titan Age does not require any building to be present and also costs wood and favor to research.

Before you may start the research to get to the next age, you will need to select one of two minor gods (with the exclusion of the Titan Age). Each minor god has its own unique units and upgrades, as well as an unique god power (see picture). Each major god also has a god power. God powers are unique abilities that you may use to strengthen your economy or army. They can do various things like spawning a special myth unit, creating a natural disaster or healing your units. With the exception of the Atlanteans, each god power may be used only once.

The advancement to the Titan Age does not give you any extra upgrades or special myth units. It will only grant you the possibility to place a Titan Gate. Once placed, you will need to excavate it using your builder units. This will take a long amount of time and once the gate is destroyed, you will not be able to get another one. When finished, a Titan will be released. Titans are a special type of myth units, being extremely powerful – as they have 7.000 HP and 70 hack and crush attack. Each civilization has its own Titan (and Titan Gate), although they still have the same stats. Keep in mind that Titans are not able to walk or be transported over water.

Expanding your town

When you have advanced to the Classic Age, you will be granted to possibility to create more buildings. The most import type of buildings that you are able to create starting this age are military buildings. They allow you to train and upgrade your military units. Each civilization has its own type of military buildings. The Greek civilization has the Military Academy to train infantry units, the Archery Range to train ranged units, and the Stable which is used to train cavalry units. The Egyptian civilization only has the Barracks building, which allows you to train basic infantry and ranged units. The Norse civilization also has just one building: the Longhouse. It is used to train basic military units of all classes. When playing as the Atlanteans, you will be able to build a Military Barracks and Counter-Barracks. The Military Barracks offers units for general fighting, as where the Counter-Barracks offers you units that are meant for hard counters. The Chinese civilization has its War Academy (see the picture above), which is used to train basic infantry and ranged units, and Stable, which is used to train basic cavalry units.

The Classic Age also allows you to build an Armory. This building is used to research technologies that improve the attack and defence of your army. It is also required to build in order to advance to the Heroic Age. When playing as the Norse god Thor, you have the ability to build a Dwarven Foundry instead. The Dwarven Foundry can be build right from the start of the game and offers some extra technologies to improve your military. The upgrades from the Dwarven Foundry also are not tied to a particular age, as is the case with an Armory.

After building and Armory and advancing to the Heroic Age, you will yet again be given more buildings to create. The most important military and defensive building that you unlock in this age is the castle-type building, which is different for each civilization. The Greeks have the Fortress, the Egyptians the Migdol Stronghold, the Norse the Hill Fort, the Atlanteans the Palaca and the Chinese the Castle. All castle-type buildings fire arrows on enemies in their line of sigh (like Towers) and are used to train more advanced military units. They may also be used to train siege units, with the exclusion of the Egyptians having the Siege Works to do so.

The other building that will be available in the Heroic Age is the Market and is needed to advance to the Mythic Age. The Market grants you the possibility to trade resources (wood/food for gold or vice versa) and allows you to train Caravans. Caravans can create a trade route between the Market and a Town Center of you or one of your allies. This trade route will provide you some gold, which is can be scarce in the later game. When playing as the Chinese goddess Nü Wa, you will be able to build a Market from the Classic Age.

The only buildable structure when advancing to the Mythic Age is the Wonder. In supremacy games they are a way to victory, when been build and staying intact for 10 minutes. Wonders are expensive and you can only have one of them at a time. Each major god has its own unique Wonder that is based on their myths. There are also some special buildings, being the Egyptian Lighthouse, providing a gigantic line of sight, the Atlantean Mirror Tower, which is a sunlight bending tower that damages enemy units, and the Chinese Garden, which provides a steady flow of a specific resource.

Creating an army

In order to defeat your enemies you will need to train units to fight. The most common group of units for combat are human soldiers. Human soldiers form the base of most basic armies and in general are cheaper than other units. They are strong against hero units, but weak against myth units. Bellow you will find a list of all human soldier units. They can be split up into three sub-categories, being infantry, archers and cavalry. Each civilization has its own units, of which some are exclusive to a certain major god. They are trained in buildings (like a Military Academy) or in some cases granted by god powers. This with the exclusion of the Militia unit, which is exclusive to the major god Poseidon and is ‘trained’ when a building gets destroyed. Also notable are the Egyptian Mercenary and Mercenary Cavalry units. These units are trained extremely fast in a Town Center, but die after 40 seconds.

Although human units form the base of most armies, they do little damage against buildings. To counter defensive buildings (like a Fortress) you will need to use siege weapons. Each civilization has its own unique siege units (see picture), which are mostly trained in castle-like buildings. Besides siege weapons, some myth units (like the Colossus and Scarab) are also effective against buildings.

Another type of units that you may use to defend or attack are hero units. Hero units are powerful against myth units and have the ability to pick up Relics. Hero units can be recognized by the glowing effect around them. The Greek civilization has the biggest variety in hero units, with each major god having its own selection (see table below). The Greek hero units are based of the lore of the Greek mythology.

God	Archaic Age	Classic Age	Heroic Age	Mythic Age
Zeus	Jason	Odysseus	Heracles	Bellerophon
Poseidon	Theseus	Hippolyta	Atalanta	Polyphemus & The Argo (ship)
Hades	Ajax	Chiron	Achilles	Perseus

The other civilization have less variety in hero units. The Egyptians have two basic hero units: the Pharaoh and Priest. They may also transform their Pharaoh into a Son of Osiris when selected Osiris as minor god in the Mythic Age. The Son of Osiris may shoot lightning from its sceptre. Priests are also used as scouting units, as they are able to create Obelisks.

The Norse civilization has one basic hero unit, being the Hersir. Unlike the heroes from the other civilizations, the Hersir is able to create buildings. The Norse do also have access to the Ragnarok god power when choosing Baldr. This god power will allow you to turn all your Gatherers and Dwarves into Heroes of Ragnarok.

The Chinese have two hero units, the Monk and Immortal, of which the last has a limit of eight per player. Monks may heal other units in battle and have to ability to convert enemy human units. When playing as Shennong, you will also be able to convert non-Titan myth units.

The Atlanteans have a unique way of getting hero units, as all of their default human units can be transformed into hero units. This costs about 120% of the unit’s default cost, plus a small amount of favor. Although being a hero unit, they will keep their old class bonus. The Atlanteans also have the god power Valor, which turn a small group of units into heroes. This god power is available when worshipping the minor god Prometheus.

A somewhat more unique type of units are myth units. Myth units are supernatural creatures that are based on the mythological lore of their civilization. All civilizations have unique myth units, which they mostly train inside a Temple. Myth units are also mostly exclusive to minor gods and require favor in order to train them. Navel-type myth units may be trained at a Dock and some other myth units are summoned by using a god power. Myth units are strong against normal human soldiers and some of them have special abilities that they can use in battle (bot not against hero units). Titans are also myth units – the strongest in normal games.

While most battles manifest on land areas, training a navy will also be necessary at some times. The base of you navy will consist out of ships (which can be mixed with navel-type myth units). All ships are trained at Docks. Each civilization has its own arrow ship, siege ship and hammer ship.

Gaining achievements

Age of Mythology does have an achievement system, like most other games on Steam. These achievements can be unlocked by completing certain tasks in the game. The following type of achievements may be unlocked throughout the game:

• Ruler of a campaign (for example Ruler of the Trident), granted after completing an official campaign.
  
• Commander of certain major god (for example Commander of Gaia), granted after leading a certain major god to victory ten times.
  
• Foe of a certain major god (for example Foe of Loki), granted after defeating a certain major god ten times.
  
• Defeating a certain amount of AI (for example Defeat the Troop), granted after singlehandedly winning from a x-amount of AI in a game. With also the Eradicator of the Machine achievements, which is granted after being victorious against one hundred AI (cumulative).
  
• Master of a certain game type (for example Master of Conquest), granted after being victorious for ten times in a certain game type.
  
• Certified on a certain game type (for example Deathmatch Certified), granted after playing one hundred times that certain game type. With also the Aimless Wonderer achievement, which is granted after playing one hundred random map games.
  
• Building-type achievements (for example Time to Rebuild, granted for creating a certain type of building for an x-amount of times, losing a thousand buildings or destroying two thousand enemy buildings. All of these achievements are cumulative.
  
• Unit-type achievements (for example Annihilation), granted for creating 25 Titans, killing ten thousand enemy units or losing five thousand units yourself. All of these achievements are cumulative.
  
• Online play achievements (for example Leader of the Fearless), granted after hosting 25 multiplayer games, playing 50 quickmatch games, playing one thousand online games or winning one hundred online games.

There also is one special achievement: Hour of Alpacas. This achievements was given to players that participated in an alpaca hour, which were held on February 6, 7 and 8 in 2016. You can still get this achievement however, by manipulating the game. A complete list of all achievements and their descriptions can be found on the Global Gameplay Stats page of the game.

Suggested readings

For more detailed information about units, buildings, gameplay and other stuff:

• https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Age_of_Mythology
  
• https://aom.heavengames.com/

For information about updates, tournaments and developer notes:

• https://www.ageofempires.com/games/aom/

[Myrian]

This guide is pretty helpful, thanks.