Unit Descriptions
Clubmen suck. The reason why Clubmen are so weak is that when
compared to villagers they have only 15 more hitpoints. They
don't have any armor, and their attack value is the same as a
villager: 3. By the time you get clubmen over to your enemies
base they're going to have plenty of villagers to fend off your
attack. I've always been able to defeat any moronic clubmen rush.
It's okay to build them though if you're planning to upgrade to
Axemen. But wait untill Tool Age before you build them. Food in
the stone age is way too important to waste on clubmen.
Axemen are the first decent hand-to-hand unit. Use these. They
are good. If you ask me they're the best Tool Age unit. Some
people think bowmen are better. Only against people that don't
know how to control their units, and with the patch, the
hand-to-hand unit AI is improved so that if one of your units is
attacked, all of your units in that area will attack back. Build
these if you are expecting to be bowmen or axemen rushed. Other
than that, don't build them because you need the food to get to
bronze age. But axemen as defensive units are no replacement for
towers. Axemen are only a supplementary defensive unit that can
go where your towers can't reach or where they need some help.
This covers short, broad, and long
swordsmen; and legions. Swordsmen are just all-around okay units.
I hardly ever use them, unless I'm Choson and making Legions. I
used to use them but I got bored with them. Swordsmen have no
specific weaknesses, but they specialize in nothing. And they're
cheap! Really, really cheap. 35 Food and 15 Gold. That's their
only advantage, and the unit limit kind of makes cheap units
pointless. They get taken down by hoplites. Hoplites are so much
better than legions. I heard somewhere that one of the advantages
swordsmen have over academy units is that they are faster. So
they can take down archers faster. This is only for people who
send academy units off all by themselves. This is suicide. Of
course you're going to get stomped by archers, or priests, or
ballistas. Just back up your academy units with catapults and
you'll be fine. I guess swordsmen are good for beginners because
there's not much strategy to them. They're really easy to use.
Ballistas have
range, damage, and a good fire rate. The problem is they only
have 55 Hit points, so they get taken down really fast. Catapults
can kill them in one hit. You have to be really carefull around
catapults.
What is the point
of these guys. The only reason you would train any is if you're
planning to upgrade to composites, so why is there a bowman
between composite and regular? I guess just to make the game more
complicated. For the Bronze Age, these guys are simply not
powerfull enough. If your tribe doesn't have composites, don't
build these. If you can, upgrade them to composite as soon as you
can. Never attack until you've upgraded them.
Chariot Archers
are basically weak units, but they are fast and can out range
towers.
Cavalry are good
for attacking archers and siege weapons, and going through
someone's town hunting down their villagers. They're really fast,
so they can get to the missile/siege weapons befort they've had a
chance to do much damage. They don't have much attack value or
armor, so you shouldn't use them in hand-to-hand combat. Only
against missile weapons. A good place to use your cavalry is at
the entrances to your town, where you have a wallin. If the enemy
attacks you with catapults, you just bring out your cavalry and
attack the catapults. Run past whatever is defending his
catapults (if anything) and go strait for the cats.
Catapults have
range, damage, and hit points. Of course the best thing about
them is their damage, 50 for a Stone Thrower, 60 for a Cat/Heavy
Cat. 60 is a lot of damage. The highest in the game.
Coincidentially, the range of a fully upgraded Heavy Catapult is
15! That's also the best in the game besides Egyptian Priests.
Catapults are simply the best unit in the game. That's my opinion
anyway. With that kind of range and attack you can really do some
serious damage to someone's town. But catapults by themselves
don't make a very good army. Since they have a minimum range, you
have to mix them with hand-to-hand units.
Heavy cavalry.
Powerful
infantry, but slow good for guards.
Chariots are
weak units, but they do have certain advantages. One is that they
are cheap on food and gold. They don't cost any gold actually.
They are 40 food, and 60/70 wood. (60 for a Chariot, 70 for a
Chariot Archer). Yeah that's a lot of wood, but wood is hardly
ever scarce. If you don't have gold then by all means build
these. Don't wait around for 10 minutes while you look for gold.
Actually what they are is just a weaker version of cavalry. You
can use them in almost all the same cases as cavalry. Use them
againsa archers, catapults, and especially priests; run away from
hoplites and elephants.
The elephant
archers can kill most things charging at the catapults, and the
important part is you can even attack approaching targets with
your catapults because the elephant archers 600 hits can survive
it. A key to doing this is to have 2 or 3 priests to heal things
after the attacks.
They have 600 HP! That's plenty of hit points. More than any other moving unit in the game. The only other hand-to-hand unit that they can't beat is a Centurion. A Centurion beats an Elephant with a few hit points left. The problem with Elephants is that they don't have much attack value and armor. 15 and 0 :( This makes them crappy for things like defending a catapult.
When I looked
at the fold out tech tree that came with AOE I was shocked by how
good horse archers were just by looking at their stats. And
they're great in action too. I always thought of archers being
kind of weak before this. Horse archers are the bomb archery
unit. They have good attack value, range, hit points, and they're
really fast. That 2 piercing armor really helps them against
other archers too. Horse archers are good against almost every
other unit except siege weapons. And cavalry, but they can run
away from the cavalry =). They're good for doing a quick raid of
someones town when you want to kill the villagers. They kill the
villagers really fast, and can retreat before the enemy has time
to get to you. That same strategy of Chariot Archers vs hoplites
can work with horse archers vs hoplites. Even better with horse
archers. Just keep attacking, and then run away when the hoplites
get to you, then attack again, then retreat, attack, retreat...
Bowmen are
great for killing villagers. They can shoot at them when they are
wedged in between farms where axemen can't reach. You should take
a few of these if you are going to attack at Tool Age. I always
do. Although they aren't as powerfull as axemen. They are good
for shooting at things that are going to run away: villagers.
Priests used to
be pretty popular. They can take enemy units and turn them into
yours! What could be a better unit? That was before people
started using catapults. As soon as a priest starts converting
the catapult, the catapult will fire on him and kill him. Priests
just take too long to convert things, and they're too weak. Only
25 HP, upgradeable to 50. I've stopped using them. I'm just tired
of my priests getting killed by catapults. It happens before you
know it. That is not to demean preasts though. They're still
pretty decent units if your opponent just builds a lot of
hoplites. They rule against hoplites, and elephants too. An
elephants greatest fear is a priest.
100 food. That's
a heavy price tag just for a Scout. It makes it especially
moronic to waste your scouts by having them attack. I've felt the
wrath of the deadly Scout rush many times. Still, Scouts are
necessary. Recon is essential. They're great units for scouting.
(no not really ;) They have a huge sight range and they're as
fast as Cavalry. Get about 3 or 4 scouts and place them between
you and your enemy's base. (That is, after you've explored most
of the map). That way you'll know when you're about to be
attacked so you can get your army together. Also before you're
about to attack, run a scout through your enemy's base to see
where his weak points are.
Villagers are
the most important unit in the game. Training them should always
be top priority. Use the keyboard shortcut, h-c. It makes
training them a lot quicker. As soon as you hear that sound that
means a villager is done hit H-C immediately. (H is the hot key
for town center, C is the hot key for train villager). H and C
are the two most important keys in the whole game :) Memorize it
and practice doing it really fast over and over again. “H-C,
H-C, H-C.” You need to be able to anticipate when a villager
is going to be finished and have your fingers hovering over H and
C ready to hit them as soon as that villager pops out. And when
they're done training, put them on resource gathering as fast as
you can. Train these all the way up to Bronze Age. By then you
should have about 32. Sometimes I go up to like 37. If you do
that you won't have many open slots for military units though.
But you'll sure have a lot of money. Then you can get the
expensive upgrades.
Powerful infantry.
Expansive, but worth the kill.
SCREENSHOTS
Harbor ...........................................Battle Field ........................................Village
Greek City ......................................Late Age............................................Invasion
Port .................................................March
MOVIES
Cavalry .............................................Chariot
......................................................
.....................................................