Multi Player Strategies

Persian Guide - by The_Sheriff_

Okey here's a Persian (my fav) strat for ya.

Persia is likely the most underappreciated and most difficult civ in ROR (yea yea Palmy might be but I hate them). I often hear people criticize Persia as being one of the crappy, slow civs, and I hope I can convince these people otherwise. The problem is, most players do not play Persia correctly, to their full capabilities. Here are my thoughts on how to win with Persia.

Part 1 - Early Economy


OK, the first thing here most of you already know - Persian hunters are awesome! You must take advantage of this bonus if you want to win. After you build your granary, take some time to explore around before you make a storage pit by a forest. You may find a pair of elephants with 3 or 4 straggler trees nearby, you can use this spot for placement of your storage pit. Hunt the elephants first, then chop the straggler trees for your woodpit. this can improve your tool time significantly. you can almost always find a heard of gazelles next to a pile of wood, this is what you should be looking for (if you stumble across a few shorefish next to wood
this is ok too). When you find the gazelles, be careful not to scatter them. Bring 3 or more peons and kill them all at once, before you make your storage pit. You now probably have about 10-11 peons, 5 of which are picking berries. set 2 peons to chop wood and the rest can start harvesting those deer. Its important to gather that meat as soon as possible, or you
will lose a lot of it to decay. Send all your new peasants to the gazelles until they are completely decayed, then you can easily switch the workers to woodchopping with little walking time lost. If you are playing on 1.0 speed, send a peon or 2 scouting for elephants, and lure them to your town center or storage pit by attacking and running. If you can hunt these eles without making a new storage pit it will make a huge difference. One thing I want to stress, is DO NOT make a dock. Anything that requires wood is something you want to avoid as much as possible. Usually if a Persian player booms with fishing boats, he will be forced into a boat war that he cannot win. Here's why - your opponents peasants in bronze are carrying 2 more wood than you, and doing that T30% faster because they have the wheel. Their boats outrange you and their wood income is more than Persia can handle. So building fishing boats is a bad idea, you will end up wasting a lot of wood Persia just cant afford this. Continuing on... once you get 20-24 peasants you should be able to advance to tool age. Start looking for a gold mine if you haven't found one already.

Part 2 - Fight in Tool or in bronze?

You now have a few options on what to do next. Check your achievements frequently towards the end of your tool upgrade.

Scenario 1 - You know that your opponent has found you because you saw his villager in your town. You failed to kill it, and you don't see him now. This usually means tool rush. If you tool before him, I suggest you tool rush him first. Take 3 peons from your wood pile and build a stables, if you have enough wood, build 2. Research attack upgrade and cavalry armor
and start pumping out the scouts. With the first scout that is built, look around your base to see what military buildings your opponent made, if any, and hopefully force his builders to abandon any new buildings he might make. Now continue with your scout rush. If he does follow through with his tool attack, make the proper barracks units needed to stop it. While attacking, build a few more peons and a market. When the battle is in your favor, begin bronze upgrade. Now if your opponent tooled before you, build a second barracks and a stables. make axemen and neutralize the attack. Sending 1 or 2 scouts into your opponents peons should be able to distract him from killing too many of your peons.

Scenario 2 - you haven't seen your opponent in your base and he has little exploration, 0 military score. In this situation, when you get to tool, send 3 peons to build a stables, and when you have enough wood, 3 peons to make a market. Monitor his military score carefully, and proceed to bronze. as soon as you have 100 food, build a scout and find your enemy. Since you don't have armor, do not attack him. Wait outside his city and prevent him from building walls. you should be mining gold now and preparing for a camel or cavalry rush.

Part 3: Bronze age Warfare


Persian players should hate the bronze age. Without the bronze age market techs, and no bronze age military bonuses, It is hard to maintain control over the game. First lets take a look at what Persia gets in bronze:

War Galley

- as I said before don't take this route, you will lose.

Sentry towers

- don't bother with this

Priests

- I usually build 1 temple and a Gov. center in order to iron, 1or 2 unupgraded priests can be very useful for healing your injured cavalry.

Market techs

- no tough decisions here, Persia doesn't get any

Government center

- get nobility if you can afford it

Metalworking

- get this if you have 6 or more cavs/camels

Cavs or Camels?

- Start off with camels, and as time passes mix in some cavs once you start to iron, only make cavalry

Swordsmen

- Persia gets metallurgy, tower shield and legion, this might not be a bad choice if you were using axemen in tool age, not to mention the iron shield prerequisite for armored eles shouldn't be wasted

Composite bowmen

- NO! This is what I most often see in Persia players, but you should not get them. Persia only gets +1 range, and no ballistics in iron, archery range units is a poor investment.

Stone Throwers

- heavy on wood, which is a big no no for Persia. also you need an archery range to make this, I hate having useless buildings. The only time I would get this is if the opponent was using comps
My advice in Bronze Age warfare is to stick with stable units. Use all 3, scouts, camels and cavalry in your raiding parties. I mentioned to lean tow add more cavs when nearing iron, this is because you will be able to upgrade to heavy cavs, your camels will not be promoted. When you are preparing to Iron jump, start making docks in an out of the way place, and start pumping out war galleys. Do not attack with them yet, they will be twice as effective when promoted to triremes. Remember, bronze age is when Persia is most vulnerable, try not to stay here long. continuously build new peons in bronze until you have a juicy 35-40 villager economy. For market tech order, get gold mining first, then woodworking, then domestication.

Part 4: Iron Age- Its go time!


If you made it to iron age give yourself a pat on the back, its not easy. But now your Persian military should dominate. First order of business, is whether to upgrade your cavs, or to abandon them. You can get chainmail, metallurgy, and heavy cavs upgrades (dare I say cataphracts? =0 ) If you have 10 cavalry or more when iron, I would probably upgrade these, if you only have a few forget about it because you are going to be using those badass elephants now. Upgrade your war galleys to triremes, and give him a surprise attack at sea, this will usually clear the ocean for good, and you can feel free to start fishing now. pump out some war elephants and upgrade your priests. You have already surprised the enemy once with your super triremes, now that you have the ocean you can give them another surprise. While your heavy cavs or longswordsmen are duking it out with his military, pile your elephants into a transport and send them over to his workers. if you can drop them off at your opponents woodcutters or gold miners, this will usually give you at least 10 kills in a few seconds.
have your priests follow behind your elephants to heal and to save them from enemy priests. At this point of the game your opponent should be either sobbing or cursing. Start mining stone and begin your wonder =)

*snap*

wake up! its a long read, so here's a brief summary if you got lost above.

1. Hunt as much as you can!

2. Avoid chopping wood for military units, this requires big walking distances and without market upgrades its very slow

3. Stay out of the water until iron age, don't get pressured into a boat war unless you have triremes.

4. Archery range units is a no no, poor range and accuracy make this a bad idea.

5. Stable units in bronze is your best bet.

6. Elephants, priests, and legions, oh my!

Persia is a very difficult civ to master, I hope this helps you all! Cya on the battlefield

The_Sheriff_

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