This is my palmyran strategy for the Hill Country map type. Hills are difficult as it is, little alone having Palmyran villagers to make. This is why I chose to master it. It gives such a challenge when you get beat that you know what to do better next time. You play that person again and again and I have finally mastered Palmyran to the best of my knowledge for hill country. The object is to not boom so much in stone (because no defenses while tooling later on) and you need to have your walls up really early. Palmyran MUST wall. That is how they survive so long, and they MUST tower.
Several reasons. Here are quiet a few... 1) Has Got to be the shier variety of units that they pack! They have every iron age unit exept the ones I have listed above! The only land unit missing is a Long Swordsman... Tell me it aint so! 2) The ability of their vils to practically consume everything in site! They gather more than 20% faster. As I will explain later on... 3) Their ability of every technology (lacking a few market techs I like) that I will ever need. 4) Heavy Horse Archers, Scythe Chariots, and Heavy Cats. This is a Tango that is untouchable... Those HHA are meaner faster and cause more damage than any other unit on the map to scale. These are awesome for an unsuspecting opponent and raiding his town killing all his vils and leaving to the next hide out before his military units even think about firing a shot at them. Vill raiding is like killing the enemy from the inside out. If you can't beat them, don’t knock on the door! Sneak in the back door... Maybe a diversion of a few siege at the front door. That way their attack buzzer goes off before you start the raid. But other than that, Horse archers are a back line fighter. Plus they don’t have that good of range. They lack craftsmanship. This is a big factor. But some civs don't get HHA's so they come out about even. You don't want to send in H.H.A.'s all by their self unless the units you are fighting are Rax (hand to hand units). They will waste them. Even Scythers... Yup I wasted Egyptian with these bad boys! Siege had my back and they had no priests is why. Horse archers are awesome for dancing and letting siege and groups of HA pick the enemy off. Oh especially legions! Oh my it is a massicare! SO lets get to the strat already! Soon as you get in the game hit H CC then Take 2 Villagers Drop 1 House With the B E hot-keys. Now grab that loner vil and start exploring and drop a granary (preferably). Pitting is also an option. Now the first 5 villagers go on food. 6-14 go on wood (that’s 8 smarty) and then the rest go on food until I decide to stop. This is kind of a judgment call on where to stop... Picture this. It takes, on the over side a bit, 2 minutes to tool. Okay so you need to start at least at 10. If you want a 12 tool time... Here are the results... On 15 Egyptian Villagers collecting the exact same berries. It takes them 2:00 minutes to gather 500 food. If I did my math right that’s 50 seconds faster! This is truly an advantage. Palmy vils are almost as fast on berries as Egyptian vils are on fish. This goes for every resource on the map! Okay lets see if we can figure out the percentages (oh boy I hate math but look here... IM USING IT!) 1 Palmy Villager 2 tiles away (non-obstructed walk) take 16 seconds to gather and deliver. 1 Egyptian Villager 2 Tiles away (non-obstructed walk) takes 22 seconds to gather and deliver. That is 6 seconds faster. Now it takes 75 food for a villager. So 5 Villagers on food will be 36 seconds faster. (this is getting in deep). SO Palmyran villagers take just 4 seconds more to get than a regular villager. If my calculations are correct. Is palmy that much slower? Or should they be considered a fast civ! Now go and read As soon as you hit tool age que up 4-6 more villagers. Build a Market, research wood working, stone mining, gold mining, domestication, in that order. Build an archery, and tower up with those 4 villagers. While those vils are in the making grab 2 villagers (1 for short parts) and wall up in between the trees and everywhere else to make a big square or circle or rectangle or what ever you have to but, GET THE WALLS UP! If you don’t wall kiss you butt good-bye. I don't care if you are sellin' towers on a whole sale... They only sit still... Those archers might out range them, or even be able to destroy them. After a villager gets done with his wall segment make him build a farm. And put 3 of those new villagers on gold and have the other one be your builder, for houses, archerys, stables ETC. The reason I had you build an archery with Palmy is because you can get 4-6 tool archers with those towers and wipe out an early bronze attacker. With early I mean 18-20 Minute attack on you. If all has went well with food you should be ready to tool in no time! Yea no time hehe... HURRY! This strat takes a while to master, I haven't yet. But I do know what I am supposed to do. You should alternate from low wood to low food. This will go on the entire game. I have never played a civ this hard before. It seems you are behind, yet you are ahead! Your wood goes 45 , but you have 15 farms... WELL DUH it will be low but watch the food start to role in. Then your wood will get back up and food goes down because you just qued up 4 vils and researched a couple more techs. What i would suggest is tower well and make layers of walls... NO! not touching.... Break your big walled part into sections with trap doors to escape. This is VERY effective on your enemy. If you see he is coming shoot through the hole wall it and split your vils up on the resources and get going again. By this time you should have ally assistance and even have your own army. When the enemy is gone fix the walls and you are good to go again. No Damage (or minimal anyway). Oh man the victory was great over a hittitie and a Summy. They both got spanked WHILE in iron with their most powerful units. Scythe Chariots and Siege and Horse Archers. It was a good fight. That’s when I was born opon Palmy. -II_DeCiMaToR_II
All But logistics, Engineering, and Aristocracy.
All But Tower Shield, and Metallurgy.
All Techs!
All But Plow, Irrigation, Coinage, and Craftsmanship.
All But Mysticism, Polytheism, Medicine, monotheism, and martyrdom.
Free Tribute, Gold Per Trade Trip Doubled, Villagers Cost 50% More, Have Armor, And Work 20% Faster.
( you know how E.S. is with percentages though
-All Stable Units Exept Cataphract.
-All Archery Units Exept Elephant Archer.
-Phalanx.
-All Siege Exept Helepolis
-Trireme, Fire Galley, Fishing Ship, and Merchant Ship.
If I haven't gotten your attention yet... Well go away! hehe. Palmyran, In My Opinion, is the strongest iron age civ. Those Fast camels waste the all siege attackers of Hittitie. The Siege can take out any other siege (practically if you dance a little
The First few minutes are very crucial. You only get to make 2 villagers. (BOOO!) hehe. So You really have to kick it in the @$$!
It takes ROUGHLY with perfect berries 2 tiles from the granary 1:10 minutes for 15 Palmyran Vils to gather 500 food!!!! are you as amazed as I am! I did this test and was shocked... So I did a test on regular villagers to see how much time it takes them.
Okay here are the times for each villager to collect food:
Palmyran Vils pay for them selves in the long run.
At the 5 minute mark, with a good spot (meaning straggler trees close by) You should have your wood pit in operation. The next 240 wood go to a storage pit and a granary by food. You will HAVE TO HUNT. There is no getting around it in Hill Country. That’s why i have included my hunting guide. Make Sure that you get a granary also. As you will need to wall in tool age and tower.
From Villager 14 - 17 are your stone miners. Or select 3 later in the game to stone mine if you are behind. But start stone mining with 3-4 at least by the eight minute mark to have enough stone to wall heavily. One game my economy was doing very well and I put 9 on stone and i had a lot of stone, but it was quickly used. With towers and walls. When you wall use the trees, forests, cliffs and ruins to help you. They are indestructable (exept trees by heavy cats in iron) And make a big tile of your territory to be able to spread out within it. I keep all my resources inside this wall and sometimes the enemies (or allies LOL) resources. That gives you an idea of how far out my wall stretches. If you broke a Huge map into 9 tiles mine would cover 1 - 1 1/2 of those. That is basically YOUR terrain anyway.
Tool Age is the most crucial part of Palmyran. It decides if you live or die.
Now you thought you had resources LOL not any more. Get villagers, villagers, and more villagers. Palmys economy is so strong that you need alot of villagers to bring out the true potential... The most I have gotten so far is 84. This is almost enough. That game I was not touched until iron age, well a little scwable on the gold mine outside but me and Spiritreaveer took them NP. I ironed at 38 Min. This is good considering i made enough resources in those 3 minutes to iron again
Defenses In bronze are as this... (unless under heavy attack) But then you still need to iron. 10-12 Compies 6-8 Camels and about 4 siege will keep them out for you to iron so just concientrate on economy while steadily building your defenses. Make at least 60 villagers! You have one hell of a army too feed in iron age so get ready before you head off in the wild blue yonder.
It is all up to you now
Don’t rub it in..
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Thank you for reading my strategy. Hope to see you on the zone!