Several years ago I posted several strategy articles at Age Of Empires Heaven as a guide for Mediterranean Maps. I would like to update these articles into one comprehensive guide. Here is that guide:
The next objective is the fastest pit time possible. To do this, villagers 6-9 all need to chop 75W stragglers. I have villagers 10,11 or 11,12 be my forward builders. 10 and 11 if I am in a corner and very far from the sea. 11,12 if I am not deep in a corner. My objective is to have them build house when pop is at 14, and explore a good dock area supplying at least three shore fish. I group my forward builders as hotkey 1. I usually get close to 100 wood by 5:00, and the forwards should have dock staked out by 5:20-5:30 at the very latest. I assign this first dock as hotkey 2, and will simply hit 2f to keep dock queued with fishing boats. I check the Achievement screen to check villager highs for all players. I then have my forwards BE to support pop of 20, walk along the coast until I have stockpile of 100 wood. I then stake out my second dock close to at least two, preferably three fish, and assign my second dock as hotkey 2. The farther away the better from my first dock. I try to get this second dock staked out by 6:10-6:25. Once the dock is completed, I keep it queued with fishing boats by hitting 3f. I check the Achievement screen as dock is being built to check villager highs again, as well as exploration. The next event is important in achieving a quick Tool time in the midst of this two dock boom. This is finding a second land food source. Luring an elephant is my first choice, followed by a group of gazelles next to a new forest pit. I take 5-6 villagers off wood and have them harvest elephant/gazelle. All villagers being born go straight to elephant/gazelle. I start this food source after my second dock is completed. If you do not do a second food source, and rely on fishing and your initial berries as only food source, you will be 1:00-1:30 slower to Tool. How well you execute harvesting this second land food source, while maintaining a two dock boom, is a determining factor in your boom size and Tool time. A lot can go wrong-- villager luring mistakes, getting housed, not having enough wood to support two docks. This is an area of the game that you can really exploit your opponent’s weakness in these things, if you can do them effectively and consistently. My goal is to hit Tool button at 9:00-9:20 with 37-39 villagers total. I quit queuing fishing boats when I start advancing to the Tool Age at the latest. Once I hit Tool button, I rebalance my economy by sending initial five foragers to a wood pit. If I don’t have a second wood pit by now, I build one and balance my woodies so there is no clustering and no long walking any woodies. I check Achievements to see who has what population going into the Tool Age. After I rebalance my economy, I focus my attention on my forward builders. From the time they built the second dock, they have been building houses as necessary while working their way up the coast towards opponent. I now focus on having them build a 3rd and 4th dock closer to the opponent. I will assign them hotkey 4 and hotkey 5. My goal is to enter the Tool Age around 11:00 with two docks close to enemy fishing, and wood to queue Scout Ships in all four docks (which takes a stockpile of 540). I have villagers back at my base build a barracks. I make sure that the barracks is completed before I arrive to the Tool Age. This sounds easy so far, right? Well what if you have bad berries and need to pit first? What if there aren’t three good stragglers close by? What if you can’t find a close elephant to lure or gazelles to pit by a forest? What happens when your forwards are discovered and chased before getting a second dock up? What if you find a crossing and your opponent already has it dock blocked? What if your opponent boomed to a population over 40? What if your opponent stopped villager production at 23? What if you are Carthaginian and your opponent is Minoan? These issues are all common and what makes this game so challenging and exciting. My solution to the first problem, late berries, is to still have five foragers, and realize that I am a villager behind from the start. I will know that I can make this ground up if I can get a faster pit and dock. The second berry problem -- hill berries or partially blocked berries -- is solved by putting six foragers on berries to maintain constant villager production. I realize that I will have at least a twenty second slower pit time, and focus to make this time up through excellent micromanaging. The third problem -- no berries to sustain villager production -- causes for an interesting Stone Age. First of all, I try not to panic. I realize that I will have early villager delay, but my first building must be able to sustain constant villager production or I am in big trouble. Even if it takes me one minute to get villager production going between vills 7&8, I feel like I can make this time up with my Stone Age micromanaging and overall strategy. The biggest determining factor is where I will place my first building, and how much food is by it to sustain villager production. I would rate my options like this: A) One elephant close to lure to Town Center while explorer(s) can find second berries, or a good wood/food pit. This will cause the least, if any, villager delay. Ultimately these first two challenges are indicators for me letting me know what margin of error I have for the rest of the Stone Age. I can’t afford to house myself or not have forward builders in position at the coast the second 100 wood is available. I have to execute well finding and harvesting my second land food source. If I don’t have good execution in these things, I just put myself that much more behind my opponent. I will try to find the best available land source before I need it. I need this food source once my second dock is complete, so I make sure I start solving this problem around 5:00-5:20 while my forwards are completing the first dock. I will have 1-3 villagers start exploring more of my area looking for food. I want as much information as possible before making a decision about my second land food source. My priorities are two elephants, then gazelle herd, and finally a second berry patch. I will maintain fishing boats queued, keep housing when necessary, while hunting/luring with several villagers. The more villagers I put on this second food source directly affects my Tool time. I can compensate for poor map location -- bad berries, bad stragglers, far away sea--and poor early micromanaging -- villager lag at Town Center by being housed, bad forager micromanaging, poor dock/fishing boat placement., lost villager(s) to exploring or luring -- by placing more villagers on this second food source. It takes experience to know how much to compensate, without sacrificing too much from your two dock boom. The speed of the game increases as there is a lot more things you need happening at once. How fast you can execute everything discussed here will have a large bearing on your results in the game. Upon entering the Tool Age, I immediately type 5e4e3e2e5e4e3e2ehccc (I can do it in 5 seconds, with practice you can too). This exhausts my wood stockpile. I then type 5432 to see what docks are queued with two Scout Ships, and what docks are queued with one. As Scout Ships are born in 23 I move them up the coast mass a navy near hotkeys 45. I engage enemy ships immediately. I have forward builders close by for repairing Scout Ships, but away from enemy Scout Ships. I keep Scout Ships being queued in docks, and keep all Scout Ships massing together for one large navy. When the first Tool Age villager is born, I have him stake out a Market close to the Town Center. The second villager born stakes out an Archery Range, and a few woodies assist him. Once third villager is born I advance to the Bronze Age. When Market is complete, I do woodcutting upgrade. My biggest priority in the Tool Age is to mass my navy more quickly than my opponent can, so I can have a 2-1 Scout Ship ratio at his dock closest me, and those first two Scout Ships can be repaired by my forwards after his first Scout Ship is destroyed. New Scout Ships will be born soon from hotkeys 45, and my two Scout Ships from hotkeys 23 will be there soon. When the next enemy Scout Ship is born from the close dock, I will have a 4-1 advantage, with my 2 other Scout Ships arriving soon making it 6-1. I repair my Scout Ships, move new ships from 2,3 into fleet. Scout ships are born again from hotkeys 56, so I expect a navy of 10. If opponent has another Scout Ship born, it will be destroyed shortly. This navy has defeated all opponent ships from one dock, and if opponent only had three initial docks, you have a current 10-4 advantage which should result in lots of destroyed enemy fishing boats and Scout Ships when you reach his other docks. If I encounter a large fleet of opponent navy, I move my navy back to hotkeys 45, where all new Scout Ships from all docks are being massed. I continue to take advantage of all easy kills where my whole navy can engage in battle with one or two enemy Scout Ships. I have my forward builders build another dock, hotkey it 7, for a total of six docks. I spend most of my time micromanaging my navy, while making sure my woodies at my base have new pits for no clustering or long walking paths. This is the Champion’s Age. If you want to be a great player, you have to execute near perfection in the Bronze Age. You have to make more in-game judgment calls than in previous Ages. You can be losing the sea, running on the land, etc., but if you have excellent early Bronze Age micromanaging and execution of the plan, you can have the advantage quickly. Early Bronze Age is where this strategy exploits all other strategies. If you are doing fine up to this point, you will become dominant by following my play from here: I will do more the first ten seconds of Bronze, than I have done in any previous ten seconds in the game. Speed in executing so many things here is a key to gain a greater advantage on your opponent. Upon immediate arrival to the Bronze Age, I hit hotkey 2 and upgrade to War Galley, 3 and upgrade to Fishing Ship, HCCC, click market woodcutting upgrade (even if I am Chariot Archer civ), grab a group of 4-6 woodies and build Government Center. Once it is completed, I have those same 4-6 villagers build a Town Center by a forest and HCCC there also. I quickly type 7654 to check Scout Ship/War Galley production and queue necessary docks to maintain constant production. Villagers that are born at my original TC build another TC by a forest. This makes a total of three Town Centers all completed in the first 1-2 minutes of Bronze. My goal is to spend as much surplus food on new villagers as soon as possible. I also want to take advantage of my early navy victories so I can spend wood quickly in Bronze on multiple Town Centers. Once I have three Town Centers constantly queued with villagers, my woodpile will be used to definitely achieve victory on the sea. I have forward builders build a Town Center by a forest, giving me a total of four Town Centers. I then have forwards make as many docks as necessary to help secure the navy victory. At 20:00, or earlier if the sea victory is eminent, I build 3-4 more Archery Ranges at my base. I queue them all with Chariot Archers or Compies. If I am a gold civilization, I won’t put villagers on gold until at least 18:00. I will start booming a large Archery army to protect me from any blindside attempt on my land economy. I boom fishing boats from all docks to keep my woodpile from getting a huge surplus. This booming from 4 Town Centers, 7-8 docks, as well as booming from 4-5 Archery Ranges puts a demand on multiple builders for houses. I maintain a low stockpile of resources spending everything. This low stockpile combined with a growing villager population is critical to the fastest and largest boom possible. There is always a shortage in wood if you are in big Navy battles. This causes critical judgment calls. I understand that if I can survive an initial lull while I invest in multiple Town Centers and villagers, that I will be able to be dominant soon, so I make the sacrifice in Navy to get those Town Centers. Once again I will state that this is a judgment call that a lot of in-games factors go into how, when, and where I get multiple Town Centers up and maintain a navy. I know I must exercise great skill and judgment protecting my sea while my economy is requiring a lot of wood. Ultimately I understand that if I am losing the sea and I don’t start getting more woodies very soon, not much is going to change on the sea. From 15:00 to 20:00 I spend my time micromanaging my navy and booming villagers from multiple Town Centers. This is a lot of work, but it is here where I win the game. Once the sea is secure, I have enough wood to boom fishing boats from every dock, make Archery Ranges, and exploit this population advantage. I really feel like this timeframe of 15:00-20:00 is where I ultimately pull away from my opponent for good. This boom doesn’t have to last too long before you get a population over 150 with over 100 being villagers. From there I mop up and Iron. I don’t think about Ironing until I have a population of at least 150, and usually it is more like 175. Iron Age really is making 10-20 military buildings and booming your favorite unit: Catapults, Horse Archers, Scythe, you pick whatever because your economy will allow you to crush your opponent. The two biggest challenges in the Bronze Age are protecting your land economy and your navy/fishing boats while you complete this big boom. As your population increases, your advantage over your opponent increases so much that you just need to make sure you defend your land and get them off of the sea. This strategy puts you in a rhythm that leads to a very high winning percentage. It allows for a lot of flexibility and can be very competitive against almost any opponent strategy. It is a superior strategy in my opinion. Very few things can lead to a loss if you can do the things mentioned above. If you win the sea, you should be able to drastically out boom your opponent in the Bronze Age to the point of guaranteeing victory. Things to look at if you happen to lose: 1) Did you lose the sea? How? Did you try to get back on sea? It should take a miracle or a very skilled player that is dedicated to the sea to keep you off the sea. Don’t let it happen. 2) If you won the sea and lost the game, then you didn’t exploit your advantage enough. If you win the sea, you should have at least a 3-1 villager count against your opponent. You need to boom larger in Bronze and capitalize on the free fishing. This should then cause you to have a much larger military for obvious reasons. 3) Review your Stone Age and Tool Age performance. If something drastic didn’t occur, did you stay with the plan? Were you on course entering the Bronze Age. Early Bronze Age performance is critical to outplaying your opponent with this strategy. Did you get your Government Center up quickly? Did you use all available food on villagers? Did you make more docks and boom fishing boats and War Galleys constantly?
The first objective, as with any game on any map, is to have no villager lag. To do this consistently, always plan on doing a granary start with five foragers. These five villagers all need to be foraging at 1:00 for no villager lag.
B) Two elephants by a forest with six villagers harvesting meat.
C) Gazelle herd by a forest with six-seven villagers harvesting meat.
D) Finding the second berry patch.
E) Wood pit and send one of first seven villagers to the sea to dock. I am not a big fan of this strategy, so I use it as a last resort.
First dock time -- goal of 5:20-5:30
Second dock time -- goal of 6:10-6:25
Second land food source execution -- goal to start harvesting at 6:30
Tool upgrade advancement time -- goal of 37-39 at 9:00-9:30
Location of 3rd and 4th docks compared to opponent’s land --goal of attacking the second they are born
Initial navy battle result-- goal is to destroy as many enemy fishing boats and Scout Ships with minimal loss
Bronze upgrade advancement time-- goal of hitting upgrade at 12:00-12:30
Overall completion of initial Bronze Age advancement tasks -- goal of 5-10 seconds
Government Center completion time -- goal of 15:00-15:30
Second Town Center completion time -- goal of 15:20-16:00
Third Town Center completion time -- goal of 16:00 - 16:30
Sea victory and booming fishing boats from all docks --
Focus on land attack from 20:00 until victory.
Can you survive the Blitzkrieg?