Persian Build Orders

Standard Age1 Barracks into TC

• Take one of the initial 3 villagers to make a storehouse at the nearest hunt patch while killing it with your scout, rally the villagers to the trees next to the storehouse, make sure you don’t let the wood-gathering villagers bring their wood back to drop off to your town center, once they have 8-9 wood in their “bag” assign them to help build the storehouse.
• Keep 3 villagers on food and rest on wood, once you have 4 on wood rally the next villager to make the barracks.
• After you start the barracks, rally the next villager to make the woodline storehouse and then reassign the initial wood gathering villagers to help make the wood storehouse and then keep 4-5 on wood.
• Rally the next villagers from the town center to food, until you have 6 on food.
• @50 wood make a house. Use the same villager who builds the house to make a storehouse on stone.
• Rally to stone until you have 3-4 on stone. Then depending on whether or not you commit hard to your Sparabara rush, move the next villagers to wood or food.
• When you start your age up, keep 4 on food and then reassign the other 2 food gathering villagers to wood.
• @50wood 50food get aid tent and try to micro your Sparabara so that they remain alive so that you can heal them, and when they get back to your base spread them among your storehouses so they get healed faster than they normally would if you left them near 1 storehouse, so that they can contribute more to defense against the inevitable counter attack by your opponent.
• @300wood 300stone make your second town center (Personally I make my 2^nd town center outside the range of the first one against Greeks, Persians, Babylonians and sometimes Egypt. But against Norse and Celts, I would recommend that you build your 2^nd town center in the range of the first otherwise you would probably regret it. I learned it the hard way recently)

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Fishing Our Waters

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had started doing the Greek quests from scratch on another server.  Every now and then I'll pull up one of those early Greek quests for a bit of a look.

The quest Fishing Our Waters can be found with the Port Master around level 6.

I was curious when this quest came up because a few weeks earlier, on the official AoEO forum, a poster mentioned that he had had trouble completing it because he ran out of enemy fishing boats to destroy.  This didn't happen to me.

The Port Master is the quest giver for Fishing Our Waters

Open the book to find out more!

The Bandit Armada (Elite)

This is the final of a three part series of posts on the Greek capital city repeatable quests which you can do in Elite mode.

This is the bigger and grander of the three repeatables, but it's not any more difficult.  Once again, there's a smart way to complete it efficiently, including the second objective, which requires you to produce no military units.  The quest can be, and should be, completed by focusing on ships.

Start Game

Let's remind ourselves of what the quest looks like from the start.

I've just started aging up to Age III, I have one dock ready to go

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Challenge: Kill the Docks (Elite)

This is the second article in the series dealing with Greek capital city challenge quests on elite.

Early on in your AoEO career, you want to start having a crack at this quest on Elite, and even when you get to level 40, it's worth the occasional look at it because on Elite mode, you're receiving level 40 chests.

Plenty of people do this on co-op, which is fine, but try and get to the stage where you solo it. I wouldn't say it's a difficult quest (it's not), but there's a smart way to do it, and then there's, shall we say, the inefficient way to do it.

You should always (always) be aiming to get the second objective of finishing five minutes early.

Kill the Docks is one of two capital city quests available from the Port Master. The Bandit Armada is the other one, and I'll cover that one another time.

The Port Master is the Quest giver for Kill the Docks

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Improving Game Play - Hotkeys

This is the second in a series of articles aimed at helping the newer player improve their game play.

I'll start this by showing you a cross-section of hot keys available. You will find these in the options menu in-game.

A selection of hot keys - the full range is available in the options menu

There are a large selection of hot keys available to you, and it is not my intention to go through all of them, and in any event, that would be a futile exercise.

Rather, I would like to encourage you to start practising some of them, and to get you started, here's a bit of a run down on how I introduced hot keys and how it helped me become a better player.  Take a bit of a look, and then apply some of those lessons to your own game, introducing  one or two hotkeys at at time, and gradually expanding your repertoire.

Open the book to find out more!

Starting Out - Part III

I wasn't going to have a Part III for the starting out series of posts, but then I remembered something earlier today.  A while back, I discovered that all the civs and booster packs you own, you actually own them across all servers, and you can play them from the start at each server.   I suddenly recalled that I had started a Greek civ on the Athens server a while back, and had forgotten all about it.

Now this is good news, because it allows me to re-visit a few things, re-live some old times, but more importantly, have a bit more up-to-date hands on exposure to stuff which otherwise, I hadn't seen for a while.

And I have to say to you - it's a lot of fun starting all over and re-acquainting myself with some of these very early quests.

So I have gone back to the very start, and that has inspired me to write one more starting out post, while I aged up from Level 4 to Level 6.

To start off with, here is my very plain, bare, empty Greek city at level 6:

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Improving Game Play - the Mini Map

I would like to dedicate a couple of articles to helping the newer, below average player improve their game play.   The overiding message I want to give is that absolutely anyone can improve playing this game.

Speaking from personal experience, many players starting out may start to plateau and notice all of a sudden that they are hitting a brick wall in terms of improving and getting to the next level.

More often than not, there will be two key things which will be holding you back:

1. the use, or otherwise, of the Mini Map; and
2. the use, or otherwise, of Hot Keys.

Let's talk about the Mini Map today, and I'll cover Hot Keys another time (although with practice, you will use them seamlessly as you improve your game play).

Take a look at this shot of the mini map from Relentless Canyon from Delos, part of the Alliance quests:

Relentless Canyon - it's a long, long, long map

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Challenge: Not Without a Bomb

Let's cut to the chase - this challenge is insanely difficult - outrageously difficult.

In my early AoEO playing career, I can remember the following challenge quests which initially had me stumped:

• Final Farmdown
• Size Matters
• Defence of Arsinoe
• Not Without a Bomb

...and it's this one which takes the cake - top of the pops - no question about it.

Full marks to the developers for showing some humour with the title of the quest.

I became obsessed with this quest, and after at least 10 goes, maybe more, I finally soloed it with only seconds to spare - it was a damn relief!

So that's the first point, it is possible to solo it, but if it finally gets to you, it's also available for co-op, and don't worry, I've helped out some very good players in co-op on this quest over the journey.

The engineer from Mycenae is the quest giver for this challenge.

If you are soloing, you should aim to get out at least 6 rams, probably need 8.

Open the book to find out more.

Milestones

I encourage all new AoEO players to get themselves acquainted with the official AoEO forum, where you'll come across people with similar issues, and plenty of peers willing to help out.

A couple of recent threads have focused on Milestones, inspiring me for today's topic. Rather than go over some of the better posts, here's a link to a page on the forum worth having a look at.

Milestones are a relatively new addition to AoEO and they appear as a tab in the Palace, as part of the techonology tree.

Each time you age up, you earn an additional notch in your technology tree, and there are three separate tabs which coincide with a different group of technologies.

Another tab corresponds to Milestones which are a further leap in technology and which apply to all of your quests in that civ. They open up at levels 5, 10, 20, 30 and 40.

Milestones: the top line represents the civ you are currently playing.
The lines underneath are your other civs.  The blue circle on each line
represents the milestone I have chosen from each of the other civs.
Question marks are empty slots, I haven't reached that level in those civs.

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The Civilisations - Persian

This is the third of my posts on the six AoEO Civilisations.

The Persians are  a pro civ, meaning that you start at level 20 with a decent selection of level 20 uncommon gear.

The Persian shield in AoEO.

You have a few home city quests, including the standard repeatable craftsmen quests (good for getting used to the Persian military at a leisurely pace), and you have immediate access to the Argos quests.

The various Cyprus quests open up to you at some point, perhaps after completing Defence of Arsinoe which is one of those milestone quests which pop up in the home cities of each civ at a certain level (around high level 20s, can't remember exactly).

The key feature of a pro civ - you don't have any additional cities with other unique quests, what I mention above is pretty much it.

Just open the book to read more.

Challenge: Keep Them Under Our Wing (Elite)

Your Greek city has a few repeatable quests which are worth doing in Elite mode as you gear up and start to improve your game play.

One of these is Keep Them Under Our Wing.

Keep Them Under Our Wing with the Scout Quest giver next to the Adviser Hall

Even once you've reached level 40, playing this quest in Elite mode gives you three level 40 chests, not too bad for a 10 minute quest.

On top of that, it's a good game for practicing a few basic skills, micro-managing your villies, etc.

Open the book to discover how to crack this quest!

Challenge: It's the Final Farm Down

The Helice Merchant, to left of the Palace, is the quest giver for the farm quests.

All of the three premium civs  offer a series of challenge quests which are often as much about improving your game play as anything else.  The Final Farm Down in the Greek civ is a good example of this.  In this series of challenge quests you have to build 10 farms in 10 minutes, and a minute is knocked off each subsequent quest, until finally you have a bare 5 minutes to build your 10 farms.

If you're anything like me, you were relieved to build your 10 farms in 6 minutes and were completely dismayed that you had to do it all again with one minute less.

I struggled a couple of times with the Final Farm down until I cottoned on to something really stupid which I
was doing.

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Consumables and the Crafting Hall

Consumables are items which you can use while on a quest.  They can be dropped automatically into a quest without the need to use the resources you have gathered during the quest.

The Craftsman school symbol

I have to admit I'm not a big user of consumables myself.  Not because I'm opposed or anything like that, but as a general rule, once I'm up and about in a quest, focusing on the game, I just don't think about whatever conusmables I have.

It is fair to say that the elite player (that doesn't include me) will generally shun consumables, because:

1. they don't need them; and
2. well.... they don't need them.

Having said all that, I believe they do have their place in AoEO so it's worthwhile getting to know them a bit better.

Open the book to learn about consumables!

Starting Out - Part II

This is a follow up article to my first one aimed at those just starting out on the great AoEO adventure.

Today, I'll try to explain a few more bits and pieces about the AoEO screen.

Some items are visible in the identical positions in both your capital city (ie when you're not on a quest), and while you are on a quest, although their use might vary slightly in each case.

Below I have grabbed a screenshot of my one of my capital cities.

A shot from my Greek capital city.

Click Open the book below to find out more.

The Civilisations - Egypt

This is the second of a series of articles in which I go through each of the six civs.

Egyption shield used in AoEO

Many of you may have begun your AoEO gaming experience with Greeks, and naturally gravitated to the next civ in the series:  Egypt.

I did this by earning Empire Points after reaching level 40 on Greek - I was able to buy Egypt (Eggies).

My knowledge of the Eggies isn't as detailed as the Greeks.

I can say this though, despite my obvious bias for the Greeks, almost every day I’m discovering something new with my Eggies, being pleasantly surprised by what you can achieve, and this leads me to believe that if I had come to Egypt first – it probably would have been my favourite civ!

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The Civilisations - Greek

Greek coat of arms used in AoEO

This is the first of a series of articles in which I go through each of the six civs.

Many begin their AoEO experience with the Greeks, and I’m no different in this regard.  The Greeks were my first civ, the ones I first took to level  40, the ones I first managed to gear right up to the rafters, the ones with which I first completed alliance and legendary quests, and they remain my one true love.

It’s probably natural that you might come to favour your first civ, primarily because you will become so familiar with it, get used to the bits and pieces you like most, get used to the various build orders, how to make your economy  hum each and every quest, build a massive army, etc, etc.

So what do I like the most about the Greeks?

Click Open the book below to find out!