NORSE FORWARD BUILDING
By:Ivan_Grozney (AoM.HeavenGames.com)
- most people begin by having their ulfsark begin exploring right away, I on the other hand find this somewhat inefficient, I want my town centers precious seconds being used to create (a) dwarves and villagers to gather and (b) Ox carts to make gather faster or more efficient.
- Because your first ulfsark is building a house, you would not want him to lose even more time and stand around once he is done; shift select the next places on the map you would want him to explore; I personally prefer to have him find a new gold mine and one or two groups of hunt-able animals. (also, if you're playing on a water map, right after building a house it's a good idea to build a dock, after all - two economies are better then one!)
- Find the enemies base. run in and cast spy on a villager (the reason it has to be a villager is this: at this point in the game, EVERY working villager counts, therefore - even if he knew which one you cast spy on, it would be very foolish for him to kill it off.
- Don't begin attacking any of his villies or his beginning military unit, run out of his base and explore around it, look for the following (a) GOLD, one of the most important resources for building a military, the less gold the enemy has accessible - the more you can dominate (this does not mean that you need to play the stock market) and (b) look for areas that are easily defended, also don't forget to note where his hunt-able food supply is.
- The first building I build is always near a gold mine, or even better - a concentration of gold mines. There are two paths you can take (a) build an outpost (don't forget to upgrade as soon as possible to watchtowers from the outposts surrounding your main base), with this up, you can then ward off any villagers and under it's cover begin building a barracks, don't forget also that you can build hersirs at the temple while aging up; these would be helpful if they were present at the forward base and helping out in the building process. The faster its up - the faster you can begin attacking (one hersir should stay behind just in case you need to build a barracks in your main base), also don't forget that if your enemy has a small army of their own, this early in the game it would be wise to wall off your forward base, it would be worth it considering the fact that if you lose it - your screwd.
- with the majority of the units you created, go and kill off all of the hunt-able food around the enemies settlement, make sure to use as many military units possible to hit one animal at the same time (Hersirs and Throwing Axemen are the best, because it would be possible for more favor to be gathered because of the Hersir's added favor bonus, and the TA's would hit at the same time, meaning more favor for you) collect enough favor to create you myth units or to do a military upgrade, I generally age up with Heimdall so I build Einherjar. This allows me to use its special attack as a bonus to my numerous army; I see it as a great benefit.
- The other thing you are interested in doing right away as soon as you age up to Heroic is to build a hill fort. Keep harassing the enemy, by now you should just send out lone or in groups of two - throwing axemen, ulfsarks, or hersir, and build towers over all the other gold mines surrounding your enemy, this would give you advanced warning if he tries to attack or to mine there. Always stay one step ahead of your adversary. I remember in one game I followed this strategy and began aging up before the enemy, and soon towered much of the gold off, the guy tried to counter that with myth units but I attacked his villies, so he kind of panicked, the only place he could mine gold was being attacked, and the others were all towered - so the enemy had to create a military to fight me off instead of aging up, a big mistake. Having fought off his military, with my second group of soldiers, I just headed into his town center with Einherjar, one or two siege units to take out his town center and bam; I was done with the game that took around 17 minutes. This is the most efficient forward build strategy I have tried so far.
