This is Insanely hard!
Playing with Atlantean for max hero synergies.
What difficulty? Playing on hard, I found rushing one opponent with cyclopes as Hades to give me a decent amount of breathing room.
I find that there are at least 5 main viable strategies for the 3 v 1s. They are fallible though.
When playing any of the 3 v 1s, it’s almost always prudent to kill or cripple one of the opposing teams as soon as possible. In this mission, the ‘warmonger’ AI is Zeus, so they’ll be the easiest to take out right away since they usually do an immediate resource dump into hoplites and whatever their classical age myth unit is.
The map seed is randomized, but there are constraints. Zeus is player 2, and they will always be the enemy in the right side direction if you were standing in your town center with your back facing the closest wall or corner.
In no particular order:
Kronos Exploding Mud Men
You’ll want the blessings Hel’s Last Promise, Hades’ Watchful Wiles, and Isis’ Divine Retinue.
This makes myth units explode upon death, have more hp, and cost less favor.
Upon starting, queue up your temple and age up, as well as the tower upgrade. Send at least one of your 3 starter murmillo and pursue a direction along the wall near where Zeus’ town center should be.
Classical through Prometheus, grab the Alluvial Clay technology. Time shift the temple near Zeus as soon as the technology finishes. Pump out about 6 or 7 mud men. Attack his town center. This should eliminate Zeus. At this point you probably have enough resources to build another temple at your main base, defending with Kastor and the 2 free mud men you got from the age up, but you’ll need more. And you’ll also want to produce a more oracles, as you will run out of the allotted 150 starting favor by producing mud men eventually.
Take any surviving mud men from the first assault and begin pushing either yellow or green. Yellow, Poseidon will be closer to Zeus’ fallen kingdom. You can pause mud men production at the time shifted temple to move it closer to Poseidon for the next attack, but you have to be careful that they don’t just send in some cyclops or something and crush it before you can produce more mud men. As you age up, you can start producing destroyers to help siege, eventually taking Helios as the Mythic Age God so you can drop your destroyers and mud men on the locations you need to.
This strategy is make or break. If you fail the first kill on Zeus, just quit out and go again on a new map seed. It’s not salvageable.
Loki Hersir Spam
Gaia’s Lashing Roots, Kastor’s Elite Guard, and either Kronos’ Drowsy Daze or Isis’s Divine Retinue or Poseidon’s Rushing Tides
The Hero Area of Effect damage and the increased population cap are necessary for this strategy, but the third blessing is more up to preference. Slowing the enemies is exceptionally powerful in the early game for killing Zeus, and with proper Kastor management, is still effective all the way through the game. Isis’ Divine Retinue will increase the spawns of Loki’s myth units from the Hersirs. Poseidon’s Rushing Tides will just make the Hersirs faster and better able to close the distance on siege and archers before they take too much damage.
Again, you’ll want to take out Zeus right away, so upon spawn in take the full starting army and Kastor over to Zeus, focus on killing the villagers on food and gold. Make sure at least Kastor survives to keep an eye on them and make sure they can’t sneak out villagers to a nearby hunt or gold mine. Using Loki’s spy god power on the right villager can make keeping an eye on them pretty easy.
Go Forseti for the Healing Spring and the boost to Hersir speed, and start spamming Hersir. This also works well with the world twist of the free titan gate. Just put it near the town center and healing spring and build it during Hersir idle time. Make sure you pull them off building when the different Greek enemies bring in their attacks though.
As you get Hersir built, probably take two or three over to Zeus and build a guard tower near to the gold mine, but out of range of the town center. The line of sight and gold starving benefits are usually enough to either kill all of Zeus’ villagers or force him to keep a minimum number of them garrisoned in the TC with no way to progress. If they’re garrisoned in towers, you can bash them down and kill them permanently out of range of the TC, but you have to be careful- because both Kastor and the Hersirs love nothing more than to die to a town center the second you look away. Alternatively, if you get a lucky early Valkyrie spawn, you usually only need her and Kastor to kill or cripple Zeus.
If he offers surrender, it may be because he has no villagers left, and less than 50 food with which to produce another. There can be some merit in denying his surrender, since it leaves the TC occupied, and unavailable for capture by Poseidon, but you will feel like a fool if he had one villager left and managed to sneak out and rat up using a pack of elk or something.
As you get myth units spawned in you can split them off into raiding parties with a group of Hersirs from the main defense force, and walk them over to the settlements that are near the edges of the map and start assaulting Poseidon or Hades. If one of them goes Hephaestus, it might be best to prioritize them so you can steal their plenty vault, and leverage it to kill the other.
Freyr Hersir spam
Gaia’s Lashing Roots, Kastor’s Elite Guard, and either Kronos’ Drowsy Daze or Poseidon’s Rushing Tides
Again the area of effect damage and the population space are a must. And then you choose from faster Hersir or slower enemies near Kastor.
Very similar opening, still taking Kastor and the starting guard over to Zeus to cripple him, and starting Hersir spam, but instead of going for the healing spring, you’ll be going Ullr for the Asgardian Hill Fort. Build the first one next to your town center, and then grab the tech to make recasting it cheaper around the time that it will be cooling down. Grab about 3 Hersir and put the second fort near Zeus, so you can then build a Ram and kill all his buildings, and TC if you want.
Build up your Hersir army, using idle time to build the Titan Gate as you can, and making sure you keep the slowing researching armory and economic upgrades going.
As you age up, you’ll want the unique Freyr minor gods, for the healing forts and the growing hammers from Aegir and Vidar. Build up an army of Hersir and battering rams and focus either yellow or green until you have it down to a 1 v 1, and then continue to siege them down until you win. Once you have the Vidar giant flaming wolf god power, you usually make quick work of TC with each cooldown, since you’ll have plenty of favor.
Honestly, Freyr is probably better than Loki. It’s more formulaic, but less whimsical. It’s a little more fun to roll the dice with the myth unit spawns.
Oranos Murmillo and Destroyer spam
Gaia’s Lashing Roots, Kastor’s Elite Guard, and either Kronos’ Drowsy Daze or Poseidon’s Rushing Tides
Again the area of effect damage and the population space are a must. And then you choose from faster heroes or slower enemies near Kastor.
Similar opening, but you will want to heroize all six of the Murmillo and get the barracks down right away so you can research bite of the shark. With the 8 total hero Murmillos and Kastor, it should be possible to quickly kill all of Zeus’ villagers and armies, and you can fly your Caladria over to heal them, as well. The Greeks can’t produce fliers, so you don’t have to worry about Arcus or any other ranged units if you don’t want.
You can focus on building strictly Murmillo and heroizing them after researching Frontline Heroics. Make sure to get your infantry line upgrades and armory upgrades as you age up, and go Hyperion for the Heroic Renewal regeneration. As you age up you can start producing Destroyers, and then you can take your destroyers and collect town centers. Being Oranos, it is sometimes possible to sneak a villager down to a corner of the map and throw down a sky passage so that you can then teleport your destroyers behind enemy lines and break their back town centers. Fully upgraded hero Murmillos will kill enemies very quickly, and fully upgraded Destroyers will be very tanky and take down buildings fast, as well as still being quite effective at killing enemy units with their AOE damage.
Hades Cyclops rush
Hades’ Watchful Wiles, and Isis’ Divine Retinue, and Kronos’ Drowsey Daze
Go Ares, grab the Will of Kronos tech, and immediately produce about 5 cyclops and go kill Zeus, and then try to kill Posiedon as well. Focusing villagers only on food to produce more Cyclops. Use Kastor’s slowing ability to make room for the Cyclops to focus town centers. This strategy doesn’t have a lot of late game legs, so you will need to win fast, otherwise your cyclops probably not going to win against both Polyphemus and Perseus, plus and all their little buddies, even if you do eliminate Zeus.
This is potentially the fastest strategy, but also the one that loses the hardest if you fail.
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Additionally, Thor is just slightly worse than Loki and Freyr, for a very similar Hersir spam strategy, but relying on the late game armory upgrades for the benefits of Thor. Odin can do it as well, but has to rely on Valkyrie management and the slower passive healing for his sustain, where the other three Norse major gods have it a little bit easier. Thor and Odin both just feel like worse versions of Freyr rather than Loki and Freyr feeling different. You can I guess go for a Ragnarok ending though, which is kind of fun- a little bit of a gamble, but you can recover if you don’t win on the spot, so long as you don’t lose on the spot, I guess.
It is also possible to win as at least one of the Chinese Gods with Pioneer and Hero spam. It’s just not as good as Norse or Atlantean hero spam.
I’ve heard people say they can do it as the Egyptians. I tried a couple times and failed. And I generally don’t enjoy playing as the Egyptians, so I never pursued a working Egyptian strategy.
Finally, there are indeed map seeds where you can Gaia wall off and win with Tartarus Gate spam, but it’s slow and not sporting. You can also play Gaia as just a worse version of Oranos, but get the Atlas Destroyer shields at the end, which make them super tanky.
Oh, one last thing- and it looks like we’re finally getting an update to the mode, so as more bonuses become available, I’m sure more viable strategies will emerge! If we can get even better versions of the bonuses I’ve listed above- then the strategies will become more efficient and stronger. Obviously I don’t think Kronos’ Drowsy Daze will get an upgrade, since it’s already a red border tier- but the ones that are currently blue tier can go up to purple or orange tier apparently, in the future. I’m really excited for that. I like this mode!
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I tried Oranos Murmillo spam right after I upload the thread, and it worked. Hero area of effect damage is really good. I might try other strategy you wrote next time. Thanks a lot!
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I was playing on hard, too. I finally beat it with murmillo hero spam.
When you get to the Jotunheim one with the Horus World Twist, the exploding mud men strategy is the best on that one, I think, since you can get the benefit of the explosion twice.
It seems like Amanra rush with drowsy daze and lashing roots is pretty OP, too.
With Oranos you can just pop a Caladria out and send Kastor to one town center, Amanra to another and just absolutely cripple two of the AI economies at once lol. Then you might be able to cripple the last one if you were efficient at the first two, but if you have to macro against him, you have gaia’s roots, you can’t really lose a 1 v 1.
Yeah, I think Amanra and Halogi rush is really strong lol
I think I killed all but just one or two villagers for each Zeus and Poseidon with Halogi and Amanra, and then I just had Halogi working down Zeus’s town center with a caladria healing him, and then as soon as soon as Zeus conceded and and Halogi was targeted at Poseidon, he conceded, too. Then I moved everyone to Hades and he conceded at around ten and half minutes. There’s room for improvement though.
That might be the fastest and easiest strategy if you have Halogi and Amanra unlocked lol.
I unlocked Amanra and Chiyou, and Chiyou is really strong and tanky with Rashing roots, it’s OP
At midgame he can fight agaist enemy’s raid army singlehandedly.