Your Late Game Options for Gold Dependent Civs

Age of Empires: DE I - Discussion
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Multiplayer of course.

Curious how others approach the late iron game with civs such as Greek, Carthage, Macedonia, Yamato, etc where all bronze and iron age civs are gold dependent. The obvious answers are towers and tool age axes, slingers and bowman, those last three won’t accomplish much unless your opponents are also gold dependent and they are out of gold too.

I guess if a person is aware that gold is almost gone you can prepare a wonder. That won’t work in conquest victory games but it will in standard. In mid iron I concentrate on cheaper iron age units to stretch the gold out as long as possible like Greek phalanx or legions.

When we can choose civs I will always go with one that at least has access to scythe chariots to mitigate the issue, but I admit it is fun to go Random civ and live with what the aoe gods give me.

I don’t think there is some hidden secret, just curious what strategies others use when the game goes long in iron.

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The last patch did a lot to address this issue. Before it running out of gold in 4v4s on highland was an inevitability and barring a miracle the side with more scythe civs would win.

Now this is no longer the case. Still, if the game eventually does reach that state you want to first and foremost spam resources to your scythe capable teammates while harassing the enemy so hard his brain gives out. Jihad+towers, archery ranges/barracks/stables painted inside their walls, 10 attack scouts are nothing to scoff at. A single bowman can halt a complete woodline if not addressed. You might not be able to fight their army, but you sure can beat up their economy. A villager not working is almost as good as a dead villager.

Still, teammates should send their gold to you first. Macedon cents are an almost unstoppable powerhouse in the lategame and the greek cent flood is not much worse. Yamato horse archer hordes end games on their own. The most important part is no different though and it’s what happens before gold runs out.

Map control. Gold units are much stronger than scythe and thus if your enemy has to resort to scythe when you can still kill them with cents/eles/legion, you’re still running a much more efficient economy. Get all the gold you can, tower the golds you can’t and then get them, sneak a couple tcs on their golds, wall all over the map to control woodlines. If you end up with 80% of gold on the map, you probably win before it runs out. It’s a real possibility they can run out of wood before you run out gold.

I have not seen gold run out in 1v1s in the new patch, not once. The games end before that. Being unable to mine gold, quite often instead so remember to secure your resources!

2v2s, 3v3s same thing.

Basically 4v4s on highlands are the only games where this happens now. Remember, if you run out gold to mine but your enemy has gold in the bank, gold still has not run out. You just didn’t do a good enough job of getting it. Check the statistics after the game to see how you did.

I honestly see more games where one side loses due to lack of secure woodlines than gold running out these days.

You can actually trade for gold semi-reliably if you have a safe route in very long games too but usually on those maps winning the water for safe trade wins you the game already.

But assuming a 1v1 game would get to a point where all gold has been used up and the other side has prepped scythe, with all other things being equal you can wonder and wall but I’d give it 5% chance to succeed at best. Unless it was a game for high stakes, like bragging rights, I’d propably just get out.

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