Era of Myths How to play

[Velensk]

Following in the steps of the creator of the Era, and finding myself in a postion where I had not much else to do I've writen a breif guide on all the Era of Myths factions. These are not as in depth as the ones for default, but they will help new players.

These guides are now out of date, as JW has returned and added a large number of severe changes, and I havn't had a chance to playtest with them

These are not set is stone and all seeing, these are just my opservations, I intend to update this as I work with the era. Many matches I don't know enough about to say anything due to insufficent testing.

[Velensk]

How to play Celestials:
Celestials are one of the best factions at fighting out in the open. The theme of the celestials is their ability to boost each other though variouse abilities. In general, per cost celestials units are ineffective, however when teamed togehter they are a force to be reckoned with. Move your light spirts (with illuminate) and your messangers (with inspire) around behind lines to give the entire line the bonus.

In general attempt to keep your forces buched together without loseing control of your villages. A good recruit against an unknown opponent would be a either one of each, or replace the zelot with a legionair.

-Messanger: these units will boost adjacent units by 10% damage, they are also fast, flying, and decent fighters. Always try to have one about.
-Light spirt: Celestials bring their own daylight with them, using these you can start your attack early and finish it late, or do extra damage when defending. Their arcane ranged isn’t bad either, and thier a scout. Beware of lawfull opponents taking advantage of the light. (frequently a priority target for enemies)
-Crusader: has healing and weak-moderate melee power. Has both blade and arcane at it’s disposal.
-Legionair: Basic melle unit, without messanger/daylight he is a solid defender with a relativly mild melee attack. With them he is a hard hitting rock (especialy if strong)
Wizard: Not quite as hard hitting as other magicians, but with inspire/daylight he comes close, and is tougher to make up for it.
Zealot: Cheap fast ranged that can pack a punch with help. Not as durable as other celestials.
Against Vampire: All your units except zelots will get extra damage, and light spirits light is great, but beware, vampires will outnumber you, and blood hulks are hard to take down unless you can eliminate support.

Against Warg: Pry them out off rough areas with inspired wizards and daylight, protect your wizards from stalkers. They will probably defend against you with bears, these are tough opponents but with enough ranged firepower they can be brought down.

Against windsong: Avoid fighting them at night even with spirts. Use ranged units on gatekeeprs, and kill scribe whenever you can. Keep in mind the tactical mobility of this faction (aside from gatekeepers)

Vs Elementals: Protect your wizards, beware of them using your light against you. Have arcane and fire attacks around.

Vs Therian: One of the most ToD independant battles out there. Bring crusaders to nullify posion, and take cats out with wizards

Vs devilings: Try to keep all your villages and kill those little buggers as quickly as possible without losing units. If you are ever strong enough to ammass a organised forward attack, do so, and you will find that you can melt away their hordes. Bring extra crusaders, messagners, and spirits. Zelots are also worth their money.

Vs Celestials: Have a good mix of ranged/melee units, light spirts are less usefull than in most match-ups. More testing required.

[Velensk]

How to play Elementals:
Elementals are a hodge-podge group. However when combined effectivly they can be a good force. They rely on their mobility, mobile healing, and swarms of windspirts.
In general your forces will consist of wind servants and unicorns with a mix of the others depending on what faction your opponent is. A good starting recruit against an unknown opponent is 2wind 1unicorn 1fire 1vine beast, and one rock.
-Unicorns: Your biggest damage dealer, also a healer, very valuable, but vunerable to peirce, and risky to attack melee heavies with.
-Wind spirts: Cheap, fast, flying, no upkeep, and ranged attacks make these a very important part of your forces. They don’t do allot individualy, but you can get many of them to swarm enemies who expose themselves.
-Vine Beasts: Effectivly an uber elvish fighter that is lawfull. Rocks in forest, but is somewhat fragile elsewhere. Fears magical fire attacks. A good idea against most opponents.
-Animated Rocks: Slow, expensive, weak, but amasingly hard to kill for the number of hit points they have. Don’t get too many, but don’t overlook them.
-Fire Creations: A solid fighter, but lacking in firepower against enemies not weak to fire. regens/fights well in desert.
-Tidals: Very hard to kill in the water, but dies easily elsewhere, not a hard hitter, but then it hardly needs to be.

Against Vampire: Fire is a good investment, as are unicorns. Try to kill apprentices, to fight blood hulks eliminate support then mob them with ranged attackers.

Against Warg: Depending on what your enemy recruits you probably want to attack at day. Warg are one of the few enemies more agile than you so be carefull about that. Try to keep them out of woods. Only wisps are good at attacking fire, so use them as a solid wall. To take out bears swarm them with wind spirits.

Against Windsong: Your priority targets are scribes and weavers. Fire is good here, but suceptible to scribes. Unicorns are good against most windsong units except gatekeepers, but will get shot up by weavers. Vine beats works well agaisnt everything except seekers and scribes. Windsevnts can peg gatekeepers not in cover to death.

Vs Celestials. Use their light against them, attack at night with fire, and wind. Defend at day with beasts. Kill wizards if at all possible.

Vs Therians: You can’t be posioned (yay) however between monks apprentices and guards he can counter anything you throw at him. You have a hard time killing cats. Kill monks/apprentices with unicorns, and use massed wind to blow away guards. There is no good way to remove cats from fortifed positions.

Vs Devilings: More testing required. Don’t use fire, protect your unicorns from nailers. Vine beast are probably your best other to unicorns and winds

Vs Elementals: There is no good counter to beasts in forests, but fire gets them when their in the open. Servents get fire good, but the opposite is also true. Unicorns arn't especaily good against any other elemental.

[Velensk]

How to play Vampires:
Vampires are an odd mixture of swarming and eliteism. Your general fous is on protecting your bloodhulks/apprentices with a swarm of fledglings

You rely on the power of your heavy hitters and your flegling swarm to make up for your relative lack of speed and vunerabilities. A good starting recruit would be 2-3 fleglings/thinblood, a gargoyal, a bat, and either a blood apprentice or a hulk.
-Fledgeling: Cheap, relativly hard hitting, with a backstabing drain attack that does less total damage than the sword even when backstabbing. Also vunerability to fire/arcane/pierce. A staple of your force, best in numbers.
-Thinblood: A capable archer unit, however lacking in offensive firepower due to neutrality. Less vunerable than other vampires. A good support
-bloodborn cheaper and faster than a goblin, but just as frail and even softer hitting without a ranged attack.
-Bat: cheap annoying scout unit.
-Gargoyal: An alternate scout, but more usefull in combat, his resistances, defences, and neutrality make him a good mobile wall.
-Blood apprentice: Much like a mage, except with an arcane attack, and vampire fangs/vunerabilites, also slightly more expensive.
-Blood Hulk: Big, Slow and mean, these things are effectivly living battering rams that can regenerate and get stronger by killing. Protect them well and try to bring their awesome firepower into effect (has a good amla).

Against Celestial: Most of their units will get damage bonuses against you in addition to their inherant advantages. Try to batter them with supperior powr and numbers on the first night before they can attack you effectivly. Extra thinbloods reckomended.

Against Warg: Apprentices are great at rooting out warg, but vunerable to counterattack, beware stalkers trying to assassinate them. The olny thing they have that is great against hulks is wips, so try to kill those off.

Against Winsong: Attack at night with all the power you can muster, you will need it. Apprentices/hulks are good at fighting keepers. Fledglings can handle seekers. Beware of weavers and scribes. Scribes can cripple your hulks, and weaver hit fleglings with devestating ranged power.

Against Elementals: you can’t drink their blood or eat them. You are best going with large numbers of fleglings and apprentices. To kill unicorns try to backstab them with fangs. Protect your apprentices well, they are your olny counter to fire/vinebeasts. Gargoyals make good walls.

Vs Therian: Be sure to have hulks around put protect them well. Therians have many units good at killing them. Hulks and apprentices effectivly counter cats/gaurds. Beware of posion. At day bloodborn make good cheap roadblocks to anything except aprrentices. Try to avoid letting them pincushin you.

Vs Deviling: Have at least one hulk, and protect it well. Keeping your hulks allive and killing is key to this match-up. Don’t let them steal your villages if at all possible. Use your fangs and feeding to keep healing yourself in the fury of their onslaught.

Vs Vampire: More testing required.

[Velensk]

How to play Windsong:
For the number of units in your arsenal there are surprisingly large number of ways to build your army. Windsong don’t have any huge damage dealers, and they are expensive, but for that they can be an amasingly effective force, with plenty of tactical mobility and special moves to pull.
In general you rely on the defence of the gatekeeprs/weavers, the mobility of courtiers,seekers,crystals and the combined offence of seekers,weavers, and scribes. It’s up to you to decide how to build your army though. There is no one correct way.

-Shards: decent survability against most enemies, horrible against others, weak attack. Their primary asset is teleport, and the fact that if they lvl up they become very dangerouse.
-Courtiers: Fast floating, and surprisingly good at playing a mobile wall (unless enemy uses cold), good at pegging melee olny enemies with a bow.
-Gatekeepers: A very good unit, however no ranged attack or resistances to magic, and slow. A very good defencive unit that enemy melee units will likly not want to attack.
-Seekers: a good thing to have around, skirmishing, fast, and agile, with both mediore melle, and weak magical ranged. Having these around tends to open up interesting tactical options.
Weavers: You will ussualy want these things about, them being fairly durable, with healing, a good ranged attack, and an arcane melee attack.
-Scribe: Very powerful, but very vunerable. They have an almost 100% chance to slow an enemy down and will deal some damage at the same time. However they have no melee attack, and few hp.

Against Vampires: I’d go extra heavy on the seekers and weavers, try to have a scribe around to slow down hulks. Slowed hulks can’t retreat, and can be pegged apart by weavers and seekers.

Against warg: your enemy is very agile, but has olny one unit that can attack gatekeepers effectivly. Scribes are likely to be assasinated. So save them untill you are sure you can protect them.

Against Elementals: Extra weavers to handle unicorns and spirits, protect scribes.

Vs Celestials: Try to kill the wizards and messangers. Try to kill spirits too given the opertunity.

Vs Therians: use weavers to help with posion. Both factions are defensive so be prepared for a long match. All of them have ranged attacks so they can peg gatekeepers mercielessly.

Vs Devilings: protect your villages, crsytals gets some extra damage, seekers are good dues to increased mobility. Kill them as quickly as possible without losing units.

Vs Windsong: Has a tendancy to be a very slow match. More testing required.

[Velensk]

How to play Warg:
Warg are a mobility face faction with a focus on melee. You fight well in the wild, but not so well on villages or castles. You have accsess to all three allinments.
In general try to strike your enemy where he is weak, and assassiate his mage type units with stalkers. Your build varries much with your enemy, but a good build for a random opponent is 2 warrior wolves 1 stalker, 1 cub, 1 wisp, and a shapeshifter.

-Warrior Wolf: Expensive, and not expressly hard hitting, but very fast in many terrains and better at dodging in snow forest and cave than most. Also fairly durable.
-Stalkers: Not quite as tough or as hard htting as a warrior, but a skirmisher with two damage types.
- Wolf cub: a cheap fast scout with a marksmanship melee attack
-Shapeshifter: A very typical unit with very few remarkable features. It is the olny warg good at defending villages.
-Wisp’o’Will: Your olny archer type, moblie with a flurry of atacks, but not expressly strong.
Naga: As always, in the process of being replaced
Bearcub: A very heavy tank that is lawfull. A good defence against lawfull oppoents, but epensive and not a quick or as good at dodging as the rest of the faction.

Against vamprire: Fight at day with lawfull and neutral units, and hold of at night with your typical units. Try to assassinate blood apprentices.

Against Celestial: Hit hard at night and slink away before they can bring their concentrated might on you. Don’t fight in the open unless you have no other choice. Kill wizards.

Against windsong: more testing required.

vs Elementals: have stalkers around to deal with unicorns, and wisps to attack the units vulernable to them.

Vs therian: beware of posion. Kill apprentices. try to control the forests.

Vs Devilings: Have all alinments around, and don’t stop fighting them at any time of day, except to recouperate. Kill them as quickly as possible, and don’t let them steal your villages. Strong warriors can kill many devilings in one hit at night. Bears can rend appart their oppoents at day.

Vs Warg: made interesting by the alliment factor you can try to focus on night, or go with a mix and try to attack at day with bears. However, wisps are neutral, and they are the only ranged unit out there, this makes offence tricky.

[Velensk]

How to play Therians:
Therians have easy reach to all damage types and posion, in addition every unit on the faction has a ranged attack.
In general you’ll defend with cats and serpents, and attack with your lawful units. A good starting recruit against an unkown opponent woudl be 1 serpent 1 gaurd 1 cat 1 falcon and 1 monk, and one other of your choice.

-Guards: Cheap, durable, with an excelant ranged attack for a base melee unit. However lacking in melee firepower.
-Monks: effectivly a tough arcane archer. More hp and melee damage than most archers +imapct resistance and a chance to have an extra ranged damage. A very good unit.
-Apprentices: Like a mage except frailer, less hard hitting, but cheaper and sporting both fire and ice attacks and resistances.
-Cats: High hp, good defences, and movement, but expensive and not a hard hitter
-Falcon: fast flying support
-Serpents: Very cheap posion and a footpad lvl ranged attack.

Against vampire: Kill the hulks and the apprentices, attack at day with lawfull units, defend at night with serpents and cats.

Against warg: use posion and ranged attacks allot: try to press at day, but beware of bears.

Against Windsong: more testing required
Vs Celestial: One of the least ToD dependant matches. Have lots of serpents, and try to kill crusaders.

Vs Elementals: You can’t posion them, but you can counter all their units with your lawfull units. They don’t have a good way to kill cats.

Vs Deviling: Monks are good. Cats are good. More testing is required.

Vs Therian: More testing required.

[Velensk]

How to play Devilings:
Devilings are one of, if not the, cheapest faction ever created. Devilings are incredibly fast and numerous, which makes them unparralled at village stealing and swarming. However there is a catch, your units die very easily. However because your units are so cheap if you can ruin your oppoents economy and focus on killing his units, you can aford to lose 2-3 units to his one. Devilings are masters of chaos, but will die when an organised enemy gives a well planned attack.
In generaly you weaken enemies with cursers/flappers and finish them with nailers/overgrowns/sneaks. A good staring recruit against a random enemy would be 2 sneaks, a flapper a curser, a nailer, and an overgrown.

Sneaks: Should be one of the most numerouse components to your army, they are cheap fast, good at dodging, and can hit as hard as a grunt when backstabbing, which they do frequently due to skirmish. On top of that they have no upkeep.

Cursers: For 10 gold you get 14 magical cold damage at a range. Not a bad deal when you throw in the lack of upkeep and the good movment.

Flappers: flying scouts, also provies minor melee and fire ranged damage.

Nailers: Very cheap, and quite dangerouse, but don’t go over board on them because of their unreliability, but have a few around for when you need to deal about 17 damage in one swing.

Overgrown: the only lvl 1 in the faction. It provides much needed toughness, zoc, and solid melee hitting power.

Vs Vampires: Eliminate support then kill hulks by teaming it with cursers and flappers. Flappers are good for their fire ranged attack/village stealing.

Vs Warg: This match-up is tough as your enemy has units of your allinment and the opposite allinment, and has high defence while resisting your magic. On the other hand your enemies units are much more expensive than yours, and not that much quicker, so just steal their villages and mob them.

Vs Windsong: more testing required

Vs Therian: have extra cursers. Kill monks

Vs elementals: nailers demolish unicorns. Use sneaks and overgrowns on windservents.

Vs Celestial: Kill the light spirits, try to force them to split up by stealing villages. Don’t let them get an attack rolling, run away if you must. Use your mobility to your advantage.

Vs deviling: An increibly chaotic match-up, zillions of little units all very good at killing each other. Have a good mix of everything except maybe flappers.

[monolith94]

Um, on how to play, is there any way to play era of myths single player? I get that there's no campaign, but when I try to do a multiplayer game of myself versus the AI, I can't figure out how to set up an era of myths map...

[Velensk]

Era of Myths is an era, it's not a map, it's a set of factions that could be played on any map. After you download it, go to a multiplayer create game menu, and find the little box under the picture that says "default". Click on that and move it down to Era of Myths. The same applys to any other Era you download.

Era of Myths campains are in the works right now, but I don't know when they will be finished.

[JW]

This is a great idea Velensk.

[Weeksy]

Could mirrors be touched on?

[Velensk]

If you request, but I don't have much experiance with most of them, and many of them arn't very remarkable.

EDIT: the template is up, but as I said I didn't have much to say about most of them. It also got me to relise that I need to play a deviling mirror at some time.

[Mabuse]

Era of Myths is indeed a nice thing -

i love EE + EOM + default

as a convinced loyalist player is must say that the Celestials are one of the best factions, they completely match with my loyalist style of play and bring their own daylight with them. LOL

really extremely nice faction these celestials

[Sombra]

THx for the nice guide Velensk. I love the develings, sneaky , evil grerat vilalge stealers.

The only faction which really dominates them are the windsong with gatekeepres... They get squashed like little annoyning bugs by them.