Guide

The Essential Athena Rush

Zeus is definitely considered one of the stronger gods today. He can do many different strategies, and it's hard to know what's coming when your opponent is Zeus. The reason Zeus is so versatile is because he is Greek, meaning the basis of his civilization is balanced (no one portion of his gameplay particularly stands out as strongest). This means unlike Atlantean or Egyptian, it's hard to predict what he will do on any given map. One of these strategies linked to Zeus is the Athena rush or gold strangle. Depending on the setup of the map or the civ you are playing against dictates which of these he will most likely try and do.

So why is the Athena rush so strong? Zeus's units are strong and expensive. This means his economy is going to take more of a toll producing mass Classical units, especially expensive Hoplites, and his villager production will suffer. However, with good eco management, the "expensive" part can be heavily outweighed by the fact his units are the strongest, as long as they are used with care.

The perhaps most crucial aspect of the strategy is Restoration. If used right, it almost gives your units a second chance at winning the battle, saving Zeus a lot of resources trying to reinforce his expensive army. If used right, it can give you the game by itself, unlike many other Classical god powers. Aside from Restoration, Athena gives your strongest units, your Hoplites, two huge upgrades, each improving their hack and pierce armor respectively. This is just another step at making your expensive units deal more damage before dying and having to reinforce them.

The strategy I am going to explain is the strategy most Zeus players use against Norse and Eggy on low/central gold and low/central food maps, with my own personal touch on the strategy (simply because I know how I do it better than I know how anybody else does it from first-hand experience).

Archaic Age: Build Order and Planning Ahead

Let's start with the build order. The objective is to reach Classical at a decent time (most often at 5:15 or before) with the economy to have enough resources to produce units out of three military buildings, as well as keep a fairly solid villager queue out of your Town Center.

Here's mine, but please do modify to something that suits you better:

1. 3 starting villagers to food
2. 3 to food
3. 3 to wood
4. 3 to gold (last one makes house)
5. 3 to food
6. 1 to wood
7. 1 to gold
8. Build temple
9. 1 to food
10. 1 to wood
11. Build Jason
12. Press advance button @ 4:15

Notes: If you're looking to rush sooner and the map suits it, forget the last 2 villagers and Jason. Only get Handaxe, no Pickaxe.

Scouting

Scouting is crucial, and there's no excuse because Zeus has the best scout in the game. By advance, you should know:

• Where his starting gold is
• Where his outside gold mines are
• Where his outside hunt packs are (if applicable)

Knowing where the outside gold mines are is extremely important, because vs. a good player it's hard to get to their starting mine, especially if it's located in a back corner of their town.

Norse vs Egyptian Differences

Against Egyptian: Eggy gets free tower upgrades and free houses to protect them. Aim to prevent Eggy from reaching their second gold instead of wasting a lot of expensive units vs. tower fire. It's still important to give it a shot, especially if their starting gold isn't protected by a tower or is very forward, but chances are they won't be.

Against Norse: Take a more direct approach and use as many units to prevent him from mining gold as possible, as well as killing his more expensive buildings and unupgraded towers to cripple him.

Classical Age: The Rush

You should already have your temple waypoint at his tower protecting his starting gold, or his pack of hunt he's currently at. This makes sure you're getting instant use out of your free Minotaur. You should have already begun this same process with Jason if you built him before you advanced. The only scenario where he shouldn't be harassing the other guy is when there is a helpful relic on the map that relates to the rush (like infantry train faster or infantry have more hack armor).

Upon Advancing

Slightly before advancing, mentally mark which three villagers you will use to build your barracks and ranges. More often than not these are 3 food villagers at a forward hunt pack. You don't always have to forward build when doing this strategy, but it can give an advantage.

Upon advance, a few things should be done simultaneously:

1. Have those 3 villagers start building 2 Military Barracks and 1 Archery Range
2. Send your scout around his other hunt packs, then sit at his 2nd gold mine (shift-click)
3. Set your TC waypoint to gold until you have about 7-8 on wood (to afford Odysseus fairly early)
4. Auto-queue units out of those 3 buildings, setting their waypoints to his gold or wherever is most crucial
5. Send those three builder villagers back to hunting

Economy Management

From here on it's managing your economy best to accommodate making soldiers. A few things to keep in mind:

• Never have more than 10 on gold with Pickaxe
• Don't let your wood get cluttered
• Make sure you don't have a bunch of hunters at one spot

Fighting

From a fighting standpoint, you want to press his starting gold as best as possible and keep him inside his base. Microing to keep your expensive units alive and getting upgrades when available (after getting full pop of course) is important as well. Keep in mind how much gold he has left and when he will need to try to make his move to his other gold mine, if he's not dead yet.

The real strength of the Athena Rush is that a Norse or Eggy player can mass an army to compete with yours to try and reach their 2nd mine, but Restoration gives you basically twice as many units.

Using walls to prevent him from getting to his mines, or letting your army make a quick escape from being outnumbered can change the game. The most important thing is that you are pressuring him and making him make the hard decisions — you set the tempo.

Additional Notes

I decided not to get much into water maps. The only maps you will be going straight for land on will be Midgard and maybe Highland, and the basic concept is the same, except the build order to get a good amount of fishing ships is more flexible and should be tailored yourself. The biggest difference will be deciding how to compensate for most likely losing your fishing ships when you abandon sea for land.

Some people have asked me why I don't do Mino+Tox. I find it takes too long to get set up, which gives the Norse or Eggy player more time to get prepared, and Minotaurs aren't as good at killing buildings as mass Hoplites. This is the same reason why the only time I would ever recommend going 2 Archery Range / 1 Barracks is on very low hunt maps.

That's it for my short guide to the Athena rush. I was sick of watching Zeus players boom, so here's a little nudge to be more aggressive!