Sando’s Guide to Ra
By UKAK_Sando · vanilla
An original-game Ra guide from UKAK_Sando, with explicit early-patch context for its economic ideas.
Introduction
As a long standing Age player, and a boomer at heart, Ra has been my favourite civ since the start of AOM, and the one I use in the majority of games. Ra is a powerplayer’s dream, with a combination of strengths that get your economy booming, and the troops and upgrades flowing.
This guide will attempt to give you an insight into Ra, and how to get the most from playing him.
Ra’s Bonuses
- Pharaoh empowers at +25% rate
- Priests can empower
- Chariot Archers and Camels have 20% more hit points, and move 10% faster
- Monuments cost 25% less and have +20% hit points.
The first of these bonuses is the most important. Ra’s priests can empower buildings – which has far reaching consequences for the duration of the game. The immediate effect is that it frees up the Pharaoh to go scouting – with his much better LOS – while the priest stays home to empower your first granary. This gives you arguably one of the best non-Greek scouts, who can also collect relics and deposit them safely in your base for when you have a temple. The disadvantage of scouting with your Pharaoh is that he can’t build obelisks, but I think it’s worth the trade off.
The next effect of this bonus is that you can mine gold early, build a temple, and produce more priests to further boost your economy. This makes Ra the only major god who can exponentially increase his economy before Heroic age without the use of Fishing Boats, and gives you potentially the fastest collecting villagers in the early game. This has a “ripple effect” as the games continues, as the earlier you gain economic advantage, the more resources you will have to gain a greater advantage later.
The other use of empowering priests is that you can use them to help “panic” build Houses, Barracks, Towers, Migdol Strongholds, Town Centers and the like – and improve their production rate – even when your Pharaoh is dead or away. (Please note, empowering the TC does not make it research or build faster, although it does generate extra resources as per a gathering site, see below.)
The improved Chariot Archers and Camels are easy to use, and make the option of attempting a fast Heroic age more appealing, and are simply better later in the game. Cheap monuments can be built earlier and for a lower cost, making collecting favor less of a drain on your other resources.
How Does Empowering Work?
Empowering yields extra resources when used on economic buildings, increases production speed for military buildings, decreases technology research time, decreases the build time of any building under construction, and makes buildings fire arrows faster.
The only exception to this is the Town Center. Empowering the foundation of a town centre, and dropping off resources to a town centre work as normal, however, empowering it does NOT increase production speed, or decrease research time.
At an economic building empowerment offers two advantages – every time a villager drops off 10 resources there, you receive 2 extra, free. Every time a villager drops off 15 resources there, you receive 3 extra free. This is equal to a 20-25% increase in gather rate, and like Mayans in AoK, means your resources “last” 20-25% longer. (As you’re taking 10 out, and receiving 12.)
How do you best use Empowering?
Empowering priests are best early in the game, as although they are not as efficient as villagers in terms of population and cost, (unless you have 9 or more villagers working from the site they are empowering) they allow you to spend more resources on improving your economy – they are “effective” rather than “efficient”. Put simply, if you can only make 5 villagers, it’s better to have 5 villagers and an empowering priest, rather than just 5 villagers – and that’s exactly the situation you’re in until Heroic age, or hitting the population limit in Classical.
Usually in Archaic age I’ll make an extra 2-3 priests, and have them empower all my main gathering sites. Priests pay for themselves in about 2 minutes on an average gathering site with 5 villagers working there, after that it’s pure profit. (They’re also handy for healing or a sudden response to myth units!)
Empowering also puts you in a paradoxical position with regard to multiple gathering sites. Normally you want to have several gathering buildings as close as possible to the resource you are collecting – this minimizes walking distance and villager bumping. However, with empowered gather sites, you’d have to provide additional cost/pop intensive priests to empower them all – or have a single, but empowered site. This means that empowered gathering is the efficiency of the priest vs the efficiency of the individual villagers. Increasing one decreases the other. This means that if you have a priest available, build a single gathering site and empower it, or if you don’t, build multiple sites.
Later on in the game, using priests to empower is only worthwhile if:
- Empowering a building with 9 or more villagers working at it. (A TC surrounded by farms is a good example of this.)
- Empowering the market to keep up the vital supply of gold. (Again, Markets frequently have a lot of economic units working at them.)
- Empowering a gold mine, (or wood if it is scarce) to make resources last longer when they become scarce. Have many villagers working there to maximize the priest efficiency.
- Empowering a monument to gain extra favour. (This is not at all efficient, but is the only way an Egyptian player can speed favor gathering once all 5 monuments are constructed – if you want to do this, always empower the monument to Villagers first, then the monument to Gods, then any of the others. Be aware this only produces a 5% increase, not the bigger increase on other resources.)
Ra’s God Power – Rain
Rain is an economy boosting power that offers a tremendous 300% boost to your farming, 200% boost to your allies farming, and the same 200% boost to any enemies farming. This makes rain something of a mixed blessing, as it will benefit your opponent(s) as well as you (and your allies).
Tessentially gives you two choices about when to use rain – either early on, before Greek and Norse opponents can build farms (or many farms), but meaning that you have to invest in farms early – or waiting and using it when you need an extra boost of food. Later on, combining the Locust Swarm power to destroy enemy farms, and then casting rain can help to minimise an opponent’s advantage from this.his
The choice with rain is essentially down to the map situation, if you’re on a map where you have to farm early, do so, especially against non-Egyptian opponents. If you’re making good use of local hunting and stacks of herd animals, wait until you have a decent number of farms. And most of all, remember to empower your TC/granary(s) when using this power! Also, getting the Husbandry tech is useful, since while vils gather at a lightning rate, they need to spend time walking to drop their food! Husbandry reduces this by making them gather more efficiently and carry twice as much.
Ra’s Mythic Upgrade – Skin of Rhino (50F 5Fv)
Ra’s myth tech is effectively a “suped-up” Loom, offering increasing attack and armour to villagers. This upgrade is extremely effective in Archaic and early-mid classical age in making you difficult to raid and harass – as villagers with this upgrade are more than capable of taking down a smaller number of military units for minimal losses. They still have to be micro’d to do so however! The disadvantage of this upgrade is the long research time (40 seconds), which can mean that it’s too late by the time you get it, and valuable TC time is taken up with it.
The Archaic Age
You have a number of choices to make in Archaic Age with Ra, as different maps and strategies offer very different choices. The usual first step is to secure your food supply, and begin scouting. Usually researching Hunting Dogs or Husbandry immediately is a good idea, depending on what your knowledge/scouting reveals about the map. Also remember with Egypt that most of their building are either ‘free’ (although most cost at least 20 resources in terms of villager time lost, due to their slow build speed) or cost gold – so your wood collection should be light, and your gold collection heavy.
Early Ra strategies then branch in a number of different directions:
- You could concentrate mainly on food collection, and bring back your pharaoh to empower the gold pit – giving you the potential to quickly advance to the Classical age.
- You could collect just enough food to maintain villager flow, and then start immediately mining gold so that you can build a temple and more priests.
- You could collect wood and boat boom on some maps.
- You could collect gold early and drop farms before casting rain.
- You can aim to collect sufficient food and gold to quickly advance to Heroic Age right after Classical Age.
Each of these branches has its uses, and you need to choose between them depending on the map, your opponent, and your strategy. As a general rule, I tend to use the second branch, and get more priests out to empower my economy – this is strong on most maps and sets you up well for the standard mass troop production of Egyptian classical age.
The other economic factor to consider is favor. With Ra’s cheaper monuments, they’re easier to build into your start. Because of the way Egyptian favor collection works, this leaves you in something of a dilemma. On one hand, building a monument straight away prevents you from building a temple as early, and/or researching the Hunting Dogs upgrade – damaging your early economy usually. However, the first monument collects favour quickly, and can be equated to “an extra villager or more” compared to a Greek who would have to send villagers to pray to collect favour (and takes up no population). Hence, the earlier you can get it up, the more you’ll gain from it.
The decision here is again about your overall strategy, players are still finding the best route to take in classical fighting, and there is much discussion about using or completely ignoring MU’s at this point. However, personally I think at a total cost of just 76 resources (i.e. One Egyptian military unit) you should build it as early as you can post-upgrade/priest, and trying to remember to build monuments once you’re involved in heavy classical fighting can be difficult.
Choosing whether to research more economic upgrades is again a decision you have to make depending on the circumstances. However, in this aggressive game it’s usually worthwhile to not hang around in archaic age for too long.
Ideally you want to have all the food you need to advance quite early (giving you the option to click up as circumstances dictate), and a well balanced economy heading into classical, giving you options.
Overall Situation
Ra has arguably the most powerful economy in Archaic Age of any God, and should set you in good stead for the next age. However, you have no attacking options at this point, and should aim to get to Classical in a decent time, and a strong position. Be wary of very fast attacking Norse and Set players who may try to disrupt your early economy – although you can give them a nasty surprise back with your strong villagers, priests and mercenaries if necessary.
The Classical Age
Classical age is probably the most difficult time for Ra, as it is for the other Egyptian Gods. On most maps you’ll want to quickly lay down multiple cheap barracks so that you can start mass producing troops – these build slowly so use multiple villagers and possibly priest/pharaoh too.
Egyptian classical units are essentially counter troops, so reliant on numbers and good micromanagement to be effective. The main advantages of Egypt are the strength of your economy and defences, the low cost of your troops and buildings and the effectiveness of your troops against their target units. You also have a very powerful “free” hero in the form of your pharaoh, (which combined with the extra priests you have dotted around your economy) makes you difficult to take on with Myth units.
For me, fighting in classical age with Ra is all about survival and trying to gain an advantage over your opponent going into Heroic. Your troops are relatively poor at killing villagers and so the most you can hope for on the offensive is cost effectively defeating the enemy army, map control, destroying some outlying buildings and/or damaging their economy by forcing their villagers off resource collection. If you can successfully gain an advantage though, it is enough to force many players to resign.
Ptah is the Egyptian god of creation and technology. He offers a good variety of military and economic upgrades, plus a handy God Power and Myth Unit. These are as follows:
Improvement: Scalloped Axe (100F 10Fv)
Researched at the Armory, this technology gives a 10% boost to the attack of Axemen. Unless for some reason I have excess food, and heavily using Axemen, I’ll usually leave this technology until later in the game, as Copper Weapons is a higher priority and upgrades all human troops.
Improvement: Leather Frame Shield (200W 20Fv)
Researched at the Armory, this technology gives a 10% boost to the pierce armor of Spearmen. This upgrade is useful for boosting the already quite reasonable resilience of Spearmen to missile attack, although like Scalloped Axe, it’s a lower priority than copper shields as it only boosts the armor of a single line. Usually I wouldn’t research this until later in the game unless I had a lot of excess wood and favor, or was facing another Egyptian player in a Slinger war.
Improvement: Electrum Bullets (150G 10Fv)
Despite it’s name, this isn’t one of Batman’s secret weapons. Researched at the Armory, this technology gives a 10% boost to the attack of Slingers. If you’re making heavy use of Slingers and have collected excess gold, this upgrade can be helpful, as it does give your Slingers a touch more punch in attack. Again, it comes behind the copper upgrades in priority however.
Improvement: Shaduf (200W 10Fv)
The Shaduf is a farming improvement that makes it easier to move water into irrigation channels for agriculture. It cuts the cost of farms from 70 gold each to a mere 47, and makes them build twice as fast. On most maps with a reasonable amount of natural food, it’s possible (perhaps desirable in many cases) to delay farming until you have researched this upgrade, offering a great deal of saved resources. Combine with the Rain god power and a fast heroic time is very possible even when fighting heavily.
Myth unit: Wadjet (150W 15Fv)
These venomous snakes offer a relatively cheap and powerful ranged unit to accompany your troops into battle. They aren’t particularly tough compared to other myth units, but with a monument or two up, and a good wood supply coming in for your slingers already, they are affordable, don’t damage your advancement time, and offer good value for population at 3 each. As a bonus, Wadjets regenerate HP constantly.
God power: Shifting Sands
This versatile power can be used in numerous different ways – including many we probably haven’t thought of yet! It can be used to transport all of your units within its area effect, a random number of enemy units or a combination of both, to anywhere within your LOS.
The obvious use of this power is mobility – you can quickly transport a large number of your units a long distance, to attack, defend or help an ally. This is particularly useful on maps with natural barriers, such as Islands or Alfheim, where it can be used for surprise attacks and forward building.
There are a number of less obvious uses however, one is to disrupt the enemy during a battle – by transporting a number of his units to a remote location, and you can swing the battle in your favour. Another is to transport enemy villagers into a trap, such as a walled enclosure or your waiting army.
Bast offers a more economic choice than Ptah, with upgrades to increase your villagers’ productivity.
Improvement: Sacred Cats (110G 10Fv)
This boosts the productivity of your farmers, is cheaper than the comparable farming upgrade, and can be stacked with it. Once you have multiple farms up, combine this with the Rain power for lightning fast food. (However, it does have slightly questionable effects. Check out the exact effects of Sacred cats here.)
Improvement: Adze of Wepwawet (100G 10Fv)
Almost impossible to pronounce, this…thing increases the speed that trees are chopped down, and increases gather rate by 10%. However, there seem to be some bugs associated with how it stacks with other lumber upgrades…again making its benefits slightly questionable.
Improvement: Criosphinx (250W 15Fv)
This upgrades your Spinxes by improving their hit points by 50%, their hack attack by 20%, and their crush attack by 50%. If you already have multiple sphinxes, this upgrade makes them even tougher.
Improvement: Hieracosphinx (400W 20Fv)
This can only be researched after Criosphinx. It further improves sphinx speed by 20%, hack attack by 20% and crush attack by 50%, offering an extremely powerful unit. However, the high favor cost of Sphinx production combined with the cost of the upgrades can make this difficult with Egypt’s linear favour collection.
Myth unit: Sphinx (200F 20Fv)
The legendary Sphinx is a lion with a human head. It is comparatively expensive in terms of both food and favor for classical age, but is also easily the best unit available to Egypt at this time. The Sphinx is very tough with high armor and HP, making it particularly resistant to missile troops – realistically an enemy will have to include heroes to tackle Sphinx. The Sphinx has a crush attack on top of it’s normal hack, which doesn’t really affect its damage vs units, but makes it highly effective against buildings. It has a damage bonus against other myth units too, and has a special attack that does extra damage.
God power: Eclipse
This power is a little bit difficult to use effectively, but looks very intimidating if nothing else. Eclipse causes the day to turn to night for a full minute, during which all your Myth units (enemy units are not affected, allies’ ones are) become even more deadly with 20% more speed and 50% more attack, and no other god powers can be cast. It is useful for making your sphinx even more powerful however, and if you’ve managed to get a good number of them together, this power could well spell doom for an opponent with no heroes.
A useful side effect of Eclipse is to effectively block other god powers for its duration. This makes it very useful in certain situations – for example it can be cast just as your surprise rush reaches your unprepared Greek opponent’s base. He may have been relying on Ceasefire to protect him, but now has to endure a full minute of attack before he can cast it – potentially making all the difference. Another example could be casting it just as you engage in a major battle – this would prevent your opponent from swinging the result through god powers like Bronze or Ancestors.
Units
There are three main military land units available to Ra in the classical age. These are as follows:
Spearman (50F 20G)
Spearmen are the backbone of the Egyptian army in Classical, with good overall armour, speed, attack and a low gold cost. Spearmen stand up fairly well against all enemy units (bar counter infantry) and their speed and pierce armour makes them better against missile units than most other infantry. Spearmen receive a 1.1x damage multiplier against cavalry units, which makes them win cost-for-cost, but they are much less effective than AOK’s pikemen line.
Axeman (40F 30G)
Axemen are the Egyptian equivalent to Greece’s Hypaspist line, boasting good hack armor and a huge 4x damage multiplier against other infantry units. However, axemen have a comparatively small base attack, and very low pierce armor, making them largely ineffective against non-infantry units.
Slinger (60W 24G)
Slingers are Egypt’s answer to ranged units, boasting a 4x damage multiplier against them and a reasonable pierce armor. However, like the axeman, they suffer from a very low base attack that makes them ineffective against other units unless massed. Slingers also counter throwing axemen (with a 3x damage bonus against them), Hypaspists and Axemen (receiving a 1.3x damage bonus against them).
Overall situation
With the free tower upgrade, the availability of mercenaries, massed counter unit production and a good economy, fighting an aggressive defence with Ra is usually the best bet in classical age. Try to attack to focus the battle on their base rather than yours, although this isn’t always possible. Make sure you micromanage battles closely so that your units are always attacking their target unit, or your troops can be very ineffective.
The low population limit means that you’ll be a little bit of a disadvantage against Greek players (with their superior quality units) once you’ve both hit it. Hang in there by upgrading your troops, quickly replacing your losses and mixing in a few myth units. Rely on spearmen as your best all round unit, and mix in plenty of slingers and axemen where they’ll be effective.
Ptah is my usual choice when advancing, as I prefer his God Power, Myth Unit and technologies. However, Bast is useful on some maps, and the Sphinx is a strong unit, especially for absorbing damage.
The Heroic Age
Heroic age is when Ra really comes into his own, with several quality new units available. They are much more expensive than your counter units however, and gold quickly becomes a major issue in early heroic. You may want to build a market immediately if you have an excess of food or wood when you need gold.
Making a Migdol stronghold is a priority early on, as this allows you to quickly produce Chariot Archers, Camels and Elephants. Ra’s Chariots and Camels receive extra speed and hit points, making them even more effective. You can now also claim settlements and build siege towers. With the availability of these strong units, it’s time to go on the offensive. You’ll probably still have a large army of counter troops, so upgrade them and mix them in with your Migdol units to form a balanced force. Chariots and Camels are ideal raiding troops, as they are fast moving with a good attack. Use your main army to support the push forward into neutral territory to claim much needed gold and new settlements.
Also worth a mention at this point is Mercenary Cavalry. While expensive at 120 gold each (and dying after a short time), they have excellent base armour at 60 hack & 70 pierce – making them extremely durable in combat. Make use of them if necessary.
You’ll want to lay down the majority of monuments now your economy is strong to maximise your favor gathering.
Ra has Hathor and Sekhmet available when advancing to Heroic age. These offer quite different abilities and the choice of which to go with will vary from game to game.
Hathor is the goddess of the sky, and love. She offers a rare (for Ra) offensive god power, two myth units and a few potentially useful myth technologies.
Improvement: Sun Dried Mudbrick (300W 25Fv)
This technology reduces the building cost by 15%, and boosts the hit points of all buildings by 10%. Since many Egyptian buildings are free, this is not a huge advantage, although it does offer savings on expensive strongholds, town centres etc.
Improvement: Medjay (250F 25Fv)
This technology increases the lifespan of mercenaries by 30 seconds (approximately 66% more), making it useful should you be making much use of them.
Improvement: Crocodopolis (400W 30Fv)
This technology enhances your Petsuchos with another 4 range, even allowing them to outrange fortresses. Buy if you have several Crocs and plan to make more.
Myth unit: Petsuchos (200G 20Fv)
Described by many as “giant crocodiles with laser beams strapped to their heads” these slow moving units have an extremely powerful and accurate long ranged attack. They have a lot of hit points and pierce armour, making them very useful against ranged units, if less so against melee units.
Myth Unit: Roc (150G 15Fv)
These giant birds have no attack, but act as an air transport – carrying up to 15 units at once. They are extremely useful on maps such as islands and Alfheim where they can bypass land defences to launch surprise attacks.
God Power: Locust Swarm
This power unleashes a plague of locusts on the farms or fishing spots of an enemy player. The locusts destroy the farms, attack enemy units and in doing so directly add food to your stockpile. This power is useful to cast around the enemy TC, especially when raiding. You may want to cast Rain immediately afterwards while a portion of your enemy’s farms are destroyed.
Sekhmet is the Egyptian goddess of warfare and the desert. She offers a range of improvements to your ranged troops and siege weapons.
Improvement: Bone Bow (250W 20Fv)
This technology improves the range of chariot archers by 4, further improving their abilities. Definitely one to buy if you’re using chariots heavily.
Improvement: Slings of the Sun (200G 20Fv)
This technology greatly improves the effectiveness of your slingers – offering a 30% increase in damage against infantry units and throwing axemen. Definitely purchase if you have (or plan to use) large numbers of slingers, and against norse players.
Improvement: Ram of the West Wind (400G 20Fv)
This technology makes your siege towers even more effective, offering a 20% increase in crush attack and hit points. You may or may not wish to research this depending on whether you plan to continue utilising siege towers in mythic, or switch fully to catapults.
Myth unit: Scarab (300F 20Fv)
These giant beetles are living siege weapons – with an additional crush attack and a 5x damage modifier Vs buildings. When killed, they damage nearby units with their acid blood. To be honest, I’m not very taken with them as they aren’t really much better than siege towers and would only use them if I was running low on gold and/or wood.
God power: Citadel
This power instantly upgrades one of your (or your allies) Town Centers to a much more powerful Citadel. This is very useful for fast defence in the same way as the Sentinel power, or as a way to bolster an ally or forward position. A particularly sneak tactic is to conduct a lightning attack on a major enemy town center, throw up your own in it’s place, and then cast Citadel to give you a powerful attacking building in the midst of his base. Citadel also boosts your maximum population by 10.
Units
There are several new units available to Ra in the Heroic age. These are as follows:
Chariot Archer (100W 40G)
These troops are arguably one of the most powerful human units in the game. They combine a ranged attack, speed and fighting power into a single unit. Chariot archers work well using the classic “Horse Archer” tactic of firing at a slower moving enemy before retreating, stopping and firing again. This infuriating tactic makes them extremely potent against infantry units, especially when carefully micromanaged. Chariot Archers are ideal for scouting and raiding, as they can swiftly ride through an enemy economy, pick off some villagers and be gone before the enemy can retaliate. Keep them moving and they can constrict or cripple an enemy economy.
The main weakness of using Chariot Archers is that they require a lot of wood to construct – something Egyptian players don’t collect a lot of. Chariots also takes up 3 population slots.
Camelry (50F 70G)
Camels are Egypt’s mainline melee cavalry unit. Although they lack something of the shock power of Greek Hippikons, they have a dual role as cavalry and anti-cavalry rolled into one. Like in previous age games, Camels receive a 1.8x damage multiplier against other cavalry, and also have the speed and hit points to be useful against ranged troops.
Camels make a good companion to Chariot Archers, and are very useful for running over combined cavalry/archer armies that aren’t as easily countered by spearmen. This unit takes up 3 population slots.
War Elephants (180F 70G)
Elephants are practically small myth units in terms of their statistics, cost and taking up 5 population slots. Elephants have a 3x damage bonus against buildings, and their combined hit points and pierce armour make them very resistant to missile attack. Elephants excel against fortresses, towers and absorbing other kinds of enemy fire.
Overall situation
Egypt’s best troops all become available in this age and the impact of your good early economy is strongly felt. If the classical age was more an exercise in defence than attack, then it’s vital to make up for lost time now. You have access to some excellent quality raiding troops that can truly terrorise an enemy civilian population. Be sure to continue using your barracks troops to provide numbers however, as they make your force more rounded. Be sure to start trading, as ensuring a steady supply of gold is vital.
Picking a god can be difficult, Hathor’s GP and techs are a little weak (if useful), while her myth units are very useful. Sekhmet offers a good range of techs and GP, but her myth unit is pretty useless.
The Mythic Age
The mythic age is a continuation of the Heroic age for Ra, with the main differences being the availability of ranged siege units, and some very strong god powers and mythic upgrades. The main problem for Egypt compared to Norse and Greek in the mythic age is the way they collect favour. While it is “free”, steady and requires no population, you have no way of gathering it any faster – and strong Myth units are what you want when population is limited.
The best way round this is to grab some of the mythic upgrades for your units such as Spearmen, Chariots and Camels to really beef them up, then mix in as many myth units as you can in a steady stream. Your catapults and ranged troops are excellent, so use them extensively. Any relics you can grab (especially the Ankh of Ra – which provides extra favour) are very useful.
There are two powerful gods to choose from for Ra in the Mythic Age, both of them offering strong upgrades for different unit lines, and a terrifying Myth Unit and God Power.
Osiris: The God of Judgement is a useful ally to any Egyptian player, offering a choice of well rounded bonuses to various troop types:
Improvement: Desert Wind (400G 40Fv)
This upgrades offers considerable bonuses to the Camel line, increasing speed, attack and hit points by 20%. If you’re using camels, this upgrade is extremely worthwhile.
Improvement: Funeral Barge (500F 30Fv)
This upgrades gives your siege ships a damage multiplier of 2x Vs archer ships. This allows you to make good use of siege ships later in the game where value for population is very important. Protect your kebenits against ramming ships and you should rule the sea. (Note this is the only Egyptian bonus to your navy available as Ra!)
Improvement: New Kingdom (200G 25Fv)
This upgrade gives you a second, free, respawning Pharaoh to combat your enemies. Mythic Pharaohs are arguably the game’s best Hero unit, and the arrival of a second Pharaoh sets you up nicely for using Osiris’s god power…
Improvement: Atef Crown (300G 30Fv)
This upgrade makes your mummies more potent by increasing their attack by 40%, their hitpoints by 20% and doubling the lifespan of the minions they create with their special attack. Very worthwhile if you’re using mummies.
Myth unit: Mummy (200G 35Fv)
Osiris’s myth unit is the legendary Mummy. These undead pharaohs possess a reasonable ranged attack, but excel because of their special attack. This instantly turns an enemy human soldier or myth unit into an undead minion who will attack his former friends, before crumbling to dust a short while later. Several mummies make an extremely effective force against any army and need fear only heroes, however, because of Egypt’s favor collection method, fielding large numbers of mummies can be difficult.
God Power: Son of Osiris
Osiris’s Son of Osiris (SOO) God power is rightly feared. Cast upon your pharaoh, it transforms him into an even more powerful unit who wields chain lightning against his foes. He is especially powerful against myth units and can bring the greatest of them to their knees.
The down side to SOO is that he cannot be healed by any method – which means that he will go down eventually if he keeps taking damage. He can also be instantly killed by Zeus’s bolt power (and will be resurrected as a normal pharaoh). You also need to be aware that his hit points will be dependent on that of your Pharaoh when he’s transformed – so it’s important to get one fully healed or recently resurrected before casting.
To get the best out of SOO, use him from behind a shield of other units and try to avoid ranged units that can pick him out. This way his devastating attack can still be used and many players get so desperate to kill him that they almost ignore your army and take decisive losses trying to get to him.
Horus is the Egyptian God of Vengeance. He offers strong upgrades to your infantry lines, a tank of a Myth Unit, and easily Ra’s most destructive God Power.
Improvement: Axe of Vengeance (300W 25Fv)
This technology means that your axemen do double damage to buildings, allowing them to quickly rip them down. Useful only if you’re using axemen a lot.
Improvement: Greatest of Fifty (300F 40Fv)
This technology adds considerably to the potency of your spearmen line against melee units, giving them an extra 15% hack armour, and a 100% damage bonus against cavalry.
Improvement: Spears on the Horizon (200G 25Fv)
This technology offers more improvement to the spearmen line (add it to Greatest of Fifty, and Ptah’s Leather Bound Shield and you have a very cheap and effective unit) – with 30% more hit points and 10% more attack.
Myth unit: Scarab (250F 30Fv)
Horus’s myth unit is the aptly named Avenger. The Avenger is an extremely brutal melee unit with a special attack that damages all enemy units close to him. With an attack of 28 and 600 hit points, the Avenger excels at rushing into the middle of a big fight and ripping apart anyone stupid enough to come near him.
This suicidal approach to combat does tend to get your Avenger’s killed sooner or later though, and it’s best to combine them with human units so they don’t get too isolated.
God power: Tornado
This is easily the most devastating offensive power in Ra’s arsenal, throwing units into the air and ripping buildings apart. The first thing to be aware of is that Tornado does damage your own troops and structures – so don’t cast it too near them. The second thing is that Tornado wanders randomly, so it best used in the middle of a mass of enemy buildings.
Tornado really excels at smashing an enemy strongpoint, even fortresses and town centres can succumb to it, and any units in the area will be badly mauled. It’s best to cast tornado, and quickly follow it up with a full on attack to finish the enemy in one move.
Units
The only new unit available to you at this stage is the Catapult. This useful ranged unit allows you to attack enemy buildings from a much safer distance, and can be kept near strongholds and behind defensive troops. They don’t have the same ability to take and inflict damage as siege towers however.
Overall situation
The Mythic age is a mixed blessing for Ra. You have arguably the best human troops and good siege at your disposal – along with unlimited numbers of ranged heroes and the free pharaoh. Favour is something of an Achilles heel though, as your supply tends to be limited compared to other cultures.
Both of Ra’s mythic age Gods offers an improvement to an anti-cavalry unit, and this means that they are less of a threat to you. Your ranged units are powerful and an AOK pike/archer/ranged siege style army with some priests and myth units mixed in is very effective.
Your choice of Mythic age God really depends on the situation. Horus tends to be better in situations where gold is tight, as his upgrades benefit your cheapest unit, and the Avenger only requires food. His God Power is ideal for cracking a hole in a tough defence. Osiris is better when gold is plentiful, as Mummies are very effective en masse (as they tend to stay alive and their numbers grow, where Avengers are hard to keep alive). He’s also the choice when facing an enemy going heavy on Myth units, as you get two Pharaohs, and can transform one to Son Of Osiris – easily the best myth unit killer in the game. (Also again the Mummy is handy vs other MU’s.)
I hope this has given you some insight into how to play, and play against Ra in games – hopefully we might see him used more now. Good luck, and may all your Pharaoh’s be called Steve. Or possibly Mike.
-UKAK_Sando
Source: UKAK_Sando · HeavenGames