An Introduction to Deathmatch: Matei’s Newbie Guide
By Matei · titans
Matei’s Titans Deathmatch introduction explains the mode’s economy, age progression and opening priorities.
Introduction
Here is a little synopsis guide for Deathmatch. This is a guide mainly directed at players of Supremacy, many of whom are unfamiliar to Deathmatch and its intricacies.
The rules of Age of Mythology Deathmatch:
Each game of Deathmatch begins in the Archaic age with 20000 food, wood, gold and 100 favor. Civ specifics are as follows:
- Norse: Five ulfsarks.
- Greek: Ten or so villagers, a Scout.
- Egypt: Twelve or so villagers, a Priest and Pharaoh.
- Atlantean: Six Citizen and three oracles.
Age advances happen instantly after you click the advance button. As soon as you advance an age through a minor god you get all of that god’s mythological technologies as well as all of the regular technologies and upgrades available in that age, instantly, for free.
God powers are granted some time after each age advance for fairness; there’s a timer on the right side of the screen that tells you when you’ll get yours. You usually get your first god power at around 1 minute and your last one at around 4-5. In Age of Mythology: The Titans, you also receive the ability to place a Titan gate (since “Secrets of the Titans” is free) with the Mythic Age GP.
The entire map starts Explored, meaning that you don’t have to scout to find water, cliffs, forests, etc though it’s a good idea to scout to find where your enemy is expanding and what types of units he or she is using.
A favor trickle is given for all civs, providing free favor slowly so that you can mass myth units as easily as human units. Gathering your own favor through normal means for your civ still works though, and it can help quite a bit (Norse have this easy here, but with patch 1.02 TT, their favor trickle has gone down from .5 to .05, a phenomenal difference)
The victory condition is conquest, meaning you have to completely kill all enemy units and buildings to win. Omniscience can not be researched.
Published 02/04/04, AoT v1.02
By Matei
So, what do you need to do well in Deathmatch?
Here are a few pointers to get you on the right track:
Advance through the ages quickly, so you’re in Mythic with your chosen god path by 1:30 or 2:00. However, look at what minor gods the enemy is choosing and try to select yours to counter his bonuses. Take into account the myth units and god powers as well as the upgrades you get from your minor gods, and remember that you get *all* of their myth technologies for free, even their most expensive ones, so don’t be afraid to look for “super-combos”. For example, the technology Valley of Thoth allows Egyptian Midgol units to train in about 3 seconds each as opposed to 9-10; although, at 600 gold, it would be a large investment in a Supremacy game, in Deathmatch many players choose to worship Thoth because the technology is granted for free. Similiarly, myth unit upgrades such as Petsuchos Ra and Gold Collosus are granted for free and are very useful.
Make lots and lots of military buildings, starting in Classical Age. Deathmatch is all about speed, do not start your economy until you are in Mythic age (or if you lack resources, for the daring 😉 Try to build the rax a bit forward but don’t waste villager walking time and make sure they don’t get destroyed by the enemy. Usually you should have at least 8-10 of your main kind of building (Longhouse/Barracks), though I would be more comfortable with 10 or 15 even. Many players use buildings not only to produce military units but also to retain control and line-of-sight of important areas. As the game progresses, create more military buildings closer to your enemy and also around Settlements, chokepoints and other key areas of the map.
Make millitary units constantly, but use them smartly and waste none of them. However, if you do, you will not be as taxed as you would in Supremacy. For in Supremacy, 6 hoplite dead means a lot of wasted food, in Deathmatch…it is a trifle. Make sure that you have a balanced army and are always at your population limit. In The Titans expansion pack, you may use the autoqueue feature to make each of your buildings create units in a particular ratio so your overall ratio of unit types is what you want, and in “vanilla” Age of Mythology use Ctrl-number groups to let you select all buildings of the same type using a number and order the units you need at them.
Remember that every unit in Age of Mythology has strengths against a particular class of units and weaknesses against others. This can be either because of the unit’s attack type and armor level, or because of damage multipliers it recieves against certain units. Thus by making the appropriate counter-unit and having it kill a more expensive enemy unit, you are basically making the enemy’s resources go to waste, and with the extra resources you have you can attack harder and do more damage. The battles in a Deathmatch game are all about countering the enemy unit mix with yours and managing units to make them attack their counters. Even if you have, say, Odin super-Jarls with all the upgrades they could ever hope for, don’t send them into your opponent’s dirt-cheap Horus Spearmen because you’ll lose the game in the long run.
Grab the Settlements on the map early and defend them against attackers. Early in the game, population space is by far the most important resource, and almost all the fighting occurs around settlements. You do not want your enemy to have even 20 more population space than you under any situation, because in that case they can get 8-10 more soldiers and overpower your army. Remember that an army’s efficiency grows FASTER than its cost as the number of units in it increases. For example, if you are attacking a fortress that kills one ram every second with 3 rams that do 1 damage every second, then they will do 3 damage for the first second, 2 for the second one (a ram died), and then 1 for the third one, or 2 damage/second and 6 damage total; if you attack with only 2 rams, then they will do 2 damage the first second and 1 in the second one, for 1.5 damage/second and 3 damage total; thus when you go from 2 to 3 rams, you pay 50% more resources but do two times more damage. The extra few units that an enemy has because he has an extra Settlement could enable him to do much better against you.
Don’t forget the mythological units. The free favor you constantly receive as part of the game and the ability to gather your own favor so easily by making temples/ monuments/Town Centers or getting kills makes Myth Units very worthwhile in Deathmatch. Also, remember that your myth units get all of the mythological upgrades your minor gods granted, even the most expensive ones. Also remember that it is much easier to get Myth Units in large groups in Deathmatch, and many myth units are better in large groups. For example, Manticore, Fenris Wolves, or Mummies, while not too threatening alone, can do serious damage if you have 7-8 of them along with your regular army. If you’re at 100 favor then you’re wasting it and giving your opponent an edge. Make several temples and use them to train units along with your normal army.
Use hotkeys. Give your buildings Ctrl-groups (select all buildings of the same type then press Ctrl-# to add them to a group, then just press # to select them; the “#” here can be 1, 2, 3, etc up to 9 so you can have 9 groups). Use keyboard shortcuts to train new units. pressing 1 U to order an Ulfsark at each of your 10 barracks is so much easier than clicking them and clicking the Ulfsark button. Know how to use the Shift key to order 5 of a unit or make a builder build several buildings one after the other. Set rally points of your buildings to places where you want your units to be (if you grouped the buildings in number groups, just press the number and right-click where you want the rally point to be). If you have some “special” groups of units such as a raiding party of fast myth units or some builders, give them number groups as well so you can find them easily. Finally, under the Player Options screen, enable the Idle Millitary Banner which appears at the top of the screen; shift-clicking this allows you to select all idle soldiers so that your forces are always doing something useful.
Don’t forget your economy. When you reach Mythic, switch your town center(s) over to making villagers or dwarves, and go for the resources which will run out first ( probably gold), then for the others. Remember to build dropsites or oxcarts near resource sites (I’m amazed that many new DM players don’t do that!). Make lots of villagers since you’ll need them later on and you want your transition to depending on your own economy instead of the starting resources to be smooth. Always establish a trade route, and make it as long as possible (trade with allies’ Town Centers preferably). You can do this by placing the market(s) from which you want to produce trade carts in a corner. A good number to aim for is 20 caravans and about 20 villagers on each resource (or 5 Atlantean villagers), although having more is not at all a problem if you need extra resources. Always protect your economy from enemy attacks. Build walls and many towers, and keep line-of-sight over all parts of your land. Remember that as Deathmatch goes on, it becomes more and more similar to a game of Supremacy in mythic age, and it’s not so much about keeping your army busy as it is about ensuring you actually have an army.
I can’t stress the importance of an economy enough: even though you start with 10000+ resources of each type, they will surely run out by 10-15 minutes into the game, and you don’t want to be caught defenseless because your enemy had some dwarves mining gold during the first few heated battles while you didn’t. Go raiding from the sides or from behind the enemy base once in a while. Take out enemy houses and economic units as the highest prioirity, but definitely try to grab Settlements if the enemy lets you. This can really cripple and distract your opponent and allow you to win the front lines at very little cost. As I said above, as the game progresses, players’ home economies and home bases become more important and you want to make your enemies focus on theirs, not yours. In addition to using raiders to attack the enemy economy and housing, also use your god powers: an Earthquake for example might take out 4 barracks on the battlefield and set back the enemy production for a few seconds, but if you use it on 10 clumped houses the enemy will be 100 pop space below you for a few minutes and also likely lose some villagers and other units that were near the houses. Similarly, an Underworld Passage could mean your 5 Helepolis pop up in the enemy town and destroy it – probably a much better benefit than, say, Ancestors or Bronze in many games.
Published 02/04/04, AoT v1.02
By Matei
The toughest unit available in the game is the all powerful Titan. He is not invincible, certainly not so in Deathmatch. A Titan can be extremely powerful against a player that doesn’t have one himself, and it has little trouble going through large enemy armies because of its special attack.
There are three ways to deal with enemy Titans:
The safest way is to destroy the enemy Titan Gate before he ever releases one of these monsters. This should be your main priority should the enemy place his gate. Remember, this gate is not an ordinary building like a fortress or a barracks: once it’s built, the enemy gets an almost unstoppable unit. Although, in Deathmatch heroes are massable easier than in RM, so Titans aren’t *that* invincible. They can be defeated by building and wall spam. Also, once the gate is gone, unlike a fortress or a barracks, the enemy cannot build a new gate. You should do your best to take the enemy Titan Gate out unless you would suffer very heavy losses. Luckily, taking out a Titan Gate before it is completed is easy for most civilizations, because you get your fourth-age god power at the same time you get the Titan Gate power. If you’re Greek, fly several Pegasi towards the enemy gate and either Earthquake it (this will basically always be guaranteed to kill it) or use Underworld Passage to bring an army and siege units. If you’re Egyptian, you have access to either Tornado or Meteor, which with the help of some chariots, camels, Anubite or other fast units to give you line of sight of the gate will be enough to destroy it. If you’re Atlantean, use either Implode to suck in all the enemy villagers/soldiers near the gate and destroy it, or Vortex to bring your army there, and 1 minute later, when Vortex recharges, a second Vortex to go back to the battlefield if needed. Finally, if you’re Norse, Fimbulwinter combined with an attack (and maybe walking woods or flaming weapons) should be pretty effective. No matter what civ you are though, you can attack with normal troops and you should make sure the enemy never gets a Titan out.
The second safest way is to make your own Titan and fight the enemy one. Titans get a very large attack bonus against each other so most of the time the Titans will destroy each other and the game will progress in a balanced way. Many civilizations can get building speed bonuses that would allow them to create a Titan faster, and some can get access to god-power blocking structures (Hesperides Tree or Isis Monuments) that make it harder for an enemy to attack the gate without sending a full army there. Also, keep in mind that Titans count as Myth Units so they benefit from myth unit upgrades like Bast’s Eclipse god power, Hera’s Monstrous Rage or Hekate’s Mythic Rejuvenation affect them. This can give you the edge over an enemy Titan. In any case though, make sure you have human units to support your Titan when attacking an enemy one. If you are lucky enough that yours survive, use it to take out town centers and houses as well as forward buildings – basically it is the ultimate siege weapon with an additional ability to do well against most types of enemy armies.
The most unsafe way is to try to counter a Titan using normal units. However, sometimes you’re forced to do this, either because you couldn’t make your own Titan or because maybe you’re saving yours for later after most of the god powers have been used and you want to get an advantage then. Remember that Titans count as Myth = Units and also have fairly low crush armor. Thus there are two main types of couters you could use – heroes, which have bonus damage against Titans and also are unaffected by Titan special attacks, and crush damage units, like Fire Giants (in fact most Myth Units do crush damage and most have a damage multiplier vs other myth units so almost any myth unit could work). Use ranged units if possible: they are usually much faster than a Titan and he simply cannot catch up to them and beat them because they can attack from several sides and run back. Also, remember that Norse Jarls and Greek unique units Myrmidon, Hetairoi, Gastraphetes) get a bonus vs. myth units when fully upgraded, so they could do pretty well (especially the Gastraphetes, which are ranged and do crush damage). Still, if you let the enemy make a Titan while you don’t have one, then you can expect to have trouble – very often it means that he or she is the better player.
That’s it guys, for this short 😉 introduction. There is only one more thing to say to get you on your way: the best way to learn Deathmatch is to play games yourself, participate in the forums and/or look at the strategy guides and recorded games people post. Deathmatch is a lot of fun and very intense when it is played well, and it is a great way to spend 15-20 minutes when you are looking for a quick game.
See you on the battlefield!
-Matei
Source: Matei · HeavenGames