Age of Empire is a real time strategy game for Android devices. You can download it at the Google Play Store for free. Age of Empire is a massive multiplayer online game (MMO), which means you play with a lot of other humans on one of the many servers.
Invitation Code for new comers
First of all, newbies can use an invitation code, when they first install the game. The invitee gets 5 free gold, which is one of the currencies in the game. Gold is the rare currency which you usually get, by buying it with real money. 5 more Gold gives you a really nice head start.
If you are new to this game and want to try out the game, please use this invitation code: 5299869696 for free gold!
How to get started – The tutorial
Age of Empire has a really nice tutorial, which gets you started pretty good, if you follow the instructions. Pretty early in this tutorial you are prompted to spend 1 gold, to speed up the production of some troops. Don’t do it! It is not necessary to continue the tutorial and an utter waste of precious gold.
If you follow the tutorial, you will build some resource buildings, a warehouse, city hall and barracks, as well as some troops. You should do all that. In the beginning all building times are negligible and you will always have some stuff to do. After a while the building times begin to increase. That’s the time where you probably want to use your troops. You should think carefully before attacking a wild, because your n00b protection will stop the first time you attack something.
Resources
The following information might vary from server to server.
There are 4 kinds of resources: wood, stones, iron and food. You need them in different amounts for constructing buildings and to train troops.
- Wood
- Stones
- Iron
- Food
Most of the time you will have more than enough wood. This is the cheapest and most seldom used resource. Don’t capture forests!
You need stones to train catapults and to upgrade you city hall. Apart from that, the use of stones is negligible.
Iron is important for building troops. You need a lot of it. Go and capture some high level wilds!
Food is the only resource which gets used up without building something. Your troops eat up the food you produce. Therefore your actual food production is: amount of produced food – amount of troops = food surplus.
Food is also important for building troops and upgrading your barracks. You will need some good wilds to cover your expanses here as well.
In the late game however, it might be preferable to not produce food at all and buy all the food you need, because your troops eat up too much.
Important: Never hoard resources. Neither in your warehouse nor in your inventory. There are two reasons for that.
- First, resources in your warehouse can be stolen. Be sure, to empty your warehouse each time you’ll be offline for a longer period of time.
- Second, resources can and should be used to level up faster. The earlier you spend resources, the faster you level. It does not matter on what you spend the resources. It depends on what you need.
Just remember: stocked resources are wasted resources! You should however have a emergency stock of resources in your inventory. How big it is, is up to you. Be self-critical and ask yourself often, how big your emergency stock has to be. Use up everything else.
Troops
There are four kinds of troops. Each troop is strongest against one other type of troops.
- Infantry
- Cavalry
- Archers
- Catapults
Infantry is strong against archers. They are the strongest defense unit.
Cavalry is strong against catapults.
Archers are strong against cavalry.
Catapults are strong against infantry. They are the strongest attack unit.
This suggests, that you should build every kind of troop to adjust to the enemy you are facing. However the advantage over the antipodal troop type is so little, that it is negligible. Therefore I would like to compare the troops with a costs / attributes measure. In this calculation attribute are the values attack, defense and hit points summed up.
- Infantry: 600 costs / 50 attributes = 12
- Cavalry: 567 costs / 42 attributes = 18
- Archers: 293 costs / 33 attributes = 16
- Catapults: 292 costs / 43 attributes = 19
One attribute point costs 12 resources
One attribute point costs 18 resources
One attribute point costs 16 resources
One attribute point costs 19 resources
This shows that infantry has the best cost-benefit ratio, followed by archers. I would like to make another calculation however, because not all the resources are worth the same. In this second calculation I completely ignore the wood and stone costs, (because you usually have more than enough) and consider the ‘precious’ iron and food resources only.
- Infantry: 390 costs / 50 attributes = 7,8
- Cavalry: 757 costs / 42 attributes = 13,5
- Archers: 534 costs / 33 attributes = 8,8
- Catapults: 834 costs / 43 attributes = 6,7
Personally, I prefer the second calculation and build infantry and catapults only. I’ve seen people fight with catapults only as well. What kind of troops you build is up to you.
I discourage the use of cavalry, because they are too expensive and I discourage the use of archers, because they are too weak.
Battle formations
When you attack an unoccupied wild or other players there are several things to consider.
The easiest way to get wilds, is to take them from other players. For that, one hero with 6 troops of any kind is sufficient. But take into account, that this way, you will get attention of other players and probably get retaliation attacks. You should however attack 2 wilds from other players each day, for the daily quest “The victor is king” which gives you 200 free fame each day.
To understand the basics of troop formations, you should know the concept of decoy troops. Decoys are heroes with just one troop on it. When decoys get hit, you will only lose the one troop, no matter how big the attacking enemy stack is. Decoys are a perfect way to reduce you losses and to train your heroes (see The tower). Decoy troops should be archers, because they are the cheapest troops.
There are two good formations for occupying wilds. Wilds are held by NPC (non player character) troops. The higher the level of the wild, the more troops are stationed there.
This is how your formation should look like.
– N –
WME
– S –
(north, west, middle, east, south)
Requirement: Formations only work (best) if your strong troop, is strong enough to kill an enemy stack with one single hit.
Formation A
This formation is recommended for the lower levels of the tower.
N a decoy troop
M a strong troop (ie catapults)
E a strong troop (ie infantry)
S a decoy troop
With this formation you will only get casualties, when the enemy has four troops. The only dangerous enemy formation is a four stack formation with a really strong south troop, because that stack will hit you once in the second round of battle.
No other formation will be able to deal significant damage to you (providing you are able to one-hit the enemy stacks).
- Pros:
- Good to level a weaker hero, because he can stay protected behind the stronger one.
- In the tower this formation won’t change after a refill! This is a big time-saver!
- Cons:
- Heavy losses in tower, when the enemy has only one stack which is too strong to one-hit. Therefore this formation is only useful in the lower levels.
Formation B
This formation is recommended for the higher levels of the tower.
N a strong troop
W and M a decoy troop
S a strong troop
In most cases this formation is as good as formation A. In some cases even better.
With this formation you will only get casualties, when the enemy has four troops. The only dangerous enemy formation is a four stack formation with a really strong middle troop, because that stack will hit you once in the second round of battle.
No other formation will be able to deal significant damage to you (providing you are able to one-hit the enemy stacks).
- Pros:
- Minimum casualties formation
- You can go to higher levels in the tower, because you get four free attacks on a single-stack enemy.
- Cons:
- In the tower this formation has to be reassigned each refill. A huge time-killer!
- Both of you strong stacks are on the front. If you miscalculte you will get more casualties.
Important: The strong stacks must be able to destroy any enemy stack with one hit.
With these formations your losses will be reduced to a minimum, because your strong troops will get hit only once by a full enemy stack.
These formations work in the tower as well and can be used against players. Fighting players however is a more complicated topic, where one should adapt to the enemies tactics.
Getting prestige
Prestige is extremely important. The more prestige you have, the higher your player level will be. Your level determines how many wilds and stronghold you can occupy. Therefore getting prestige is your main objective. There are several ways to get prestige:
- The victor is king
This is a daily quest, which gives you 200 prestige. You should do it every day. To complete the quest you just have to take two wilds from enemy players.
- Arena
Each day you can fight in the Arena for 15 times. Each victory gives you 10 prestige. This way you can get 150 prestige (and 3000 resources of each kind) a day. Do it daily.
- Dragon
Once a day you can attack the dragon. Killing the dragon is not the objective, unless you have several tens of thousands troops to spare. But you get 20 prestige and some gold and resources, if you attack the dragon even with one troop only. Do it daily!
- Fighting players
If you find enemy troops you can beat, destroy them. Each killed unit gives you 1 prestige. This is by far the best way to get prestige fast.
- Buildings
You get prestige for every upgrade on any of your buildings. The higher the level, the more prestige you get.
The tower
Once a day you can enter the tower for free. In the tower you fight against NPC troops. You start at level one and fight your way up the tower. The higher you get, the bigger the enemy stacks will be. The tower is the best way to level up your heroes fast.
In the tower it is very important to use decoys. One the one hand, it reduces your losses enormously. And on the other hand, the two remaining heroes level up twice the speed, because they kill all the enemy troops on their own. The only drawback of using decoys in tower is, that you can’t use the fill-up button anymore. Each time you lose an archer, you have to close the tower and refill your troops with the hero menu.
Important: To close the tower, use the ‘X’ button in the top right corner. Pressing the ‘exit’ button will forfeit your daily free tower run and you have to start again at level 1 on the next day.
You should fight in the tower until your heroes are unable to one-hit an enemy stack. When you are unable to one hit, consider carefully if you want to go on. From that point on, you will get casualties. After you quitted the tower, the next day start from level 1 again.
For the tower I recommend a combination of formation A (see Attacking formations) and formation B. Formation A is good for the lower levels and to train one weaker hero. Formation B is good for the higher levels of the tower.
Do the tower daily!
Daily tasks
- Tower
- Arena
- All daily quests (except trade master)
- Dragon
- Treasure hunt
Thanks
Thanks for reading my strategy guide!
Feel free to comment on this post, correct me, thank me or point out some missing important information. If you liked this strategy guide and you are new to this game, please use my invitation code the first time you start age of empire: 5299869696. You will get 5 free gold as a reward!