← Back to the wiki

Everything in Aetas comes out of five resources. Split them wrong and you get an army that does not grow, or a treasury that does nothing.

The five#

A worker chops or digs until it is full, walks to the nearest drop-off and goes back. So walking distance is half your harvest: a camp next to the vein is the difference between twenty and thirty wood a minute.

Forests are in the way#

A forest is not scenery, it is a wall. You cannot walk through it until you have cut a path. That cuts both ways: the forest protects your flank, and the forest stops your army when you are in a hurry. Check the minimap for the gaps before you march anywhere.

What runs out and what does not#

Berries run out. A berry patch covers the first few minutes; after that it is farm plots around your mill, and those cost wood. Miss that moment and you stand still. A farm plot gives 350 food before it is used up — the Greeks get three times as much out of one.

Stone, gold and iron do not. A vein holds enough for a whole match. What limits you there is not the supply but the space: only eight workers fit around one vein at a time. More workers in the same spot gain you nothing — a second vein does. Iron has one extra condition. It is on the map from the first minute, but you cannot work it until you reach the Iron Age. Until then it sits there dulled, so you already know where you will be going.

The small patches near your town are for the first ten minutes; the big deposits are further out and worth defending. In most matches, the first fight happens at one of those big veins.

How many workers?#

A rough split that nearly always works:

• Food — about half. Workers, infantry and ages all run on it.
• Wood — about a third. Buildings and ranged units.
• Stone, gold, iron — the rest, and only seriously once you need them.

Keep making workers until you have around thirty. Every worker you do not make is a unit you cannot afford later.

Research that pays for itself#

The mill, the lumber camp and the mining camp all have research that permanently raises your harvest — fifteen to twenty-five percent a step. On twenty workers that pays for itself within a few minutes. At the town center, Baskets (Bronze Age) and Handcart (Middle Ages) each let your workers carry 25% more per trip, so they walk less for the same harvest; Leather Aprons (Stone Age) gives them 15% more hit points, and Drill (Renaissance) makes every unit train 25% faster.

There are sixty-eight technologies in all, spread over thirteen buildings; twelve of them belong to one people only, two each. Some make everything else cheaper: Guilds (university, Middle Ages) takes 15% off all research, Oil Lamps (university, Iron Age) makes it 20% faster, and Coinage (market, Middle Ages) makes every unit cost 15% less gold. The full list is on the technologies page. Select several buildings of the same kind and research is spread over them: two barracks research two upgrades at the same time, and each new order goes to the building where it will be done first.

Upgrading units costs no research#

A spearman does not become a swordsman by way of the university. You select the unit and press the upgrade button on the unit itself: it changes on the spot, wherever it happens to be, mid-fight included. The price is the difference between the two training costs plus a quarter, with a floor, and civilization discounts count. One step up is cheaper than training a new unit; several steps at once can cost more. Twenty-three of the thirty-four units have a successor like that, sometimes a whole chain of them — except where your people stops early (see your first match).

It means an army you built early gets less worthless as the match goes on: you do not have to throw it away to keep up, you pay the difference.

The same goes for your training queue. Still have spearmen lined up when you advance to the next age? They come out of the barracks as the newest version, for the same price as an upgrade. Can't afford it, and you simply get what you ordered.

The market#

From the Bronze Age (the Arabs: from the start) you can build one market. There you buy and sell food, wood, stone and — from the Iron Age — iron, always 100 at a time, for gold. At the normal price 100 costs 150 gold, and selling brings in 60% of that. Every trade moves the price 5%, for every player at once: buying makes it dearer, selling cheaper, and then it slowly creeps back. Shift + click trades 500 at once,

Repairs#

Repair a damaged building by right-clicking it with a worker. It costs half the build price, in proportion to the damage, no matter how many buildings of that kind you own. After an attack, repairing is almost always cheaper than rebuilding. Workers who finish a building or a repair look up to twenty tiles around for the next one, so a spread-out row of buildings gets done without new orders.