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Age Of Darkness: Final Standseems, on the surface, to have a fairly simple economy compared to other RTS games. That perception won’t last long, though, because your production and expansion can come to a grinding halt if you aren’t particular with your development and defending your outposts.
Every game of Survival will be different, but nailing down an efficient build order will help you move up the tech tiers quickly and stand a much better chance against later waves. Try using the strategy detailed below on your next run.
This build order was devised for Normal difficulty.
What To Build First
Your immediate goal is toget Wood and Stone production online.As soon as the game begins,send your Hero and starting unitsto explore the area around your Keep. They shouldn’t wander too far in any direction, but instead shouldget the lay of the landand note any resource nodes and choke points that will form the basis of your early construction.
While they’re exploring,use your starting funds to construct a Dwelling.This will give you more Villagers available to work, and a little extra Gold income. Once it’s done,save up 300 Gold and build a Lumber Yardthat will generatea minimum of 16 Wood per cycle.
The more trees are in a Lumber Yard’s radius, the more Wood it will produce.
Once you’re producing Wood,keep exploring and clearing nearby Nightmaresuntil you have 30 Wood, and use it tobuild a Quarry. There will likely be a few Stone deposits available, sochoose the largest one, or the onecloses to the Lumber Yardso that you can eventually enhance them both with a nearby Storehouse.
Don’t hold out on building your Quarry waiting for a perfect Stone deposit. Build one even if all the options are bad just to get production going; you’ll build more Quarries later anyway.
Best Way To Produce Food
Once the Quarry is built,construct three more Dwellings, making sure to leave enough room for future Farms, Warehouses, and other buildings. Once all three Dwellings are done, you should have enough population to build aWood Workshop, your first key upgrade structure.
Instead of building Food Huts,research Farms at the Wood Workshopand build one as soon as the research completes. Farms are much more efficient, and since Food Huts can’t be directly upgraded it’s a lot faster to just rush straight for them.
Now that you have more food,research Lodgesand start upgrading your Dwellings. While that’s in progress,build a Training Hallalong with yoursecond Lumber Yard and Quarry.
From this point on, you canbuild Lodges and Farms as neededto increase your population and food supply.
Farms produce less food if buildings are constructed over their fields; be sure they have plenty of room!
Growth And Expansion
Now that you have a Training Hall, you canstart adding troops to your starting armyand replacing any losses that you may have incurred while exploring. Start bulking up your forces - in particular, try to havetwo to four extra Archersto garrison in towers for the first Death Night.
While your troops are training,build a Storehouseto increase your resource storage capacity. Advanced buildings require more than you can actually have at a time without one, sothis is a necessary upgrade.Remember, Storehousesincrease the production rate of nearby resource buildingstoo!
Finally, if you’ve been able to collect 15 Iron from Points Of Interest,build a Watchtower next to your Keep. When the first Dark Crystal is revealed, it willshow the path the Nightmare Swarm will take.Once that happens, quickly build some defenses and move your army into position.
The first Swarm is just 140 Crawlers, so as long as you meet them at a choke point supported by walls and a tower, you should be fine.
After the first Death Night, your next priority is tofind a source of Iron.This will require some expeditions into Veil territory, and worthwhile deposits can be hard to come by. If you find a vein that’ssix or more tiles, do whatever it takes to secure it andbuild a Quarry on top of it.
Night Patrols
While you’re searching for the site of your ironworks,upgrade your defenses at the Wood Workshopand keep two or three soldiers near the Keep to serve as a “night patrol.” You’ll find that wandering Nightmares will often attack your defenses or outlying structures at night, so use the patrol to deal with them without having to recall your main army.Having to repair or rebuild structures is a major slowdown, so you don’t want to have to do it if you can avoid it.
Reaching Higher Tiers
Once you have access to Iron,focus on growing your populationby expanding into usable farmland and building Lodges until you canresearch and build the Refined Workshop.Along the way, you’ll need to build asecond Storehouse, but the extra storage (particularly for Wood) will make it easier to build efficient buildings like theFishing Portwhen the opportunity presents itself.
When the Refined Workshop is finished,upgrade your Farms and Lodgeslike you did before to get Refined Farms and Houses. You’ll probably need to split your focus between defense and growth by that point, but the next goal is toresearch and build a Treasury near your Housesto increase your income and Gold capacity, thenuse the extra funds to build a Siege Factory.
The Factory requires a whopping40 workers, so you’ll likely need even more Houses before it can be built.
Ideally, you want the Siege Factory to be ready and producing weaponswell before the third Death Night, because that’s when Crushers start spawning. These huge Nightmares can pretty much walk through your walls if you let them, and there will be more of them with each wave, so Impalers and Grand Ballista Towers will be necessary to have any hope of bringing them down before they reach the Keep.
Once you may produce Siege Weapons,keep growing and expanding as much as you can, even if you don’t think you need to. The Nightmare hordes will keep getting bigger, so you’ll need a bigger army and stronger defenses to match them.
