Quick Links
Age Of Darkness: Final Standis the ultimate test of your defensive RTS skills. With only the resources of a few scattered villages, you’ll have to hold your own against wave after wave of thousands of Nightmares. The game can be a challenge even for strategy veterans, so good gameplay habits are essential to victory.
If you’re just getting started in your defense of Erodar, these tips will help keep your torches lit and your walls standing. The rest, of course, is up to you when night falls and the swarm approaches.
Play The Campaign First
Survival is the main game mode in Age Of Darkness, but it’s a very good idea toat least play the first two acts of the Campaignbefore diving in. While it may seem a bit slow, it’s a great introduction to combat and economy, and helps get a sense of what your troops can and can’t handle.
The climax of Act 2 puts you in charge of the defense of Norfolk against the game’s first true Nightmare Swarm. Once you can survive that mission, you’re probably in good enough shape to try Survival.
Use Hotkeys
This is true of any RTS, and Age Of Darkness is no different;hotkeys save lives.Using hotkeys lets you issue orders and build structures much faster than clicking menu buttons, and the saved time adds up considerably over the course of a run.
It’s especially important toassign numbers to the units at each defense locationso that you can easily cycle between them, and topress B to go straight to the build menuinstead of clicking on your Keep. Even just mastering these two techniques will help you win more games.
Keep Ranged Units Behind Walls
Often, you’ll have to send your melee units to bravely sally from the gates and fight the swarm before they can breach the walls, butranged units like Archers and Huntersshould stay inside.They can fire over the walls, so there’s no reason to put them in harm’s way when they can deal damage in safety.
Ideally, your ranged units will have Towers to shoot from, as thisgrants them a bonus to Armor Shredas well as additional protection, but realistically there won’t be enough garrison space for all of them.
Always Have Units In Training
Your army is going to suffer a lot of casualties when the Nightmares arrive. You need to have a steady supply of reinforcements to keep up,usually from multiple Training Halls.Even if you think you have enough troops, you should have more queued up in anticipation of losses; after all, each soldier takes a while to train, and each Training Hall can only recruit one troop at a time.
By the same token,each key strategic point should have its own Training Hall(s). If an outpost is about to be overwhelmed, they usually can’t wait for you to move soldiers from another part of the map unless there are at least some local guards who can hold the line.
Keep Roads Between Outposts Lit
One surprise that is guaranteed to trip up new players is theDeath Fog, which descends when major Nightmare Swarms attack. Any areas of the map that aren’t lit by torches will becovered in green mist, which will quickly kill any troops caught in it.
It’s critical that youprepare for the Death Fog ahead of timeby building and protecting light sources along roads. Otherwise, youwon’t be able to move troops around the map as needed, leading to isolated outposts falling one by one.
As tempting as it might be to build a large army and heavily fortify your Keep, this will lead to the eventual collapse of your economy as the outlying villages fall to the Nightmares. Instead, you need toprioritize the spots on the map that must not falland ensure that they have adequate defenses.
This is one of the main challenges of the game, so expect to have to make tough decisions - do you pull your Sentinels back so they can put their gained XP to use, or sacrifice them to get more Iron out of the mines before they’re overrun? Whatever you choose, remember that it’sa lot harder to reclaim an undefended location that you losethan it is to defend and repair the same spot over and over.
Build Up Troop XP
From the beginning of a run, whether you’re on Survival or Campaign, you should belooking for enemies for your troops to fightbefore the swarms start showing up. Heroes and basic soldiers alikeget considerably more powerful after leveling up, so if you may train an elite corps to defend your villages you’ll be in much better shape.
Wandering Nightmares are stronger at night, but grant more XP when killed.
It’s also well worth scouting the map to look for choke points, resources, and anything else that you might be able to use in your defense when the time comes.
Have Villagers Available For Emergencies
With Nightmares all around, it makes sense that you would want every Villager doing something to contribute to defense; gathering resources, researching, or fighting. However counterintuitive it may be, though, itactually pays to have a few idle Villagers at any given time.
Villagers without jobscan be assigned immediately, removing the need to build any extra dwellings if you require something like a Ballista Tower or a new group of soldiers right away. Dwellings don’t take that long to build compared to other structures in the game, but when your Villager count is all that’s standing between you and a critical piece of tech, that build meter will feel eternal.
