The camel rider was created for several reasons. The most important is that they are particularly effective against cavalry.
In the original Age of Empires®, there was no good defense against a cavalry attack on one's town -- though hoplites or elephants can kill cavalry, the cavalry could always ignore their slower would-be nemeses, sprint past them, and concentrate on slaughtering villagers.
Camels change this situation. While the old-fashioned cavalry rush can still be pulled off, it is less dominant, somewhat riskier, and the rusher is far better off if he accompanies his rush with some other types of soldiers (swordsmen, archers, etc.) to help protect the cavalry.
 | Age: Bronze Train at: Stable Special: Attack bonus against all cavalry, scouts, horse archers and chariots. Notes: +8 vs. cavalry, cav archers, scouts. +4 vs. chariots. |
| Unit Name | LOS | HP | Move | ROF | Range | Damage | Cost |
| Camel Rider | 4 | 125 | 2 | 1.5 | 0 | 6 normal | 70f, 60g |
The Camel Rider is used by desert civilizations to defend against cavalry attacks because horses fear camels. Camel Riders do not receive a cavalry bonus against infantry. Nobility increases hit points. Toolworking, Metalworking, and Metallurgy increase attack strength. Leather Armor, Scale Armor, and Chain Mail increase armor.
The camel was adopted for military use at a very early date, perhaps before the horse in the Middle East. Camels were particularly useful for moving quickly across the desert wastes and favored by small raiding parties.
They were also used in battle by desert civilizations such as the Assyrians. Riders fought with spears and swords. They could take part in the pursuit of a beaten army, like light cavalry could. They were also useful against cavalry because horses were unaccustomed to the camels’ odor and often refused to come near them.
We at Ensemble felt that the war elephant was rather under-utilized, and we designed the Armored Elephant specifically as an upgrade to make the former unit more popular.
The Armored Elephant is extremely expensive, costing more gold than any other upgrade (though it doesn't cost that much food -- after all, if you're building elephants, you already have a critical food shortage!). He is no faster than a normal war elephant, and he doesn't even have a hit point bonus. What he does have is a tiny combat bonus and a huge Siegecraft bonus.
The armored elephant pounds through walls, towers, and other buildings like a ... well, like a herd of elephants. By actual count, it took a lone armored elephant 25 seconds to pound through a fortification, where it took a single heavy catapult a whole minute. Because of the elephant "trample" effect, the elephant destroys a fairly wide radius of the wall, too -- add to this the effect of several elephant tramples all adding together and you can see how impressive this creature is at wall- and wonder-busting.
He can still be killed by centurions, through not with as much impunity as before. For those civs who have not, in the past, possessed useful anti-wall siege equipment, he provides a fascinating alternative. But beware of priests! He is perhaps the ideal unit to pack aboard a transport and unload in the middle of the enemy town -- his houses, markets, etc. will be demolished almost before the enemy player is aware of what's happening.
 | Age: Iron Train at: Stable Prerequisite: Iron Shield Upgrade cost: 1000 food, 1200 gold Special: +1 piercing armor; trample damage to adjacent enemy units; attack strength cannot be upgraded; has Siegecraft. |
| Unit Name | LOS | HP | Move | ROF | Range | Damage | Cost |
| Armored Elephant | 5 | 600 | .9 | 1.5 | 0 | 18 normal | 170f, 40g |
The Armored Elephant is an upgrade of the War Elephant. The Armored Elephant has Siegecraft, more attack strength, armor, and piercing armor.
Leather Armor, Scale Armor, and Chain Mail increases armor.
Armies using elephants in battle learned quickly that wounded animals could be as dangerous to friendly troops as they were to the enemy. One solution to this problem was to cover elephants partially with light armor that helped protect them from arrows and spears.
Unwounded animals were much easier to control and direct against the enemy. Keeping the elephants under control and bringing them into contact with the enemy was critical. Only veteran troops would stand and fight against a determined charge by elephants. All others would rout when the elephants got close.
Certain civilizations were at a distinct disadvantage in a naval game -- Babylon, Hittite, Shang, etc., all suffered from the fact that in any game where navies played an important role, all of their buildings within 12 tiles of the shore got trashed by the enemy cat triremes. The Fire Galleys are a primarily (but not exclusively!) defensive unit that helps balance the odds. Fire Galleys are produced in the Iron Age, and are intermediate in cost between a trireme & cat trireme. They do not have a long-range attack. In fact, their flames only reach 1 tile! Nonetheless, they are useful because they are very fast, and they dish out a lot of damage. They are much better than triremes in single combat; triremes have to outnumber fire galleys by 2:1 or more to ensure victory. They can also burn down unprotected docks very quickly -- we've learned to emplace towers behind our docks for protection (don't put the tower right next to the shore, or the fire galley will burn it down, too).
Fire galleys are vulnerable to catapult triremes, though if you micromanage your fire galleys, you can thread your way between the falling stones and get to the cats before you're sunk. Juggernaughts are tougher, of course. To defeat fire galleys, you need a combined-arms strategy in which your triremes hold off the fire galleys while the cat triremes bombard them from behind. To counteract this, the fire-galley user needs to build both triremes & fire galleys, and use the triremes to take out the enemy cat triremes while the fire galleys devastate his triremes. When both sides are using the combined-arms tactics victory depends on the more skilled player.
Fire Galleys do have some quirks in use. One is that 3-4 fire galleys are usually more effective than 8-10, because they're easier to maneuver and get into action -- a huge fleet of fire galleys is unwieldy, and takes lots of hits from enemy cat triremes before they can close. Thus, they are ideal for "guerrilla" ship warfare, in which you produce a couple fire galleys from a hidden dock, then send them against the enemy fishing boats, docks, etc., When they're hunted down, they kill a trireme or two, then are sunk. You then produce a couple more and keep up the good fight. They're best when micromanaged -- in combat, it's best to try to target each fire galley vs. a specific enemy ship (kind of the way most good players use their priests). A heap of galleys all aiming at a single trireme does manage to kill that trireme, but they bump into each other doing so. If you use your galleys right, you can pretty much be assured of killing at least one trireme (maybe more) for each fire galley you send into battle, even if you're outnumbered. If you outnumber the triremes, then you may be able to kill him without loss. Beware shore-based catapults and juggernaughts, though. They're the bane of the galley.
Basically, with the addition of the fire galley, the Iron Age war at sea now takes on a rock-paper-scissors form of interaction -- Fire Galley > Trireme > Catapult Trireme > Fire Galley. Oh yes, one interesting tip. No civ gets both cat triremes _and_ fire galleys. It's one or the other, never both.
 | Age: Iron Train at: Dock Prerequisite: War Galley Special: Boats are twice as resistant to conversion as other units. Notes: Alchemy adds +6 to Damage. |
| Unit Name | LOS | HP | Move | ROF | Range | Damage | Cost |
| Fire Galley | 8 | 200 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 24 normal | 40g, 115w *Updated |
The Fire Galley is a short-range vessel used to defend against other ships. Fire Galleys are superior to Triremes in one-on-one combat. Fire Galleys take additional damage from Ballistas, Helepolises, Stone Throwers, Catapults, Heavy Catapults, Catapult Triremes, and Juggernaughts, whose heavy artillery can shatter the Fire Galley's burning fire pots and set fire to the ship.
Fire Galleys benefit from Alchemy which adds +6 to Damage.
Note: You cannot build Fire Galleys if you select the Full Tech Tree option before starting a game.
Because ships were built primarily of combustible materials (wood, cloth, hemp, and pitch), fire was a devastating weapon against them. Ancient mariners devised several ways to set enemy ships on fire. The simplest was to fire flaming arrows or ballista bolts on an enemy ship. Next most useful were flaming grenades, something like modern Molotov cocktails, filled with a combustible liquid like oil.
Most intricate were flaming firepots suspended from the bow of a ship by a pole. When the pole was positioned over the deck of an enemy ship, the pot was dropped. The shattering of the pot spread burning liquid over the deck.
The Scythe Chariot was designed to address a couple of issues. For one thing, we felt that the chariot was under-used by AoE players. This was partly because chariots don't upgrade. Now, knowing that your chariots can "promote" to scythe chariots has successfully stimulated chariot use. The scythe chariot also adds a little extra Iron Age oomph for cav-lacking civs. For those civs that have both chariots & cavalry, they give you more flexibility, especially if you're running low on gold.
In combat, the scythe chariot is an interesting combination of strength & weakness. Because he does all-around damage (like a war elephant), he is very strong in numbers, and is the terror of massed priests. On the other hand, he doesn't have very heavy armor, nor too many hit points. Ballistas, towers, hoplites, and war elephants massacre the poor things. They also require a fair amount of upgrades, because you need the tool-working/metallurgy upgrades to use their full power, not to mention Nobility. Do _not_ use scythe chariots alone. They need back-up! Also, be prepared to build a lot of these guys, because scythe chariots may be able to dish it out, but they sure can't take it. When you send a dozen or two into combat, expect to kill a lot of the enemy, but also to lose all your scythe chariots!
Egyptians obviously get the best scythe chariots, because of their bonus. Other civs getting this upgrade are Babylon, Hittite, Phoenicia, Shang, and Sumer (not to mention Palmyra & Rome). The scythe chariots are essential for the horse-weak civs of Egypt, Sumer, Babylon, and Rome, and don't upset the balance of the others. They're a popular unit here at Ensemble.
 | Age: Iron Train at: Stable Prerequisite: Nobility Upgrade cost: 1200 wood, 800 Gold Special: Double attack against Priests. Scythed wheels damage adjacent enemy units. |
| Unit Name | LOS | HP | Move | ROF | Range | Damage | Cost |
| Scythe Chariot | 4 | 120 | 2 | 1.5 | 0 | 9 Normal | 40f, 60w |
The Scythe Chariot is an upgrade of the Chariot. It has more hit points, more attack strength, and more armor.
Toolworking, Metalworking, and Metallurgy increase attack strength. Leather Armor, Scale Armor, and Chain Mail increase armor.
Chariots went out of favor by the beginning of the last millennium BC in favor of cavalry. But they did not disappear completely. Some armies continued to use them and they remained a symbol of prestige. To make chariots more effective and fearsome, scythe blades were attached to the axles. As the chariot moved, the blades rotated through the air. A foot soldier facing an oncoming Scythe Chariot faced the prospect of being ridden down by the horse, shot by an arrow, stabbed by the soldier on board, or hacked by the blades to the side.
This could be a terrifying weapon against broken troops trying to flee. Against steady veteran troops, however, the Scythe Chariot was still a chariot with inherent weaknesses. If the horses could be wounded, the chariot faltered. The Persians attempted to use Scythe Chariots against Alexander the Great, but the weapon made little impression on the disciplined phalanxes.
Sandy Petersen - Designer: The Rise of Rome
The slinger is an extremely useful little dude, who manages to fills more needs than any other X-Pack unit. First off, he is an admirable antidote to the pure archer rush. One slinger can take on 2-3 bowmen with an excellent chance of victory.
Second, they act as a "jobs program" for the under-used axemen -- if you protect your archers with a few axemen to take out enemy slingers, the archer rush may be back on schedule. Of course, it's a little less devastating than before vs. enemy villagers, because you've diluted your force with axemen ...
Not only do slingers stop bowmen, but if you get an upgrade or two for them (i.e., Stone Mining & Bronze Shield), they can hold their own against chariot archers. Even fully-upgraded they have trouble vs. horse archers, though. We recommend placing a few regular chariots in among your archer chariots to KO slingers. If you're into composite bow instead, you can either use your own slingers as an antidote, or back up your composite bows with hoplites, cav, camels, etc.. Almost any melee unit can readily destroy slingers, in stark contrast to the trouble that missile units have.
Slingers are by far the best Tool age unit vs. walls & towers, and can be used even in the bronze age for this purpose. They do not lead to an effective rush of their own, because they are way too slow at killing villagers or non-tower buildings. Slingers are very cheap, and are the only normal unit that costs stone to buy. Hence, players who normally never build walls or towers themselves finally have a use for that starting 150 stone.
The slinger will probably never be the backbone of anyone's strategy, but he is handy, cheap, and useful through the end of Bronze. Actually, if you buy all the upgrades that apply to him, he is fairly potent vs. his chosen foes even into Iron, but most folks have stopped building him by then in favor of more destructive offensive units.
 | Age: Tool Train at: Barracks Special: +2 attack against archers; increased attack against walls and towers. Notes: Alchemy also increases the slinger's attack strength. When a slinger is fully upgraded, he has an attack of 5, a range of 6, and 5 piercing armor. |
With Logistics, *Updated* Slingers only count as half units toward your population total.
| Unit Name | LOS | HP | Move | ROF | Range | Damage | Cost |
| Slinger | 5 | 25 | 1.2 | 1.5 | 4 | 2 Piercing | 40f, 10s |
The Slinger is an infantry unit used to defend against early archer and Watch Tower attacks.
Bronze Shield, Iron Shield, and Tower Shield increase piercing armor. Stone Mining and Siegecraft increase attack strength and range. Slingers do not get armor upgrades from researching Leather Armor, Scale Armor, and Chain Mail.
Slingers were light troops who threw stones at the enemy to cause casualties and disrupt formations. A barrage of heavy stones could cause wounds and bone fractures. The stone was held in a cloth sling and swung in a vertical loop to build centrifugal force. One end of the sling was released, launching the stone. Slingers were an alternative to archers and javelin men. They threw stones of different weights, depending on the range to the target.
Roman art shows slingers throwing rocks the size of a grapefruit, probably at short range. Specially shaped stones could be thrown accurately to a respectable distance. The best known slinger of antiquity was David, who slew the Philistine champion Goliath in single combat with a slingshot to the head. A contingent of Rhodesian slingers were part of the 10,000-man mercenary force whose march home from Persia is described by Xenophon in his book Anabasis.
