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Choosing the right pantheon for your playstyle is the key to success inAge of Mythology: Retold. The Greeks play the most similarly to the more standard Age of Empires games, and have some very robust options when it comes to military, economy, and god powers.
Hades, one of the three major Greek gods, is focused heavily on archery, making your buildings serve you better, and supplying your army with Shades of the underworld. Below, you’ll find our basic guide to making Hades work, helping you optimise and learn how to use this wonderful god.
Hades Overview
Hades’s focus is mostly onarchers, but also provides a very big bonus tooffensive buildings.
20% for enemy humans to return as Shades after death
Shadeswill spawn at the closest Temple and are quite weak and generic, but this makes them excellent fodder and bulk for your army.
20% more hitpoints for Myth Units
Hades has access to some very powerfulMyth Units, and making them bulkier is always a good thing.
Ranged soldiers and Heroes get +1 range
As the ‘archery god’, it’s only natural that Hades would havevery strong archers.
Buildings with ranged attacks get +2 range
This upgrade will drasticallyimprove your Watch Towersonce improved into Sentry Towers and also yourFortresses and Town Centres- this encourages aggressive forward base building.
Ballistics and Burning Pitch are researched automatically
These technologies are researched for you in the Heroic and Mythical Ages respectively.Ballisticsis an accuracy boost, whileBurning Pitchis a big damage boost to buildings and a moderate damage boost overall.
Formulating a strategy while keeping these bonuses in mind is quite simple:recruit an army heavy on high-quality Myth Units and archers, bulk them up withinfantry or cavalry, and then play aggressively. Hades rewards strategic use offorward building, claiming Town Centres close to your foes and utilising Watch Towers to defend your territory.
Choosebetweeninfantry and cavalry, based on your god choices and preferences. Having both is a drain on your resources.
With the bonuses afforded to them, Hades’s Toxotai will be the main unit to focus on. They’ll be so powerful that you’re able to field them against even other archery units without worrying, meaning there’s often no point in bothering to recruit Peltasts.
This does make Hades quite a resource-intensive playstyle, so you’ll need to be clever and measured while keeping youreconomyin mind.
Minor God Choices
Every decision that you have to make when it comes to minor gods with Hades will force you to choose betweenranged damage improvementsand an alternative, but gosh do those alternatives make compelling cases.
Athena
Athena provides a significant battle win condition withRestorationand has a very good Myth Unit in theMinotaur, but her technology is only beneficial if you’re using infantry. With a god whose most optimal army composition is often archery plus cavalry, this isn’t so useful.
Ares
Despite having a very situational and expensive Myth Unit in the Cyclops, Ares proves his worth quite easily withEnyo’s Bow of Horror, which vastly improves Toxotai, which should be a mainstay of a Hades army.Pestilenceis also a fantastic god power, preventing enemy buildings from firing at you and slowing unit production, and being quite cheap to recast to boot.
Apollo
Something Apollo does really well isturn your Temples into healing buildings, which pairs really nicely with Hades’sbulkier Myth Units. They’ll often be the last units surviving after a raid or attack, and healing them back to full after a fight is as useful as it is economical. Manticores are also a really fantastic Myth Unit, especially for a range-heavy army, andUnderworld Passageis one of the most useful Heroic Age god powers in the game. This isn’t even mentioning his boost to ranged damage.
Aphrodite
Aphrodite is aneconomy-focused god. Her buff to villagergather rates and Favor generationare fantastic not only for progressing to the Mythic Age quicker but also supplying a full-sized army quicker and easier. The Nemean Lion is a decent Myth Unit, but not the draw here.Golden Apples and Divine Bloodare what you should be picking Aphrodite for, with her pig Curse being a decent plus.
Hephaestus
Hephaestus is one of the best gods in the game and for three reasons. First,Colossimake for fantastically efficient Myth Units - they’re a bit expensive, sure, but they’re great at defeating standard units and also destroying buildings. Just keep them away from Heroes and play cautiously against enemy Greek and Norse pantheons. Secondly,Plentyis a really fantastic economy power, and economy is important for Hades. Finally, histech to reduce Armory costsis truly amazing for late-game tech spam.
Artemis
Artemis is a great god who only suffers because she’s up against Hephaestus.Earthquakecan win games handily when used against densely-built villages, and another boost to ranged damage only benefits Hades in amazing ways. She’s also very valuable against foes who spam Myth Units, making your Heroes even better.
General Tips
How To Use Shades
When defeating human enemies as Hades,Shades will sometimes spawn at your nearest Temple. These units aren’t too powerful, but they will be very useful for bulking out an army. They behave like infantry units, making them perfect for your front line (while your archers destroy enemies from behind).
Since Shades make very little impact when used alone, it’s a good idea tosave them upuntil you’re making a big push to eradicate an enemy, using them in bulk. It’s quite common to accrue a very large number of Shades over the course of a game, and they’ll be a force to be reckoned with.
Sentinels: Save Or Spend?
Sentinel is Hades’s base god power and it’s a handy one. It spawnsfour stationary archer unitsaround a Town Centre of your choosing, and they helpfully benefit from all the same technologies as your Toxotai, which can rack up quite quickly for Hades.
Since you can cast god powers more than once, it’s possible tostack multiple Sentinels on the same Town Centre.
It’s tempting to use Sentinel immediately to provide your home Town Centre with more defence, but there are pros and cons to this:
Pros
Cons
Sentinels make it far easier to destroy enemy scouts who wander into your camp.
Sentinels may benefit later Town Centres more, especially if they are built aggressively.
Sentinels will significantly help ward off an enemy attack, especially if you stack them up.
Recasting Sentinel to cover more Town Centres or stack them up costs 50 Favor a pop, which is very cheap but could be better put towards Myth Units.
To Research Vaults Of Erebus Or Not
Vaults of Erebus is Hades’s starting technology option and provides a trickle of gold in exchange for200 Wood and 15 Favor.
Thetrickle is quite small, so it will only really be useful in games that willlast a long time. We recommend getting this as soon as possible, and only in games in which you are at a numerical disadvantage or can see them lasting a very long time.
