Age of Mythology/Headscratchers

• What is the Atlantean's Titan supposed to be?
  • This huge crystal guy, I don't know. Probably, since we don't actually have a Real Life Atlantean myths collection, we can't pick some kind of flashy monster from that to use as a building-smashing abomination.
  • I saw somewhere that it was supposed to be Typhon from the Greek Mythology (how did an Eldritch Abomination end up like a crystal giant humanoid pawn beats me), but the site could very well be wrong anyway. IIRC the Norse Titan is Ymir or a scaled up troll, right?
  • My Age Of Mythology guide book says his name is Chthonian.
    • I too heard that the Atlantian Titan is supposed to be Typhon. He's humanoid because a dragon-thing would be hard to animate. At least they kept the volcano theme.
      • Correct about the Norse one, I'm just wondering what the Egyptian one is supposed to be. Keeping the theme of progenitor Gods, it would mean Nut, problem with that being that Nut is a cow and not a bird.
      • I thought it was Geb, who is portrayed as a bird occasionally (because he is a goose, I thought they decided to portray him as a falcon to make him more impressive). Then again, it could just be Horus made a titan for the Rule of Cool
    • According to the Age of Empires wiki (which also covers the Age of Mythology thing), the Greek Titan is Cerberus, the Nordic one is Ymir, the Egyptian one really is Horus and the Atlantinean one is Perses.
• Why isn't this game getting a proper sequel?
  • Because Ensemble got closed. Sad.
  • You might want to check out the first two Empire Earth titles. Similar in style and gameplay.
• When you attack the giant battering ram, it will take a long time to destroy it. Ajax even specifically complains "What will it take to destroy this ram?" while you are attacking it. It makes a certain logical sense, as hitting a giant piece of wood with arrows, spears and swords will take a long time to break it. On the other hand, the logical thing to do would be to just cut the ropes that are being used to hold it up. Or kill the men operating it.
  • The game mechanics wouldn't allow that. Or if they would, there's no race against the clock.
  • Either you have to destroy the ram and simply race against the clock, or you have to cut the ropes/kill the rammers and face a never-ending stream of reinforcements from Gargarensis trying to repair the thing.
• When Chiron makes his heroic sacrifice, he kicks over a pillar, blocking the enemy's path, and charges past the collapsing piller to fight the foes on the other side, trapping himself and ensuring an epic death. But why didn't he stay on the safe side of the callapsed pillar? He is an ARCHER! There's no need for him to charge in and die when he could safely fire arrows aver the collapsed pillar, and he would do more damage that way because the enemies couldn't reach him.
  • The real question is probably how he kicked it over. If a few hundred pounds of force from mythical beasts cannot lever over one in one blow, why is one generally spaced kick from a centaur enough to roll it over? Even Chiron could not calculate that much to find a perfect weak point in the time it takes for him to run from there. And why not fight the fire giants then and there? You probably spent an army's worth of firepower annihilating Gargarenesis's forces to the outside and getting to the rams there, how many giants could it kill off?
    • Mythology is like this, it was his time to be a hero, so he was.
    • Also, it doesn't really take that much to weaken the ram to the point that you summon the reinforcements. It might even be as easy as showing up.
• Isn't Oranos supposed to be dead?
  • Canonic mythology never points out his ultimate fate after castration, although you could say he died. I'm more concerned as to why the sky god is trapped in what amounts to Hell, and why he is working alongside his hated son when he could be on his grandson's side.
    • He's probably working with Kronos just to get out, with both planning to turn on the other once they are out. As for why he's down there Zeus probably just didn't trust grandaddy to not try and take over.
• Why is the Big Bad Gargarenesis not doing things the easy way and opening all the gates he could get to at once? If he can find the great gates in Atlantis, Erebus, Niflheim under the Well Of Urd, and the Egypian city that venerates Osiris, find the forces for gigantic battering rams to open those gates, and he can summon an army to take the assumably legendary protections of Atlantis, the fighting spirit of the Norselands, the heavy walls and independantly operating desert forces of multiple impenetrable Egyptian cities, and find his way into the Underworld, albeit with help on some of those, but still without a Trojan Horse kind of plottery, why does he not open all the gates he can? He could probably get the other Titans free, not just Kronos if the gates reseal. Does he simply go one at a time? And why does Kronos bide his time and only send his will forth after his first plot is defeated? Taking a risk that may impact eventual freedom is not always a good idea unless you have many, many, more plans afterward. Did the other pantheons take just enough damage to let him do that but not enough to free himself? Sure, dooming Ioklos is an act that seems big. But, even if destroying Odin's previously ignored earthly center of power would be too hard and get another pantheon on your enemy list, but taking the equally previously ignored Egyptian high god-power relics would probably be easier, particularly because the now-dead Kamos and the now-dead other Egyptian ally would have a large enough presence to siege the previous relic-holding cities and eventually burn them down and take their relics before a secret party could shift the sands to another citadel of power and take the relics with them.
  • I theorise that, since it is 10 years later, the characters from the first part had enough time to defend the gates properly, making it nearly impossible openreach them without the help of the titans...which the player has to stop before they can create more chaos, so, the only gate that isn't defended is the one in Atlantis.
  • Isn't that what Gargarensis was trying to do? He was trying to open the gates he had access to when he had access to them. If you meant trying to open them all at once, he probably didn't have the resources to do that, or the time to wait until he could. The taking of the Atlantean gate, for instance, rested on the city's greatest commander being somewhere else with his army, and that was only going to happen so long as the Trojan War went on.
• Ignoring the fact that there wouldn't be much of a game if he did this, did anyone else feel like the expansion Titans plot could've been entirely avoided if Arkantos had bothered to stop in once in ten years and tell his son to watch out for history repeating itself? It's obvious from Ajax and Amanra's reactions that they know he's a god and have seen him before, so it's not like he's forbidden from interacting with mortals ever. Why he couldn't stop in and see the son he claims to love so much, especially seeing as how Kastor still believed his father was alive despite all facts pointing to contrary, always bugged me, even back when the game originally came out. Daddy Had a Good Reason For Abandoning You only goes so far in this case, and it just kinda makes Arkantos seem like a Jerkass for just letting his son wander around and almost destroy half the known world.
  • Well, he did turn into a Greek God....
  • Maybe Kronos and his servant were preventing him from reaching Kastor?
  • Maybe Zeus told him not to. It seems like the Gods showing up in person is a rarity.
• Am I the only one that thinks that ES dropped the ball when they added the Atlanteans as a new civilization in the expansion? Atlantis had been already covered enough in the first game campaign, and very well at that, with the Greeks; and when you look at the x-pack Atlanteans it really looks like they were struggling to come up with something that wasn't just a repeat of the Greeks, using second-rate Greek gods and mythical creatures, not to mention their odd choices for human units (hypaspists were just another name for hoplites and murmillos were a type of Roman gladiators!) or that boring way to collect favor (possessing town centers? Seriously?). It's not like the world lacks rich ancient mythologies (Aztec, Celtic, Mesopotamian, Indian, Chinese, Japanese...) that could have been adapted into the game to produced a distinct and awesome fourth civilization.
  • What I don't get is how the ruined Atlantean army is so incredibly specialized. You'd think having to scrounge an existence for a decade would make them all good at multitasking.
  • The original game's mythologies consisted of The Theme Park Version of a mythology that people would be vaguely familiar with; note that Thor is not dissimilar to the Marvel Comics version (and I can't help but wonder if that's the only reason he's a major god in the first place, though I'm not that familiar with Norse mythology). The only mythology you listed that might qualify is Indian, which might offend modern Hindus, though a case can be made for Mesopotamian.
• In the second game why is Kastor so torn up about accidentally helping the Titans get free? Has he forgotten that for most of the game he's been worshipping the Titans? Did he never stop to think that it's a bit hard to worship deities locked away? He should be cheering them on.
  • Before that he didn't know he was being bullshitted by a possessed old guy into helping stupidly powerful jerks out of detention. He was fine worshipping them until they started kicking the crap out of everything in sight.
• After the antepenultimate mission of the original campaign, the heroes think they have defeated Gargarensis and saved the world... so why do Ajax and especially Amanra come back with Arkantos to Atlantis?