Land Eight: Back To The Aztecs

It's time to wreak bloody vengeance in the deserts of the Aztecs! These guys are intent on smacking you down just as surely as they did before, and they're going to have help on their side, in the form of a Hurricane Wonder that's being built in one of their cities. You're going to be stuck in a pretty small area here, but you should have the resources required to build your way to success if you're planning on a Good win, or get your army together for a military victory if you so choose.

Objectives

Objective 3: This is possible for Evil gods; you'll need a lot of Fertility Statues, Nurseries, and Breeders, of course. Good gods will have an easier time of it; the two main enemy cities should send you huge migrations when you Impress them.

Objective 4: Ha, ha. Although once Ylaruam falls, you won't have to worry about any incoming enemies, it'll be very difficult for you to fulfill this objective, since most enemy attacks will cancel it.

Objective 10: This is very difficult to accomplish, as you apparently have to do it before you win the land, which means that you'll have to conquer towns, then build roads between them while the enemy still has a presence in the area. Since the towns are so far apart here, this probably isn't worth bothering with, especially since you'd have to build buildings along the road to connect your influence bubbles.

General Tips

Fire is still the most efficient way of dealing with enemy platoons.

Well, as mentioned above, you're going to be stuck in a pretty small area here, especially if you intend to wall yourself in. There's nothing that technically prevents you from building out in the desert, but doing so will probably require you to manually transport food out there from your closer storehouses, since fields will only grow near the lake here. The same situation applies to trees, and we personally had a hard time getting trees to re-grow after they were cut down, water miracles or no.

Anyway, with the land area you have, you're going to have a somewhat hard time fitting in all the buildings that you like. You'll probably want to use skyscrapers here instead of villas, if you haven't been doing so already. They'll require ore, obviously, so be absolutely sure you have a smelter going with eight Refiners before making people head for the mines.

Thankfully, the military threat presented to you by the Aztecs on this map isn't as severe as you might think. They will send platoons your way, to be sure, so you'll want to wall yourself in and get your Fire miracles ready, but your part of the map is a good distance from their two main cities, so you should be able to see any incoming threats well before they reach you and deal with them accordingly. Most of the early platoons can be taken out by your creature, while later threats can be dealt with through your army or miracles.

The key thing to know here is that your foes will be building up a charge on their Hurricane Wonder in the town of Ylaruam, their second largest city. Whether you're Good or Evil, you'll want to take this town over before they can cast their spell at you; a Hurricane would really, really ruin your day, especially if you have a bunch of skyscrapers clustered into a small area and they all get hit. That'd be ruinous!

Good God

Building up here will let you get some massive Impressiveness points.

Although building skyscrapers is technically an evil act, they're going to be quite advantageous to you here, especially when you climb the hill to the small plateau near your ore mine. If you can get up there (we managed to do so by just building a road up the hill, and lining it with villas), then you can build a central happy structure, such as a Temple or an Ampitheater, and then start packin' em in with skyscrapers build around the perimeter of your happy structure. The Impressiveness bonuses up here are substantial, so a skyscraper just five or six levels tall should wind up worth in excess of 1,000 Impressiveness. They'll also do a great job of helping you store all your citizens, and you're going to have a lot of them, especially after Ylaruam falls; it'll send you a migration of around 250 civilians when it goes.

You shouldn't have to worry too much about resources here, except perhaps wood; many of the forests here won't regrow after they've been chopped down, and your fields will take up a lot of prime forest real estate. Still, if you're careful you won't have to worry too much about it, and should be clear to build your little heart out.

Evil God

Besides population and food problems (which shouldn't be too severe, considering the yields of the fields by your lake), you shouldn't have a horrific amount to worry about here. The Aztecs are surprisingly passive in military terms, especially after Ylaruam falls, so you'll be able to bide your time and build your forces for the final strike. You'll definitely want some catapults for the assault on the enemy capital, as there are four platoons of archers on their walls, and they'll do severe damage to your creature if you're used to using it to destroy enemy walls.

Silver Scrolls

Isle of Nymphs

The Isle of Nymphs is located in the middle of one of the large lakes here. When you click on the scroll, the Nymphs will ask you to bring them...something. They don't say what, and they don't appear to know themselves. You can drop anything on their island to see their reaction to it, but, being Nymphs, it should be pretty obvious to the mythology or fantasy literature peeps what they need: a man. Not just any man, though, but a young one. You need to find someone precisely 21 years old; you can check on the ages of your civilians by hitting the S button while you're looking at your city. Grab a 21 year old male, drop him on the island, and you're set.

If you can't find someone precisely 21, grab a 19 or 20 year old, drop him on the island, then come back in a few minutes and he should be 21. Pick him up and drop him again to complete the objective. If a 21-year-old gets rejected, you might need to try someone a bit older, so start with a 25-year-old and figure out what precise age they need.

Note that, since you can manipulate objects on this island, you can pick up all of the trees and stick them in your town's storehouse if you're running low on wood.

Sun Dial

The Sun Dial scroll is found near your home city, and involves four sundials set out in a circle, each one giving you a different time of day if you hover your mouse over it. One is set to 7 - 9 PM, one to 6 AM - 8 AM, one to Midnight - 2 AM, and one to 1 - 3 PM. You need to set the clock in the sky to these precise times, in the order that we just listed them; doing so will let you light them up in order, and you'll gain the tribute reward. Note that this can screw you over for the "Water your fields every day" objective if you move the clock forwards instead of backwards.

Rain Dance

Near the large volcanos on this map, you'll find the Rain Dance objective. Your task here is simple: memorize the pattern of drums that the drummer plays, and play them back when it's your turn. It's effectly a memory puzzle rather than a rhythm puzzle, then. Unfortunately, the beats are randomized, so no amount of coaching or spoiling would help you here. You just have to be quick with the ol' brain!