Age of Darkness: Final Stand - Beginner's Guide | Screen Rant
Age of Darkness: Final Stand is an extremely difficult survival RTS, and without the right knowledge and strategies, players may find victory unreachable. Players build and expand their city centered on their keep, and must defend from waves of nightmare creatures. Each wave increases the number and strength of enemies that attack, culminating in on final onslaught where the player will be assaulted from all directions.
The fantasy cousin of They are Billions is a ruthless battle for resources, land, and time. Players familiar with the genre will recognize the basic cyclical structure of play. Scout the area, expand the base, defend from attack. As the game progresses, new technologies will be unlocked, which provide access to better industry, weapons, and defenses, all of which are necessary to succeed.
The most important lesson for new players is to always be expanding. Time is the ultimate limiting factor in Age of Darkness: Final Stand and players who don't use it effectively will lose sooner rather than later. Whenever players find themselves waiting, whether it be for a resource to fill up or a building to finish construction, they should think "what can I be doing right now?" The answer is almost always to expand. Early in the game, the player's most useful tool is their hero unit. Like Arthas in Warcraft 3, heroes are special units with their own backstory. With high durability, damage, and natural respawn, the hero is crucial to early game expansion because they can singlehandedly clear new areas, even before the player can produce other units. Claiming new land means new areas for farms to produce food, houses to increase population, and access to natural resources. From start to finish, expansion should be foremost in the player's mind.
There are a few priorities every successful game of Age of Darkness starts with. First, build a lumber yard. Much of the map is covered in forest, and lumber yards are cheap, so there's no excuse to ever run out of wood. Second, find a stone deposit and build a quarry. Stone will be a limiter early in the game, so the more a player can find and harvest, the faster they can progress. Third, start building dwellings and food huts. Population, like supply in Starcraft II, limits unit and worker numbers. This will increase the city's population and gold, both of which need to start growing fast.
Once these steps are complete, and the city has begun to grow, more options open up. The first death night, where the player will have to defend from an attacking horde of nightmares, is fast approaching, and to survive the city will need soldiers and walls. Stone will be the limiting factor here, so players should save it for three things: the training hall, the keep, and archers. The training hall allows the player to recruit units, and without one they will not survive the first death night. The keep can be upgraded, which provides significantly greater storage and gold income. Finally, archers will be the main defenders of the city for the early game, and players will want as many as they can support.
Death nights are huge attacks, like swarms in They Are Billions. When the death night approaches, a crystal will be revealed on the map. Select one unit, place it at your keep, and then give it directions to go towards the crystal. This guy is a goner, but it will help predict where the swarm will attack from. Once the player has determined the angle of attack, it's time to build defenses, and choke points are the name of the game. Ideally, find a long, thin passage on the map, and fortify the entrance where it widens out on the city's side. This will minimize the number of nightmares that can engage the city's defenses while maximizing the number of the player's soldiers in the area.
Multiple layers of walls are a must in Age of Darkness, and towers extending the range of the archers will greatly improve their effectiveness like bunkers in Starcraft II. Gates have lower health than the three walls they replace, so they create a weak point and should be left out of death night defenses. For players that can complete defenses in this style before the first swarm arrives, the first death night shouldn't be too difficult. If unable to find a chokepoint, defense in depth is the second-best option. Multiple layers of walls for archers to retreat behind can allow players with less fortunate starts to scrape by with a little more micro.
Now that players have survived the first death night and understand the basics, it's time to get down to brass tax. Efficiency will win or lose every game of Age of Darkness, so understanding where small advantages can be gained will make the difference between survival and death. Scarcity is a part of any good RTS, and iron and stone are two resources that will always be scarce because they have to be found on the map. Building a storehouse near a quarry will increase its output, and researching the refined quarry should be a priority. Lodges should be favored over houses as the main housing type, because lodges are both more efficient in terms of recouping the gold invested, and they don't use stone.
Exploring the map is a constant necessity in Age of Darkness, but doing it wrong can end a run. As players explore, they should build fire sconces in their path. Light prevents enemies from spawning, limits the area of the death fog during death nights, and allows units to recover from horror. Fire sconces are the first step in claiming an area for the city, and they should be protected by towers with archers or arbalests. Accurate to medieval war when expanding, creating full-on defenses in every direction is a waste of resources. Instead, a tower or two will suffice except on death nights. Elite nightmares, huge monsters that only appear at night, are scattered around the map, marked by towers tipped with crystals. Though they do offer rewards of essence when killed, early in the game these will kill the player's hero and wipe their army.
Heroes lose experience each time they die, which can quickly hamper their usefulness. Elites are best given a wide berth until arbalests are unlocked. Larger crystals can also be found on the map, appearing as black and red flower bud-looking objects tied down with chains. They are the source of the swarms that attack on death nights, and attacking one will immediately start the count down to the next death night. Like summoning the horde in Left for Dead, there is really no good reason to ever mess with one. Players will lose significant preparation time and take casualties for a bit of essence that could be harvested after the crystal has naturally burst during a death night.
As each death night is survived, Age of Darkness players will have more time to prepare between swarms, but the attacks will become significantly more vicious each time. The grand ballista tower and the impaler, a mobile ballista, are unlockable through the siege workshop. They are the next big step in defense advancements. after the second or third night, arbalests alone won't cut it, but they are still invaluable in expansion.
Rapid expansion is a must in the end game because siege weapons are extremely expensive and players will need a lot of them. Gold deposits will become the main source of income, and iron and stone will again be limiters as fortified walls and towers are built up. This is also the time to assess the positioning of the strong points. Late game swarms are essentially unbeatable without a good choke point, so sometimes it will be necessary to cauterize an entire section of the city if an indefensible area is targeted. Remember, farms can be rebuilt, but if the swarm breaks through the player's defense it's all over.
On the final death night in Age of Darkness, the player will be attacked from all the previous crystals simultaneously. They'll have ten minutes to prepare, so planning for this attack early is essential. If preparations are left too late the player will not have enough time or resources to complete the many choke points necessary. Everything that can be sold for iron should be sold and converted into grand ballista towers and fortified walls.
Ultimately aggression, efficiency, and positioning will determine how long a run lasts. Every city will be pushed to its limits, and players will gain experience with each loss. Even with knowledge of the mechanics and a careful strategy, players will lose, repeatedly. The real test is to learn from these defeats without giving up.
Age of Darkness: Final Stand is available on PC.