Legendary Walkthrough: Liberating the Lower Nile

This is my second follow up to my original guide, where I talked about the general requirements and strategy on doing a legendary quest. This guide is a specific application to a less popular quest Legendary: Liberating the Lower Nile. I picked this quest since you start at Age 2, and get attacked by 2:30~3:00, so you will need to set up some defense. Also, since this is a 12h quest, you can have a lot of practice refining your strategy in a short time.

I am going to be playing as Norse, and the key advisor doing legendaries with Norse infantry is Cowardly Colonel Pamphilos. It helps you quickly take down walls and fortresses, so try to get one that is rare or better. As with the main guide, I assume you have epic gear on your berserkers, as well as increase train/research rates, reduce train time, or increase movement speed items on your villagers, caravans, town centers (TC) and Markets. As always, the advisor Dumnorix is nice to have, as it allows you to build more caravans faster.

Before we dive into the actual walkthrough, let me talk about the map and what you will face. First, the map is very linear, with only one path through the entire thing. There is only one entrance to the base, narrow enough to walled off and defended by a few towers. The first attack comes minute 3, the first elephant at minute 8, two more elephants at minute 10, and two catapults at minute 11. The scary things here are the first attack and the first elephant. After that, you should have enough units to deal with everything the AI throws at you. The one thing to watch out for with the catapults is not getting caught attacking the wall just outside your base while the catapults murder all your berserkers.

To start, immediately shift-click to train 5 villagers from your first TC and rally it to the berries nearby (use the camels if you have the APM to spare). Then, send 3 villagers to the right to build a town center (TC) near the woodline and camels, rallying that TC to wood. Send one of the scouts to take care of the crocodiles while you are at it. Send 2 villagers to the alcove at the far left to build a Market, and send your initial spearmen and the other scout to build a full wall across the entrance. Make sure that the spearmen stays behind the wall while they are building it, and upgrade the wall as soon as it finishes. You should then have 3 villagers collecting stone so you can build towers for early defense. Once you have the resources, pull 2 villagers and build a tower with your spearmen and villagers. The tower should be more or less ready when the first attack wave comes. Don’t panic if it wasn’t quite ready yet. Remember to continue training out of your TCs and Market while the attack is going on. By now, you should have excess wood for a second Market, so build one, hotkey it and rally to the TC to the far right.

The wall and first tower should be enough to take care of the initial attack. Repair the wall as it gets damaged. As you get enough stone and wood, build additional towers until you have at least 3 (4~5 for extra safety). Don’t build too many since they won’t matter much when the elephant comes. Once you have your towers up, you should check the wall occasionally and repair as needed, but there shouldn’t be any issues until the elephant comes at minute 8. Kill the crocodiles if they are attacking your caravans, and build a third market. Continuously train out of all your TCs and markets this entire time, and keep your villagers working by moving them to new locations for food and wood. Build extra storehouses if the woodline is too far from your existing TC or storehouse.

At about 5 minute, you should age up and build up to 6 barracks with about 5 villagers and your spearmen. As soon as you age up, start building as many berserkers as you can, trading resources at the market if necessary. You want to have at least 10 berserkers by the 8 minute mark for the first elephant, and about 80 villagers and caravans for economy. When the elephant comes, don’t panic. If you have done everything right so far, it should fall with minimal loss on your side. It’s OK to let the wall be destroyed, but try to keep the towers alive so they can do some extra damage. I recommend berserkers over spearmen since:

• While spearmen do bonus damage vs elephants, they die really quickly.
• Your spearmen is likely to be poorly geared compared to your berserkers.

Keep training more villagers, caravans, and berserkers as you continue to boom. When you have the resources, build 3 armories, 4 more barracks (10 total), and advance to Age 4. You want to get all relevant upgrades from:

• Armory (melee damage, melee and pierce armors)
• Storehouse (farms)
• TC (carry capacity, town watch)
• Market (saddle bags, buy/sell penalty)

As you run low on berries and camels, build 20~25 farms. Build a great hall and a chief when you have the resources, or go pure berserker if your chief is poorly geared. The elephants at minute 10 should pose no challenge. For the catapults at minute 11, make sure your units are far enough back that the catapults are outside of the gates. Without a wall protecting the catapults, they should fall easily to your berserkers’ charge.

Once the catapults are dead, you can start pushing if you have a decent force, even if you aren’t completely maxed yet. If you continue to build and upgrade as you push, you should be maxed and fully upgraded by the time you reach the first fortress. If you haven’t done so, kill off your excess villagers and caravans until you have 80 left, with all villagers on farms and the rest of the workers caravans. You don’t need anyone on wood and stone, as the little wood you need for building extra barracks can be traded for at the market. There’s also no need to keep villagers to build forward bases with Norse, as their units can do this for you.

Take out the first fortress. Depending on how much time you have, you can decide on how you want to take out the wonder:

• If you have 4+ minutes on the clock and a good number of berserkers, build 8 forward barracks where the fortress used to stand. Then, hotkey these forward barracks and rally into the enemy base. You should be able to destroy the enemy base and the wonder before the time limit runs out. If you start running short on time, rush the wonder at the top left of the base.
  
  
• If you have about 2 minutes left, rush the wonder. If you hug the top and run all the way left past the fortresses, you should be able to make it through the enemy bases with only some losses. With Cowardly Colonel Pamphilos, you should be able to take down the wonder before all your berserkers die. For the berserkers that are rallying in, keep them out of range of fortress #2 and #3 and regroup there.
  
  
• If you decided against rushing the wonder, simply stay out of range of fortress #2 and #3 and build forward barracks. Attack the base once the barracks are up and you are maxed.

In all cases, you want to have forward barracks when you assault the first enemy base proper.

Once the base is down, kill caravans until you are down to 60 workers total, and rally your berserkers to the second base at top left. There isn’t much to say other than keep rallying berserkers until the base dies. Only caution is to stay away from fortress #6 and #7 until you are ready. If you get too close, 8 elite war elephants would rush in from the bottom and kill all your berserkers.

Build another 8 forward barracks where the second enemy TC used to be and hotkey the barracks, then build berserkers until you are maxed. You can kill off another 20 villagers/caravans until you have 40 left. Take care of the treasure camp nearby, then push towards fortress #6 and #7. Destroy of the 8 elephants that spawned and 2 fortresses, then push towards the final enemy base. You should meet little resistance after the elephants. If your gear is good, you can pull ~20 berserkers and travel southeast from the second base for a treasure camp. Otherwise, hit the treasure camp after you destroyed the final base. When you finished the mission, clean up the remaining treasure guardians. There are 4 treasure guardian camps on this map: 1 in each of the 3 enemy bases, and 1 in an oasis southeast to the second enemy base.