Relics - worth being collected or not?
One of the most underestimated features in AOK are the relics. Although there are 5 relics on every random map (and at least 1 close to your original town center) a great majority of the players simply ignore them.
Relics are an "inconspicuous" gold-resource. They work slow and it seems they only bring in a few gold pieces, not worth the costs for a monastery and a monk at all. But: The value of relics increases with the length of the game. Relics donīt block pop-spots as trade carts do. Since you always should have some monks for healing (another neglected feature by the way) collecting them is free. After some hours, when all the gold- and stone-piles are mined out and selling wood and food for louzy 14 gold per 100 units determines your actions having collected some relics early in the game really can make the difference as you can see from the table below.
|
"Normal" civilisation: |
1 relic |
2 relics |
3 relics |
4 relics |
5 relics |
|
With aztec teambonus counting in: |
|
+ gold / 1 minute |
45 |
90 |
135 |
180 |
225 |
|
60 |
120 |
180 |
240 |
300 |
|
+ gold / 10 minutes |
450 |
900 |
1350 |
1800 |
2250 |
|
600 |
1200 |
1800 |
2400 |
3000 |
|
+ gold / 60 minutes |
2700 |
5400 |
8100 |
10800 |
13500 |
|
3600 |
7200 |
10800 |
14400 |
18000 |
A gold mining villager needs about 2 minutes to gather 60 gold. So an aztekan relict replaces 2 workers. Plus: This is extra-gold, coming in for the whole game, no matter if it lasts 1 hour or 3 hours.
Letīs guess you have 2 relics and hold them for 2 hours. That makes a total of 10.800 extra gold (with aztekan team-bonus 14.400). 10.800 means 540 (720) Champions ! Or 144 (192) Paladins.
Conclusion: Go for relics as soon as possible which means early in castle age. Usually your opponents donīt think about them so with a bit of luck you should be able to get 2 or even 3 without taking a risk.
