Build Orders Guide – Age of Mythology Retold

Although the tutorial and the campaign scenarios can be helpful as you're learning how to play Age of Mythology: Retold, it's a good idea to practice building your settlements without listening to a voice telling you what to do. If you're new to Age of Mythology: Retold, check out this beginners' guide that covers a few easy build orders.

Best build orders for all Pantheons in Age of Mythology Retold

Each of the four Pantheons in Age of Mythology: Retold has an easy, beginner-friendly build guide below. But, out of the four, the Greek Pantheon is the best one to play if you aren't familiar with Age of Mythology.

Before we get started — this is what a relic looks like in Age: of Mythology: Retold (see image above). They're tiny, but they show up as a mini lantern-like graphic in white on the map, and they look like this when you get close enough to see one.

I slowed down to build everything and take screenshots, so do ignore the scoreboard and timer in the top right of the screen for this entire guide.

Best Greek Civilization build order — Hades

As tempting as it may be to have Zeus as your God for a Greek Civilzation build, it's going to be easier to get started with Hades. Hades has an ability that automatically gives you more gold, which is something you're going to need a lot of as you build up your town.

The Greek Civilization may be basic and good for beginners, but you're still about to spend a lot of time learning terminology and figuring out where each of the items is on the different menus.

You'll start your game with four villagers when you play the Greek Pantheon.

1. To start, send your first four villagers over to your local hunt source (nearby animals that you can hunt for meat).
2. Build a Granary (used for food storage) right in the middle of your town to make it easier for your villagers to deposit any food they gather.
3. Once you have enough meat, get a couple more villagers and send them to the Gold Mine. It costs 50 food to create one villager.
4. Send your Scout off to do their job — once they discover livestock, click on your Town Center and activate the livestock feature in your menu (bottom left when you click on the Town Hall), which will send any livestock to your town.
5. Once you have enough resources, build a Storehouse (stores gold and wood) between your Gold Mine and the nearest patch of trees.
6. Set up two more villagers to gather wood and another two for any newly discovered livestock that's making its way to your town center.
7. At this point, you'll be running out of population space. Build a house using one of the villagers, but remember to put them back where they were working afterward.
8. Send three more new villagers to gather food.
9. Get a new villager, build a Temple (anywhere is fine), and have that villager stay at the temple to worship.
10. Send three new villagers to gather wood.
11. Advance to the Second Age with Athena (you can pick Ares if you prefer his God Power, but Athena is a healer). You'll get your first Myth Unit once the advancement is finished.
12. After you've advanced, make two more new villagers for gold mining and one more for wood gathering.
13. Create your first Hero — Ajax, if you're playing Hades. Go and look around the areas your Scout has revealed for relics and send Ajax to collect them. Once he has the item, he needs to take it back to the temple for you to "gain" the item. You have to do this all manually, which is a bit annoying, but it's important to get it done.
14. Build a Military Academy and an Archery Range to start producing fighters.
15. Create your next Hero Unit — Achilles — by clicking on the Temple and choosing him from the menu in the bottom left corner.
16. Build any additional houses you need for your population.

This should set you up nicely for the game, and you can just start producing more fighters and villagers as needed. For more Myth Units, have more villagers worshipping at the Temple.

Once you have your military set up, you can consider fighting your enemy. Personally, I'd be looking at reaching the Heroic Age first (which you need an Armory or Market to do), and building a fence to give your town an extra layer of defense. But, if you do decide that you can take on the opposition, just be sure you go in with at least twenty fighters and that you understand what your God Powers do —you can find out by hovering over the powers in the bar at the top of your screen.

You can also look at nearby areas and turn abandoned settlements into towns like yours, but that does mean expanding the area you need to defend.

Egyptian Civilization build order — Set

For this guide, we're going with Set because it matters when you build their Temple, as opposed to the other major Egyptian gods where it doesn't make much of a difference.

You'll start with a Priest, a Pharaoh, a Baboon of Set, and four villagers. In the beginning, only your Pharaoh will be able to pick up relics, and they'll be busy, so we'll need to fix that.

1. Have three of your villagers hunt for food and two for gold.
2. The Pharaoh should be empowering the Granary (used for food storage) because that's where the majority of the villagers will be. This will also make it so you don't need as many villagers hunting for food.
3. Build a Mining Camp near the gold mine that you have your villagers working at. The Egyptians have a separate building for gold, and another for wood (which you'll build in step 10).
4. Add another villager to the food-hunting squad.
5. Build your first Monument to start gaining favor — there are different Monuments, but the first one will increase the favor you get from your Civilization. Once it's built, the air around it will be speckled with red, it's a bit disconcerting, but it's nothing bad.
6. Build a house for your rising population.
7. Send out your Scout (the Baboon of Set is perfect for this mission).
8. Make enough villagers that you have eight in total hunting for food, you don't need any more than that for the Egyptian Civilization. The Greeks need nine because they don't have a Pharaoh boosting the food numbers. Remember to press the livestock feature in your menu so that your villagers don't run out of food to hunt nearby.
9. Build the Temple and activate the Hand of the Pharaoh in the Temple menu so that you can send your Priest to get relics instead of your Pharaoh. Your Pharaoh is busy, and the Priest doesn't do a whole lot of stuff, so you may as well have them rather relics.
10. Create a few villagers to chop wood — this isn't super necessary for the Egyptians, so don't worry about having more than two or three of them doing this. Wood is used for some upgrades, so you'll want to have it building up passively just in case.
11. Build a Lumber Camp (used solely for wood) near the trees you're cutting down.
12. Send two more villagers to the Gold Mine.
13. Advance to the Second Age with either minor God. The choice is completely up to you, just pick whichever power you prefer.
14. Gold is really important for an Egyptian build, so grab the Pickaxe upgrade next by clicking on the Mining Camp.
15. Drop another Granary next to another nearby food source — whichever group of animals is around. Usually pigs, chickens, or goats.
16. Build two Barracks — one for Slingers, one for Spearmen or Axemen. I went for spears; I like spears.
17. Build a second Monument (this one is for your soldiers).

That's the basic setup for the Egyptian Civilization. As I said, playing Egyptians requires less wood, but they do need more gold. Be sure to add more villagers onto the Gold Mine, and build houses as needed for your population.

From here, you should also start setting up your military from the Barracks, and consider building an Armory. Once you have enough resources, remember to take a look at the other available upgrades, too.

Norse Civilization build order — Thor

There are four major gods that you can choose from for the Norse Pantheon, but you will need to pay for Freyr with real money if you want to play with him as your God. As much as I like Loki, this build is going to focus on Thor because he's pretty popular and has a unique set-up.

Thor's focus is Dwarves and the Armory, so you'll have a better time choosing him for this build than another God. The cool thing about Thor is that you get a free Dwarf every time you get an Armory upgrade, so you can utilize his powers well for a Dwarven build.

The Norse Civilization build is a bit more complicated than the others because it includes Dwarves as well as regular villagers. You'll start with three Dwarves, a Berserk (that's not a typo), and an Ox Cart.

One last note before you start: The Norse Pantheon doesn't have a Scout. Use your Berserker to manually scout nearby when you're not fighting.

1. Send your start Dwarves over to a tree to chop that down for your first bit of wood.
2. Build the Dwarven Mine (Thor's God Power, found at the top of your screen).
3. Send your three Dwarves over to your Dwarven Gold Mine. Dwarves are much better at mining gold than human villagers are, so it's a waste of time to have regular villagers over at the Gold Mine.
4. Create two human Gatherers (the Norse equivalent of villagers) to go and hunt food.
5. Create two Gatherers and have them chop down trees. The Ox Cart acts as a Storehouse, so you can place it near the group that's furthest away for now and the others can walk to your Town Hall and back.
6. Click on your Berserk and build a Dwarven Armory (on the right side of the Berserk's menu). Get the Copper Shield upgrade as soon as you can (this lets your fighters pierce armor). Send the free Dwarf to collect wood.
7. Build a house.
8. Get two more Berserks. They help with building.
9. Produce more villagers to gather food. Ideally, you'll want to get to 12 villagers gathering food overall — it's used a lot in the Norse builds. You don't need to get all 12 up and running right now, but get to eight before the next step.
10. Once you have eight food-gathering villagers, get the Copper Armor upgrade from the Dwarven Armory. Send your second free Dwarf to collect wood.
11. Build the Temple (click on your Berserk to find the menu that has the Temple).
12. Get your first Hero from the Temple. Up until this point, you'll have generated very little Favor, and you'll need more going forward.
13. Advance to the Second Age. Choose any minor God you want, I went with Freyja for her Forest Fire ability, but Forseti's healing is also a great choice.
14. Drop an Ox Cart to make your Gatherers' lives easier. Aim for three Ox Carts in total — one for food, one for wood, and one for gold.
15. Build another house, you should need one around now.
16. Build your military buildings — the Longhouse and the Great Hall.

You can now start producing your preferred Military Units and continue to build and upgrade your town.

The Dwarves and the Dwarven Armory and Gold Mine are your biggest assets here. But, if you're not playing with Thor as your God, then just replace those with regular villagers, a normal Armory, and the standard Gold Mines. There isn't too much difference, to be honest.

Atlantean Civilization build order — Oranos

You'll start your Atlantean town with two villagers and three Oracles. Oracles are used to scout and help you gain favor.

You don't need as many villagers when playing an Atlantean Civilization, so it's another good beginner-friendly Pantheon to play. It has fewer steps than the Greek Pantheon, but there's less information out there about how to run a good Atlantean Civilization because the Greeks have been in Age of Empires games much longer.

Be sure to consistently check on your Oracles. When they stop for a long time and start waving their sticks, they're ready to move on.

1. Send your first two villagers over to the nearest food source.
2. Your three Oracles need to be spread out. Oracles can't work together, and having them grouped up will stop two of them from doing their job. Send them to Scout in three different directions.
3. Create your first two villagers. Send one villager over to your Gold Mine, and the fourth one to a wood source.
4. Build a house (called a Manor for the Atlanteans) to keep up with your upcoming population.
5. Create two more villagers and send them both to gather food.
6. Create another villager to become your second wood-gathering villager.
7. Place a Temple and have a villager worship there for extra favor if you want. It's not super necessary, though, because you have three Oracles running around who have been doing that for you. The Temple can give you other upgrades, though, so be sure to build it.
8. Make two more villagers — send one to wood and the other to gold.
9. Advance to the Second Age, pick whichever minor God you like the power of.
10. Build an Economic Guild (this is unique to the Atlanteans and develops their economy).
11. Build a Counter Barracks and a Military Barracks. In the Counter Barracks, you'll want to produce Turma soldiers (ranged fighters), while the Military Barracks should be producing Murmillos (melee fighters).

Start building up your army and checking out which upgrades you want.

Remember to create more Manors as and when you need them, and occasionally check on your Oracles to make sure they're not crossing each other's paths (this will largely depend on the map you're playing).

You'll notice that the Atlantean build doesn't use any storage facilities. Once you have the Economic Guild up, you won't need any. It basically takes the place of the Granary in other builds.

I found the guide for easy build orders that informed this article over on YouTube, but I found the video went far too fast for new players and didn't explain certain terms. I've broken it down here for our readers and made a few changes to set up new players in a way that's easier to understand. Huge thanks to Moose AOM for his efforts.

Want to read more about Age of Mythology: Retold here at Pro Game Guides? Check out this other guide for new players: Age of Mythology Retold Tier List – All Gods Ranked.