Little-known fact: you can’t spell ‘real-time strategy’ without ‘strategy’. Mind-boggling, right? The fact is, RTS games often tempt you into a route one approach that involves amassing an enormous blob of units and marching them somewhere dangerous, but almost never reward you for doing so. The real fun is in exploiting the systems to your advantage, and making use of every mechanic to exact an advantage on your opponents.

In Ancestors Legacy, the Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, Holy Roman Empire and Slavs are going at it. There are many ways to exert dominance, and they all involve a lot of blood and screaming. But they all involve a bit of thought, too.

Resources

As with any RTS worth its salt, gathering and wisely spending resources is a big part of the game. This being a historically accurate title, Tiberium isn’t littering the forests and villages. Instead, wood, food, iron and housing form the primary resource concerns.

Wood’s used to erect buildings, recruit troops, and construct upgrades. Iron is for armour upgrades, unit production, and blacksmithing. Food’s used for unit maintenance, and a food shortage can negatively affect morale. An army marches on its stomach, after all. Prolonged famine will also drain health. Finally, housing puts a hard limit on the number of squads you can field.

Villages

At the start of every game, villages begin in the neutral zone of the map. They’re under no-one’s control, and up for grabs. Once you control a village by attacking it and defeating the peasants within it, you’ll gather its resources. The more villages under your control, the faster you collect resources.

It’s important to remember that villages can be re-captured after you take them, so maintaining defences there is key.

Prayers

Every nation has their own unique prayers, bestowing a variety of bonuses on their squads and economy. Here’s how they break down.

Vikings can worship Loki to burn structures faster, worship Odin to grant an attack bonus, or worship Thor to boost movement speed. Anglo-Saxons can pray for luck to increase melee and ranged defence, pray for welfare to boost all resource income, or order to decrease recruitment cost and time. The Holy Roman Empire can enact a fast to reduce squad upkeep, pray for victory to boost attack and defence, or welfare to boost all resource income. Finally, Slavs can worship Mokosh to reduce unit upkeep costs, worship Perun to boost attack, and Veles to reduce recruitment costs.