Recently I made \[this post\](https://www.reddit.com/r/AgeofMythology/comments/1udecof/atlantean\_dlc\_god\_concept\_pontus/) for a 4th Atlantean DLC God focusing on a turtle strategy, Pontus.



I did loads of research into the titans for this and had some fun ideas for other Titan gods and myth units, and my previous two attempts at Nyx and Pontus both had issues, so for your reading pleasure here is my last attempt (promise) at an Atlantean 4th DLC god: Iapetus



Why Iapetus? Well, unlike Nyx and Pontus, he is actually part of the Titan lineage. Imprisoned next to Kronos, there's a hint that he was a second-in-command of sorts, and may have been as revered among the Titans as Poseidon or Demeter were among the Olympians.



Note: all these ideas are my own, but I’ve added some AI-generated icons and god portraits to make it a more entertaining overview.



If you enjoy this let me know, I’ve really enjoyed all your comments on my last few posts.



\# Major god: Iapetus



\*\*\*Focus: Population\*\*\*



Iapetus is designed to support a booming playstyle, with bonuses that come into fruition in the late-game to support a more robust economy and military production, provided you can establish a strong economy to support unit production. In the Archaic Age, improved scouting potential helps you identify Settlements for claiming in the Classical Age, which can be reached sooner with a god power and myth tech that improve early food gathering.



\*\*God Power: Devour.\*\* Cast on a food source to passively gather from it.



\>\*Effectively like having an extra Citizen gathering food in complete safety.\*



\>\*Nuwa’s Creation gives better gathering power, but Devour’s advantages over Creation are 1) there’s no citizen’s for the enemy to harass, so the gathering can’t be interrupted; 2) it can be cast on food sources inaccessible to normal citizens, like fish and farms in use; 3) its two-minute max duration in the Archaic increases as you age up.\*



\*\*Unique Unit: Hoplomachus\*\* Infantry unit. Good against cavalry.



\>\*This unit is Iapetus’s unique identifier, like Oranos’s Sky Passages, Kronos’s time-shifting and Gaia’s Lush. Like other Atlantean human soldiers, can be promoted to a hero.\*



\>\*The Hoplomachus is an exceptional generalist infantry unit with an anti-cavalry bonus, comparable to a Hoplite. It's unique in taking 1.5 pop space; this means one Hoplomachus takes 2 pop-space, but two of them take 3 pop-space. In practice, this allows you to train 33% more Hoplochami than Murmillos for the same pop space. They will lose to Murmillo and Hoplites 1v1, but they will win with pop-space. Pop-space could be increased to 1.75 if this proved too unbalanced.\*



\*\*Bonuses\*\*



\*\*1.\*\* Hoplomachus replace Murmillo



\>\*This means Hoplomachus are trained at the Military Barracks instead of Murmillo.\*



\>\*Given that Hoplomachus has a counter-cavalry bonus, why replace Murmillo instead of Katapeltes? Because the Hoplomachus is also an excellent generalist infantry, similar in design to the Greek Hoplite. Katepeltes are still more effective against cavalry, so the Hoplomachus fits better in the Murmillo’s niche than the Katapeltes’.\*



\*\*2.\*\* Starts with a Turma Scout



\>\*The Turma Scout looks just like a Turma, only without the shield on the horse’s haunch. It takes -1 population space, is +0.5 faster, has +2 LOS, and -4 attack (offset by +5 attack against animals). It can be tasked to scout. It cannot be upgraded to a hero. If it is killed, there is no way to train additional Turma Scouts.\*



\>\*In the Classical Age, the Turma Scout will be converted to a regular Turma, though it will retain its scouting ability.\*



\>\*Improved scouting in the Archaic Age should help in securing resources an a second TC in the Classical. It also synergises well with the Devour god power; use the Turma Scout to find distant food sources and bring down huntables. If you’re feeling brave, you could even use the Turma Scout and Devour combo to steal some food from your enemy, a very strong move in the Archaic.\*



\*\*3.\*\* Fortified Town Center is researched instantly and for free in the Heroic Age, and provides +50% population



\>\*By default, Town Centers provide +10 pop-capacity with this tech; for Iapetus, it’s +15.\*



\>\*While this sounds like a defensive boost, I think of it more as an incentive to be a bit aggressive and claim more TCs in the Classical Age; you can risk more in taking additional TCs if you know they’ll get a defensive boost when you age up.\*



\*\*4.\*\* Citizen training time: Citizen training time: -5% for every empty citizen pop-space below the maximum you have achieved. Same for military units, but -2%



\>\*This takes some explaining. TLDR: doesn’t help you build population in the early game, but offers easier economic recovery after raids, and in the late game offers rapid economic recovery and helps to ensure that you can quickly deploy small to medium armies.\*



\>\*Say you have trained 10 Citizens and 3 Oracles. Citizens have a pop-space of 2, so your Citizen pop-space in 20 (the Oracles don’t contribute to your Citizen pop-space). You lose three Citizens, so your Citizen pop-space goes down by 6 to 14. This grants you -30% training time for the next trained citizen (6 x -5%), -20% for the one after that, then -10% before returning to normal. The cap is -90%, for which you’d have to have lost at least 9 citizens.\*



\>\*The military pop-space count is handled separately. The cap for military units is -70%.\*



\*\*Unique Tech: Bounty of Epimetheus\*\* Replaces livestock near your Town Center with boars worth 25% more food.



\>\*Livestock increase their food over time, boars don't, and they fight back when attacked. But boars do also provide better gather rates. This tech sacrifices long-term food supply for short-term gains, which can be beneficial but should be used with caution.\*



\>\*If there are no livestock animals near your TC, you receive no benefit from this tech, and you essentially waste the resources used to research it. Given Epimetheus is the Titan of short-sightedness and poor planning, I think this is quite fitting.\*



\# Minor god: Phoebe



\*\*\*Focus: Vision.\*\*\* In the Classical Age, Iapetus’s goal is to create lots of Citizens.



Prometheus approaches this economically, making it easier to upgrade your Citizens to heroes and improve their work rate. If Iapetus’s Turma Scout survives into the Classical Age, it will become a Turma and can be instantly promoted to a hero with the Valor power, giving you early access to a useful raiding unit, and helping your economy stay ahead.



Phoebe offers improved favor generation, but no other eco bonus to help with Citizen production. Her support for booming comes from map control. Her god power supports armies in defence and offence, she has access to an extremely fast myth unit to allow engagements all over the map, and she can provide improved scouting and modest regeneration to help identify and hold Settlements.



\*\*God Power: Prophecy.\*\* Target a location to grant your units a second, non-healable health bar.



\>\*The new health bar is meant to mimic a unit having seen a vision of a single fight in the future, and thus be prepared to defend against it. In gameplay, the second health bar cannot regenerate, but it is permanent until destroyed. It must be completely destroyed before their regular health bar starts to take damage.\*



\>\*The new health bars are worth a total of 100 hit points (this could easily by modified for rebalances), e.g. if you cast Prophecy over 5 units, they’ll each receive 20 hit points; if you cast on one unit, they’ll receive the full 100 hit points. This would increase in later ages.\*



\*\*Myth Unit: Python.\*\* Myth unit that can burrow underground to move faster. Good against human soldiers.



\>\*The Python is a melee unit that moves slowly similar to the Wadjet, with its head reared up. It is larger than the Wadjet, however, with more health and good hack armor. It can be toggled to burrow underground at any time, and then toggled to resurface; both these processes take time, during which the Python is vulnerable to attack.\*



\>\*A mound of earth appears over the Python while it is underground, moving with it to show its location. While underground, the Python is impervious to damage, and moves extremely quickly. It cannot cross water or cliffs, but it can move under walls, buildings and trees (though it cannot resurface while under them).\*



\*\*Tech: Earth Dragon.\*\* Upgrades Pythons to Delphynes, which burrows and resurfaces from the ground much faster, and can rapidly strike from underground.



\>\*Normally if you task a Python to attack a unit while its underground, it has to slowly resurface. When a Delphyne is underground, however, it can attack enemies to resurface instantly and inflict additional damage. It still takes time to burrow underground.\*



\*\*Unique Unit: Delphic Oracle.\*\* Hero Oracle that generates favor 10% faster and can move her LOS to remote locations. Max limit: 1



\>\*Trained at the Temple. Does not contribute to your Oracle max limit, essentially granting one additional Oracle with 10% faster favour generation. More expensive, more pop space and longer training time than an Oracle, but is created as a hero (i.e. there’s no non-hero version).\*



\>\*Her special ability, Far Sight, moves her vision to a location of your choice at a cost of 5 favor. This reduces her local LOS to 0, and the chosen location has half her usual LOS, so it’s quite small (and therefore produces less favor). It must also grow, like normal Oracle LOS. There is a cooldown for moving her vision, and if she moves her remote vision is broken, causing her local vision to start expanding as normal.\*



\*\*Tech: Sacred Light.\*\* Oracles regenerate the health of units within their LOS.



\>\*The healing rate does not stack with overlapping Oracle LOS. I imagine this would be quite a small amount of healing, increased to more when units are idle.\*



\>\*The Delphic Oracle’s healing would be more than other Oracles, and it does apply to the Delphic Oracle when using her Far Sight ability. So you can choose between setting up a healing spot for your units, or get better intel on your enemies.\*



\# Minor god: Coeus



\*\*\*Focus: Trade and Technology.\*\*\* In the Heroic Age, it’s time to start researching military techs and set up a trade route for late-game gold.



Hyperion enables this by emphasising the use of military power to secure map control with a strong offensive god power, strong heroes and a strong myth unit. Furthermore, regenerating heroes can be exceptionally powerful in Iapetus’s Mythic Age, so Hyperion gives you the strongest long-term army.



But if you’re map control’s already in a good place, you might consider Coeus for a more robust trade route and a much more powerful research potential to ensure a strong late-game economy. Your late-game army won’t be as powerful, but you can reach it sooner and maintain it for longer.



\*\*God Power: Secret Knowledge.\*\* Transforms an Economic Guild into a Research Guild, which can research all available technologies 40% faster, and can research additional eco techs in the Mythic Age.



\>\*To be clear, everything can be researched here (including armory upgrades, military unit upgrades, dock upgrades and so on) except for age advancement, Secrets of the Titans, and Omniscience. The limiting factor is that it only researches one tech at a time and you’ll usually only have one Research Guild, so it might be quicker to also research additional technologies from other buildings where possible.\*



\>\*For comparison, Heimdall’s Classical Age tech Rigsthula improves research rates by 20% across all buildings, the Mythic Age tech Divine Prefecture improves research rates by 60%, and the Dwarven Armory researches armory techs 33% faster in the Heroic Age and 50% faster in the Mythic. So I think this is balanced.\*



\>\*Similar to how the Dwarven Armory provides additional armor techs in the Mythic Age, the Research Guild provides additional eco techs. These are NOT classified as myth techs.\*



\*\*Tech: Secrets of Ourea.\*\* Citizens: +15% gold gather rate. Requires Quarry.



\*\*Tech: Secrets of Pontus.\*\* Citizens and Fishing Ships: +10% food gather rate. Requires Flood Control.



\*\*Tech: Secrets of Gaia.\*\* Citizens: +15% wood gather rate. Requires Carpenters.



\>\*In terms of balance, my sense is the availability of these techs doesn’t make Coeus overpowered because they’re not available immediately, and they provide only a late-game eco boost (by which time the gold tech in particular might be completely unnecessary).\*



\*\*Myth Unit: Griffin.\*\* Myth unit with a special leap attack that stuns a target and knocks back nearby foes. Good against human soldiers.



\>\*The Griffin is a land-based unit, not a flying unit. Its wings are used for its special attack in which it leaps into the air (powered by its wings) and descends on a target, which it stuns. All its nearby allies are knocked back with wind from the Griffin’s wings (similar to the Minotaur attack), allowing the Griffin to attack its stunned target in peace.\*



\*\*Myth Unit: Hippogriff.\*\* Flying caravan myth unit created at Markets that collects gold from Town Centers and returns it to your Market..



\>\*Compared to the Chinese Pixiu, the Hippogriff is more expensive, doesn’t generate gold faster than normal caravans, and doesn’t have any bonuses to generate food and wood. But on the plus side, it can fly. That means protection from raids, and it isn’t slowed down by geography or buildings.\*



\*\*Tech: Golden Talons.\*\* Upgrades Griffins to High Griffins, which have +25% attack.



\*\*Tech: Shoulders of Giants.\*\* Non-myth techs cost 0.5% less for each one previously researched.



\>\*I’ve run the numbers. Bear in mind Isis gives a flat -10% on all technology costs, including Myth techs (which aren’t covered by this). A perfect research strategy in which you research the cheapest techs first and the most expensive last would result in a saving of 20%. But you’re not researching all the techs in any game, and you’re definitely not doing it perfectly. The worst saving possible, where you research the most expensive techs first, results in a 10% saving; ordering randomly gives about 15%, which I think is the most likely figure you’d hit.\*



\*\*Tech: Greek Fire.\*\* Unlocks Fire Siphons; Fire Ships and Fire Siphons +20% movement speed.



\>\*Not the strongest boost, but potentially useful in pushing the enemy off a TC if you need to boom harder.\*



\# Minor god: Mnemosyne



\*\*\*Focus: Heroes and Human Soldiers.\*\*\* In the Mythic Age, it’s time to start pumping out large armies.



Hekate’ offers powerful myth units and synergises very well with Iapetus’s other minor gods. Use the Delphic Oracle’s Far Sight to drop a Tartarian Gate in the enemy base, research Mythic Rejuvenation for regenerating Griffins, and improve the gather rate of your Hippogriffs with Celerity.



Conversely, Mnemosyne offers powerful heroes (with a particularly large power-spike for Iapetus’s unique unit, the Hoplomachus), supported by a sturdy myth unit and a dangerous god power. If you’re fighting an opponent that easily counters myth units, this might be the better choice.



\*\*God Power: Story of Typhon.\*\* Summons Typhon, a titan who will attack everything near him for 30 seconds.



\>\*Typhon is a neutral and aggressive Titan. As well as attacking enemies, he will attack your units as well. When Typhon first appears he will impact that ground, causing damage to units. He cannot be summoned on top of a building, he needs open ground. He cannot be killed, but he only last for 30 seconds before departing.\*



\*\*Myth Unit: Amalthea.\*\* Myth unit that is almost completely invulnerable to pierce damage. Good against human soldiers.



\>\*A fairly standard melee myth unit with respectable attack whose unique selling point is pierce resistance, making it a useful additional to infantry-heavy armies.\*



\*\*Tech: Horn of Amalthea.\*\* Upgrades Amaltheas to Amalthea Aixes, which heal nearby friendly units as they attack enemies.



\>\*Similar to the life-steal effect of Poseidon’s Thracian Horses tech, except the Amalthea regenerates the health of its allies rather than its own health. The Amalthea is good defensively, but this tech makes it a support specialist for your heroes.\*



\*\*Tech: Gigantomachy.\*\* Hero infantry have 3 veterency levels, growing in size and power.



\>\*Affects Hoplomachus, Katapeltes, Fanatic and Destroyer heroes.\*



\>\*Veterency ranks are increased by inflicting damage. Any damage inflicted by a unit before it becomes a hero also contributes to their veterency as a hero.\*



\>\*With each veterency rank, the unit’s size increases slightly, as does their range. Their health and attack both increase by 10%, and they gain +1 / +2 / +3 points of crush damage (so +6 at full veterency).\*



\>\*By comparison, Vidar’s Avenging Spirit tech increases Hersir attack by 20% with every veterency level. The attack boost is lower for this tech because it affects a wider variety of units and also affects range and health.\*



\*\*Tech: Remember the Fallen.\*\* Heroes grant +0.1 divine damage to all nearby human soldiers on death.



\>\*This is a permanent boost to all nearby human soldiers. The hero must be killed by an enemy (deleting your own units does nothing). Maxes out at +1.5 divine damage (this could be increased or nerfed for balanc). This tech is particularly valuable for groups of Hoplomachi since their decreased pop-cap means you can field more of them than other heroes, so there's more available to die.\*



\*\*Tech: Cult of the Piercer.\*\* Hoplomachi and Turma have +20% attack and -20% hack vulnerability, and cost 50% less favor to promote to heroes.



\>\*With all of Mnemosyne’s techs researched, the unit that benefits the most is the Hoplomachus Hero. As a baseline, they train faster (thanks to the Iapetus bonus), can be trained in high numbers, they may regenerate (if you chose Hyperion in the Heroic Age), and have +20% attack, -20% hack vulnerability. Individually, they can also reach +1.5 divine damage (via Remember the Fallen) and another +30% attack, health and additional range at full veterency (via Gigantomachy).\*



\>\*By comparison, Norse Hersir have 65% more base health, more speed, much better pierce armor, and do about 20% more damage than the Hoplomachus. With Freyr, they can have an additional +20% health, +20% attack, and +10% movement speed. Individually, they can achieve another +60% attack (via Avenging Spirit). So stats-wise, the Hersir can be far superior. The Hoplomachus are also countered much harder by anti-infantry units, with their lower pierce armor. Their edge over Hersirs is their faster training times and their numbers on the battlefield.\*



\>\*So overall, the fully upgraded Iapetus Hoplomachus is extremely powerful, but not so much so that they’re unbalanced next to other strong infantry builds.\*

Atlantean DLC god concept: Iapetus