Zeus Walkthroughs: Hercules' Labors

» Episode I: The Labors Begins

Goals
- Produce 30 skeins of fleece in one year
- 250 people in Tenement or better
- Treasury of 7,500

Hints & Tips
Begin by building a housing block near the immigrant entrance at the top-left of the main landmass. Between boars and abundant urchins, there is ample food for a large population. Keep in mind, however, that the arrival of the Kraken in Episode 2 can seriously disrupt your urchin gathering. Heed the advice in the introduction and resist overbuilding your city. To avoid over-building, limit yourself to 10 to 20 houses and focus on evolving those to higher levels.

Depending on the difficulty level you are playing, the toughest goal will be either the fleece production or the treasury goal. Regardless, your main activities in this episode will be to set up a thriving fleece industry on the meadow near the lower portion of the playing area, and to export fleece to Cyme. Tiryns will become the fleece capital of Greece before you finish this adventure, so leave room for expanding your fleece industry.

During this episode, Cyme will go through a series of political upheavals. Since you can have no influence on these for the time being, it's best to just ignore them and concentrate on your own city.

To ensure quick fleece production and delivery to your houses, follow these tips. Build your carding sheds near, but not over, the meadow, preferably between the meadow and your housing block. Place a storage yard nearby set to "accept" fleece. Then place another storage yard near the housing block's agora set to "get" fleece. This will prevent any backlog at the carding shed because of a long delivery distance, and will also ensure that the agora's fleece vendor has a short trip to pick up his goods. This same technique can be used for other goods, and for food as well (with granaries). Trading posts act like "getting" storage yards, so they will benefit from this distribution chain as well.

To evolve your houses up to Tenement level, provide them with food, fleece, culture, and some attractive parks or columns. Then export excess fleece to Cyme until you have the money you need to move onto the next episode. If you produce an abundant excess of food or fleece, give it your allies as gifts to improve relations with them. Cyme will especially appreciate any gifts of fleece, since it a product they need.

Your next episode will be a choice of three colonies. You will get to play them all before Hercules' Labors is over, and the order you play them will affect the adventure's difficulty. For the purposes of this Hints and Tips, we will follow the easier path of Lerna-Lemnos-Ephesus. For a bigger challenge, play Ephesus first. That way, you'll have hostile Amazons at your throat for the rest of the adventure! Won't that be fun?

» Episode 2: The Hydra (Lerna Colony)

Goals
- Slay a monster (the Hydra)
- Fulfill a forthcoming quest (The Apples of Hesperides)

Hints & Tips
The main objective of this colony episode is to summon a great hero. Guess who? Yes, it's Hercules! Only the mighty Hercules can kill the multi-headed Hydra. He also excels at fetching apples for erotic goddesses.

Most of the requirements to summon Hercules go hand-in-hand with the development of a self-sufficient city, which should be your first priority. Start out by building a housing block to the left of the narrow river in the open land.

The best spots for fishing lie across the river. Clear some trees and bridge the river near its mouth. Then build fishing docks along the shore. When you are ready, begin requesting or importing fleece from your parent city of Tiryns. You can produce olive oil and wine in Lerna. Wine is required to summon Hercules. Olive oil will help you evolve your houses, and can be exported for profit.

A few months into the episode, Aphrodite will announce the quest, and you will be able to build the Hero's Hall to Hercules. Hercules won't even think of coming to your city until you have met the following requirements:

Right-click on the Hall to check up on which requirements you haven't yet met. To meet the culture requirement, make sure the Hall is built amongst your houses. That way, you can provide excellent culture to Hercules and your citizens using the same culture buildings. Unlike most common housing blocks, you will need to add a stadium to meet the Hero's exacting standards for city culture. Maximizing cultural coverage also ensures that you will win one of the Panhellenic Games in the first few tries. Use the Culture tab in the control panel and the cultural overlay to make sure you have adequate coverage. If you have difficulty winning the Games, build more and more cultural venues.

Eventually, the Hydra is going to appear in the swampy area near the lower edge of the playing area. He will occasionally sortie into town and wreak some havoc on your city. The sooner you can summon Hercules the better!

When you have summoned him, he will kill the Hydra on his own. Then send him on his quest for the Golden Apples, and you're ready to return to Tiryns!

» Episode 3: Gods in the World

Goals
- Slay a monster (Kraken)
- Sanctuary to any God

Hints & Tips
As the introduction points out, your association with Hercules is creating more enemies than friends at this point. The introduction alludes to looming danger from the gods Poseidon and Apollo, the monster Kraken, and the nation of Centaurs. Things will start speeding up in this episode, so be ready to move quickly. Use the "P" key to pause the game if you need extra time to plan and build your city.

Start by building the trading post to Lerna. You can export fleece there, and import olive oil to further evolve your houses. You may also request olive oil from Lerna on the world level. Begin importing bronze and wood. You can convert the bronze into sculpture for the sanctuaries you must build. When importing goods, always keep an eye on your treasury. It's easy to buy too much and find yourself in the red. Right-click on trade buildings and storage yards to set limits on the amount of goods they will buy and store.

Soon, the city of Mount Pelion will blossom. Build a trade post with them and start importing marble. The Centaur cities of Mount Pelion and Mount Malea may pester you to send them some wine. Whether you want to comply or not is up to you. If you provoke their anger, you may find them taking away trading rights.

Build a huge fleece industry. You can now export fleece to several cities. Also, gifts of fleece to fleece importers can do wonders for your diplomatic relations. You can then cash in on your high favor by requesting goods you might need.

At some point in the early stages, Poseidon will unleash his Kraken in the waters surrounding Tiryns. You need to summon Perseus to defeat the Kraken. Perseus is a very demanding hero. He requires:

You will notice that the two sanctuary requirements more than meet the sanctuary episode goal. In other words, the goal of this episode is essentially to summon Perseus. The biggest hurdle is building the two sanctuaries, so start on them right away. The Kraken will periodically destroy some of your coastal structures, so keep an eye on those that need replacing. Also, be careful not to let too many goods accumulate in a trading dock. The Kraken might decide to come along and rip it to pieces.

Although it is not a goal, make sure that you end the episode with a large enough treasury to build up a city from scratch in the subsequent colony episode. Try to have at least 5,000 Drachmas on hand before summoning Perseus. Then when you are ready, call him to your city. He will surf out on his raft to kill the Kraken, and you will advance to the next colony mission.

» Episode 4: The Fallen God (Lemnos Colony)

Goals
- Population of 2,000
- Sanctuary to Aphrodite

Hints & Tips
Lerna is an interesting region consisting of a string of islands. The large island furthest from the mainland provides the best spot to set up your colony. First, build bridges connecting the mainland to the big island. Then build your housing block on the dark green grassland near the marble quarry. Save the higher plateau for building Aphrodite's sanctuary.

Use trade and/or diplomacy to acquire the goods you need to build a large city. Set these trade routes up as soon as possible. You will need a large population to maximize your ability to harvest the rich resources Lemnos has to offer. When your labor force is large enough, start mining silver and quarrying marble. The silver will add to your treasury. You can use the marble for four purposes. First, you can use it build Aphrodite's sanctuary. Second, you can export it for profit. Third, you can give it away as gifts. And fourth, you can use it to fulfill requests for marble from your parent city of Tiryns. With all these uses, you can quarry an almost unlimited supply at Lemnos and still never have too much.

During the episode, you will have to contend with numerous tidal waves as well as invasions from Hephaestus. When Hephaestus invades, some of your buildings will probably explode into flames. No wonder Aphrodite married the guy! Anyway, the sooner you build Aphrodite's sanctuary, the sooner she can go about soothing her husband's fiery temper. In the meantime, be quick to repair any damage to your city the fire and water might inflict. If any bridges get wiped out, your city will be cut off from all of Greece! When you have completed the sanctuary and built up your population to 2,000, you are ready to move on.

» Episode 5: War with the Centaurs

Goals
- Support for 8 Hoplites or better
- Population of 2,500

Hints & Tips
This should be a relatively simple episode. You only need to accomplish two tasks. First, expand your common housing to accommodate 2,500 people (41 townhouses). Then build an elite housing block. You will have to import or request armor to develop housing that supports hoplites. Add some wine to evolve the elite houses so they can support more hoplites.

There are a few obstacles which might get in the way of the painless scenario described above. First, those drunken Centaurs may continue to nag you for wine. Also, be on the lookout for angry Gods who may want to harass your citizenry. Finally, keep a close eye on the money situation. Importing the goods needed for elite housing can run your treasury into the ground, and you don't want to start the final colony episode completely broke, do you? Be careful not to advance until you have enough money in your treasury to survive the hostile environment of Ephesus.

» Episode 6: The Amazon World (Ephesus Colony)

Goals
- Fulfill a forthcoming quest (The Amazon Girdle)
- 18 bars of bronze for parent city
- 8 planks of wood for parent city

Hints & Tips
Build a housing block near the immigrant entrance at the upper-right side of the landmass. Hunt for urchins along the shore to provide your people with food. With food, culture, and appeal, you can raise your houses to tenement level. It's up to you whether you want to acquire fleece and olive oil to upgrade these houses.

Begin mining bronze at this point, and import the wood you will need to set aside for the parent city.

Soon, Artemis will ask you to send your old pal Hercules on a quest for the Amazon Girdle. The requirements for Hercules' Hall are listed below.

You will need to request or import wine to summon the big lug. When you have him, send him on the quest, dispatch the goods to Tiryns, and move on to the next episode. Keep in mind that after losing their precious Girdle, the Amazons are going to be really ticked off at Hercules, which means they're also going to be ticked off at you. Prepare to deal with their wrath in the upcoming episode.

» Episode 7: The Tables Have Turned

Goals
- Population 3,000
- Rule Mt. Pelion
- Sanctuary to Zeus
- 40 people in mansion or better

Hints & Tips
There are two major challenges to this episode: ruling Mount Pelion and building the sanctuary to Zeus. Fortunately, conquering Mount Pelion actually aids your sanctuary construction because Mount Pelion is a marble exporting city.

To conquer Mount Pelion, build up your elite housing to support 4 or 5 hoplite companies. This may require importing some wine and a large amount of armor. Each manor-level house (one above mansion) can support up to four individual hoplites, so you need eight fully-evolved manors to support four hoplite units. Once you have conquered Mount Pelion, butter them up with gifts of fleece so that you will be able to request marble from them. Also, request and import marble from your colony at Lemnos.

When you have enough marble, build Zeus' Sanctuary. The longer you wait, the more damage you may suffer from various God and rival invasions.

Depending on the world's diplomatic situation at this time, you may be subject to any number of enemy invasions. Keep a ready supply of armor near your elite housing to re-supply those houses that lose residents in battle.

When you accomplish these challenging goals, you will win the Adventure!