Forge of Empires Space Age Mars Prep: Map, Ore, and Colony Guide

To transition smoothly into Space Age Mars in Forge of Empires, conquer the continent campaign map into Mars territory while still in Virtual Future. Space Age Mars replaces traditional main-city goods production with an off-world colony and introduces Mars Ore, an untradable special resource extracted directly from the campaign map. Advancing without prior map progress will immediately stall your research tree.

Conquer the Mars Campaign Map Before Aging Up

In earlier ages, lagging behind on the continent map only delayed city expansions and side quests. In Space Age Mars, campaign map progression is a mandatory bottleneck for research. Mars Ore cannot be manufactured in your main city or traded on the market; it must be mined from interactive extraction nodes on conquered Mars campaign sectors.

Scouting Mars sectors involves lengthy scout timers and costly infiltration fees. If you enter Mars while your scout is still in Oceanic Future or Virtual Future, you will run out of tech options within the first few unlocks. Pushing your campaign map into Mars territory while remaining in Virtual Future unlocks exploration sites ahead of time. Once you research the Mars arrival technology, you can immediately send mining teams to gather the ore required for military barracks and economic upgrades.

Stockpile Virtual Future Resources and Forge Points

Setting up your Mars colony and clearing initial technologies consumes significant legacy goods and base resources. Build a stockpile before initiating the age transition:

• Virtual Future Goods: Stock 1,500 to 2,000 of each Virtual Future good (Cryptocash, Data Crystals, Golden Rice, Nanowire, and Tea Silk). These cover initial tech tree nodes, colony setup, and sector negotiations.
• Coins and Supplies: Maintain several hundred million coins and supplies to fund recurring colony construction cycles and production runs.
• Banked Forge Points: Store inventory Forge Point packages to rapid-fire through the opening branch of Mars technologies. This provides immediate access to Mars residential pods, military units, and colony expansions.
• Space Carrier Great Building: Level the Space Carrier before aging up. Its diplomatic gift ability drops special resources upon successful negotiations, providing a steady daily influx of Mars Ore without waiting for map timers.

Balance Colony Life Support and Mars Credits

The Mars Colony functions as an auxiliary city accessed via the spaceport shuttle in your main city. Unlike cultural settlements, the colony directly produces your age-specific trade goods and generates Mars Credits, the currency used to pay for goods synthesis and mining operations.

Colony efficiency depends on maintaining a positive Life Support balance:

1. Construct Life Support Buildings First: Residential pods produce Mars Credits but consume Life Support. Construct service buildings to keep Life Support higher than your population's demand.
2. Avoid Life Support Deficits: If Life Support drops into the negative, goods synthesizers suffer steep penalties. Production times increase, and Mars Credit costs rise sharply per cycle.
3. Run Scheduled Collections: Time your residential collections to ensure a steady supply of Mars Credits for map-based mining runs.

Mine Mars Ore on the Campaign Map

Once you control campaign sectors with ore deposits, you can deploy mining crews to extract resources.

Some extraction nodes spawn defensive combat encounters when your workers arrive. If your military attack bonuses are low, you must spend additional goods to negotiate past them. Raise attack-oriented Great Buildings—such as the Statue of Zeus, Cathedral of Aachen, and Castel del Monte—before aging up so your armies can clear mining encounters via battle rather than draining your goods inventory.

Adapt Military Compositions for Mars Combat

While heavily boosted Virtual Future Hover Tanks can clear low-attrition battles in early Mars sectors, native Mars armies require structural changes to your army:

• Countering Advanced Skills: Mars introduces flying units and Augmented Reality (AR) skills that bypass certain terrain defenses that protected older units.
• Frontline Anchors: Steel Wardens feature heavy armor and defensive shields that absorb chip damage, making them vital against fast Mars units.
• Early Tech Priority: Research native Mars military barracks early in your tech tree. Deploying Mars units ensures you can reliably win campaign map extraction battles and maintain high attrition levels in Guild Battlegrounds and Guild Expeditions.