Try this against me with the German rush.....you won't have a TC after 7-8 minutes. Militia won't hurt Mercs. You must have some army or 6 towers up, but nothing but villagers will get you crushed hard.

I admit 30 villies would allow greatness, but if you plan on sitting back, just go with about 25 villagers.

You don't need more than 11 hunters (6 on each animal), and split the rest up into gold/wood. Heck, honestly I'm never hurting with 20 villagers in age 2. I make more once I hit it, but 20 isn't bad right before I advance.

After 7-8 minutes I usually have around 5 towers up and around 12 Musketeers. Also The Minutemen.

You are in dire straights indeed against a rusher. That's all find and good for 7-8 minute rush, but what about a 5-6 minute rush?

What about a rush from cavalry at 4:30 from a german player? Your strategy is not bad it just needs to have a little more effort put into advancing quicker and getting enough military to fend off attacks. You can easily advance earlier than you suggest and not suffer any economic consequences.

I think the British have great potential. This is a possible strategy. You have no idea how risky it is however! Against the Russians or Ottomans, grenadiers will be all over your undefended town doing some fireworks. Against Germans, either Uhlans will have your villagers for lunch, or Landsknechts will have your town center for dinner, and your villagers for dessert if you don't resign for some reason.
Ok, I know I am not that funny, but my point is that it's hard to keep control of all those villagers. You will eventually lose some of them, which negates the whole point of your strategy and that is to outboom with more villagers.

It might work against French, Port, Dutch, or British since they mostly boom. Don't forget as well that people tend to rush the British.

30 vils? Manors are expenise and waiting for the cheaper manor card takes time plus by time you have 15-20 vils a ok rusher would atack and minute men? They would just run away and wait a couple moments for there health to decrease then come back and kill them and kill a least some vils putinng back your goal of 30.

No. With the minutemen card you can have 21 men who are slightly less good than musketeers plus outposts plus TC. Could someone test it in Multiplayer as I don't have the game?

30 villagers? wtf? What sort of time do you hit colonial? 7 mins?

Whats gonna happen when you run out of resources near you towers? You say you don't have the game which explains a lot. If by the 6 min mark my enemy has not hit colonial (almost never, but if) I simply tower all their nearby resources and boom.

This won't work online because booming like this will get you dead very fast against everyone.

Even far less risk booms than this get killed off quite easily (just ask any Port or British player what Ottomans and Russians or Germans can do to them if they overboom... This strategy will get demolished by those civs, even non rush civs will destroy you as well.

Also, if someone Fast Fortress against you and you do this strategy you will be one dead dog.

Huge boom strategies fail badly online.

You may thing that, but any early rush can be defeated by your combined militia and outposts. P.S. Towering off the surrounding resources doesn't work as they can easil be desroyed by any force of almost any units if their are 10 or more with relatively little losses. P.P.S. If you are craking out musketeers at an average of one every ten seconds you are in total control.

The militia are marginal, and outposts are only good for shooting cavalry, garissoning villagers, and map control. They can't defeat an enemy all by themselves unlike aom.

You basically have to go up at 5 minutes in this game. Villagers are weaker and more valuable, if you lose to many of them early, there's no coming back against a competent opponent.

Manor booming doesn't really work early in the game either because wood gathers so slowly, and you need the villager seconds for more important things.

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I would be careful to follow strategy advise from somebody who hasn't experienced "live" play on quick search

This would never work in a real game. You will be raided to death by cavalry before you can get to Fortress age.

Well, I will try it once as soon asI get the game.

I would tryt this with the french. Thier villies could defend vs infantry and some muks will take cav. It has potential.

Quote: "Another hairy thing: The enemies Fort. Discover where thyeir Fort Wagon is and simply snipe it with your remaining minutemen. This also has the added bonus of killing your Minutmen off and giving a few more population slots."

I suggest you edit that out...

BADDD, personaly my best strat would be (for ANY civi.) GET FALCONETS they OWN EVERYTHINGG MANN ITS CRAZYY, i could win the game on moderate, in 30 min with 10 folconets, and maybe a few guys like pikement of rodeleos guarding them, they never die either cuz of the folconets (no offence to ur strat but thats not really a start thats just how noobs play it, 1)get villagers 2)get army, some start there) no hard feelings

With all the resources you're spending, especially since it's wood, why don't you think any other civ could not produce a mass of pikemen and crossbows to tear down anything you put up. Not to mention all the time they are alone in colonial they can send colonial cards and boom up to age 3 if they want too.

all i do is put all villies on food, first card is the 300 food and 2 vills later i advance... ive spend about 12-14 pop when i advance and i get ther at about 4-5 min

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So it takes you thirty minutes to beat the comp, and your whole strategy depends upon falconets? Culverins anyone?

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Rodeleros are quite possibly the worst unit in the game. Ask anyone.

pikemen are better.

I have to weigh in on this one since I've been playing British almost exclusively since I got the game (I wish I had started with a different civ, but I'll stick with the brits until I have about a level 20 home city).

30 vils is too much to start out with unless you are playing in some sort of lame, "no rush" game or you have a dream spot in a game of 6-8 people with capable allies.

The one map where this might be possible is Carolina. When I see that map come up I love playing British because you start out with enough wood for 3 houses. Build them immediately and you can jump way ahead in the villager count.

If you make it to the Fortress Age with the brits you're usually in good shape. Just keep pumping vils (and fishing boats! no one ever uses them!) and making houses. Make pikeman/longbows until you can easily fend off raids.

I think the most important British cards to get are the Age 1 wood bonus, age 1 team fishing bonus, and the age 4 factory cards (not including the obvious fort and TC cards).

If you try this strat online, one of three things will happen:

1) Your opponent is a noob and you get away with your 8 min colonial time and crush the opponent. (not likely)

2) You get rushed and killed in under 6 minutes (extremely likely against ottoman or spanish or a german merc rush)

3) The enemy booms to age 3 in under 8 mins and gets falconets and tears down all your precious towers with ease. (Also very likely against Dutch or French)

I advise you develop strategies online, or at least after playing online, to save yourself wasted time. No point developing strategies that only work against the AI or human players who are more noob than the AI.

[This message has been edited by Ceres629 (edited 11-17-2005 @ 01:10 PM).]

Many human players are more noob than the AI (expert).
I am not new to AOE series and i won hard a.i. in AOE2 but i am not able (yet)to win expert in AOE3 and i am sure that many people saying here:"i win easily on expert" simply lie.
It is a damn good ai (also considering the default handicap that i heard in expert is +100% but i am not sure of this)
Anyway i plaied many times with british and i find this quite difficult in the first stages of game then british are a powerfull civ so i don't think you can reach age two with 30 civ and minutemen, in first rush you loose all minutemen and 10-15 civ...if you are lucky

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nuff said.

I agree with wast majority of ppl here, this strat dont sound realistic in real life. Only situation i think it could be viable strat is 3v3 (or more) game, with brit being protected in the back and booming, while 2 (or more) other guys eat fire for quite some time... and than, if they all are alive, tarataratara, comes the cavalry (or whatever).