-Utterly demolishes rushers.
-Allows you to survive enemy fortress age 'floods' (e.g. otto mass abus/grenadier attack in age 3)
-Excellent eco recovery due to estates.
The main problem with this strat is that it requires a lvl 50 british HC, for the king's musketeer.
Essential cards:
3 vills (age 1)
700g (age 2)
6 musketeers (age 2)
5 vills (age 2)
1000g (age 3)
5 hussars (age 3)
2 falcs (age 3)
3 rockets (age 4)
8 hussars (age 4)
Estates
Both factories
Essential politicians:
The king's musketeer (age 4, 10 musks, HC lvl 50)
How to execute: A recording of me using this strat against port age3 warfare: I've had plenty of wins with this strat since 1.06 came out. I was able to fight off several russian/otto/spanish rushes as well as age 3 port/otto attacks, then launch successful industrial counterattacs. The thing that's very dangerouns when playing this strat is propably a MASSIVE age3 flood around 15:00 when your eco isn't fully established yet, but that's unlikely to happen very often with age3 shipments nerfed. Comments are welcome.
-Game starts, collect the food crates with 5 vills, start training villies from TC ASAP. 1 villy collects wood crates and builds only one manor. Task only 2-3 vills to hunt, and start chopping wood with the rest (set the TC gather point to wood as well). If you only got 2 wood crates at start, it's a good idea to try to find a wood treasure with your explorer. Once you got 250 wood, build a TP with your explorer and move all villies to food.
-First card:
-Once the TP is up, use your explorer to find another flock of huntables somewhere further out from your TC.
-You should
-If there's no more huntables near your TC (this will always be the case on great plains), move most of your villies to the flock found by your explorer and start hunting there. Leave 4-5 vills near your TC and chop enough wood to build another manor. Once you build the manor, start mining gold until you have 100.
Once you hit age2, send
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-You should
-If the enemy is rushing, they will propably start attacking your TC while you're in transition to age 3. Because you only have 5 vills near TC, garrison them while the other vills near your outpost continue to work.
-To fight off the rush, use your 7 archaic troops from age up + 6 musks unleashed at the right moment + TC fire + minutemen in nescessary. This should be enough to at least stop one wave of a strong rush, even if your troops die. Make sure you repair your TC ASAP!
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-You should
-If all went well, the 2nd wave will propably come while you're in transition to age IV, usually with 'nadiers + infantry or possibly falcs. Use your longbows against infantry and your hussars against grenades/abus/arty. Hussars will completely decimate strelets, nadiers, abus, skirms, and cassadors. You'll hit age 4 shortly and 10 additional musks will help you defend. Send in
-Once the rockets are in, use all your remaining troops to support them and wreak havoc. If the enemy rushed, he's still in colonial, in which case it's gg (rockets with support will wreak total havoc on anything he may throw at you). If you really managed to push him back, ship in additional troops (8 hussars are good) and finish him off. You don't even need to recover your eco now.
-If there was no rush, either the enemy will attempt an age3 flood (for which you're prepared, 3 rockets with support will usually be able to fight age 3 attacks), or they'll boom. Either way, it's now time to ship in estates and start to recover your hurting eco. You should be able to get a strong 80+ villy eco going without too much trouble. That's it for the FI, you know the rest.
I made some mistakes in discovery and colonial ages, which resulted in a rather slow industrial despite of no rush, but it was good enough to win.