This assumes a map that does not have good fishing available since schooner booming tends to be the best overall strat for Ports.

Required cards
Age 1: Land Grab, Colonia Militia
Age 2: 700 wood, 700 gold
Age 3: 1000 food, 1000 gold
Age 4: both factory cards

Age 1:
Send Land Grab
Age up with 14 settlers and 400 wood politician.

Age 2:
Build second TC in line with first with gold pile or hunts in between if possible. Build a barracks in between both TCs. Build 1 Tower in front of Barracks and one Tower in back of barracks. Your whole layout is a diamond shape with 2 TCs and 2 Towers forming the vertices with your gold/hunts and barracks in the middle.

Build a house.

Send 700 wood followed by 700 gold. If heavy rush is coming, send 700 wood followed by Colonia Militia and then 700 gold. Collect 300 gold if you think FF is viable. Collect 400 gold if you're going to need Colonial Militia.

Build 10 crossbows.

Barracks, two towers, 10 crossbows and a house requires 1200 wood. You'll have 1100 from age up and 700 wood card. So you'll need at least 100 more. You might need more if you need to keep up your defense (stick to crossbows with possibly some pike protection).

Age up with 6 cassadores as soon as possible.

Age 3:
Depending on how much pressure you've been under your 3rd TC can either join your turtle shell or you can try to use it to get some map control (look for closest gold pile that isn't too far away from your shell). You want to boom from 3 TCs so don't risk losing your TC.

ship Fort followed by 1000 food and 1000 gold (or 1000 gold followed by 1000 food depending on need)
build artillery foundry and 2 culverins if facing another European civ (this is where you might need 1000 gold before food)
build Fort into your turtle shell (between original base and 3rd TC if you used your 3rd TC for map control)

Age 4:
ship both factories, set to heavy cannons

Your goal is to age up to Industrial as soon as possible while maintaining enough defense. It takes lots of skill to "defend just enough" without wasting too many resources on defense. To beat a rusher you need to make him waste more resources than you while still allowing yourself to age.

The Land Grab card will allow you to stay in your defensive shell and quickly build mills or plantations as needed. When you get to Industrial you want to protect your cannons with either muskets or dragoons. An alternative to heavy cannons is to use the newly improved Organ guns with Mortars and leave your factories collecting resources.

[This message has been edited by MNBob (edited 03-15-2007 @ 08:36 PM).]