The British Musketeer Sting ^v1.12

by Valckrie

no expansions i.e. vanilla

Foreword:

I am aware that there is a similar strategy (The BAM Strategy) posted in the TWC reference section. Please note that I did not copy it from that, it just so happens that I started using this strategy a while before I registered on the forums. I aim to update the strategy to fit the more recent common strategies that players now execute. This strategy is for Vanilla, however if you feel that it will work on TWC / TAD then feel free to perform it, but I cannot guarantee its effectiveness in those xpacks.
The main problem with British is the utilization of manor boom. If you overboom you will be outnumbered by their military which you probably have not been making and if you concentrate on military you don’t harness the advantage of the manor boom. However, this strategy aims to effectively surprise rush an opponent and then overboom him. You can get 40 muskets and 40 settlers (produced, not dead or surviving) most of the time by 10 minutes.

Overview & Usage:

Aim to get to Colonial Age at 4:30-4:45 which varies with starting food and wood crates.
Have your first wave of 11 Musketeers at 5:40.
You will need:

[3 settlers]

[6 muskets]

[700 wood]

[6 Longbowmen]

[5 settlers]

Obviously, as with all strategies, you cannot use this against every civilization. My advice is to not use against Russia, Ottoman and Dutch. Why? Because Russia have a good early military, including LI, Light Cavalry, and a few HI. Ottoman Abus Guns can always be a problem, and if they FF, this strategy is dead. French are a bit unsure, because if they choose to stay in colonial you can easily beat them, however if they semi-FF or FF then they will concentrate on microing coureurs, which are very hard to kill with muskets. Dutch also have skirmishers, which if utilized correctly, can drop your muskets very capably. If you want to use British vs these 4 civs (not the best choice IMO) then there are other strategies which I hope to post later.

IT IS YOUR OWN CHOICE WHETHER TO USE IT OR NOT AND I AM NOT TO BE BLAMED FOR YOUR FAILURE, BECAUSE I USE THIS VERSUS 26PR+ AND I WIN, SO IF YOU LOSE IT IS ULTIMATELY YOUR FAULT. HOWEVER THIS DOES NOT MEAN THIS STRATEGY IS 100% PERFECT, OF COURSE IT HAS FLAWS.

Musketeer [1 Pop]



Cost:-------------75f, 25g
HP:---------------150--180 (Veteran) Resists 20% vs Hand
Ranged Attack:-23----27 (Veteran) 12 Range
Hand Attack:----13----15 (Veteran) x3 vs Cavalry
Siege Atack:----20----24 (Veteran) 6 Range
Train time:------30 seconds
Build XP:--------10
LOS:-------------16

Usage in this strategy: The musketeer is your main military unit. Being a heavy infantry unit with a ranged and melee attack, it is highly useful in all situations. You will use them for attacking, raiding, sieging and destroying cavalry.

Build Order

Discovery Age:
1. Task 2 settlers on food crate, 1 settler on wood crate. 3 settlers go herd you starting herd. Explorer explores surrounding area. Select TC and tap [V] madly until first settler is queued. You need to age with 16/17/18(Carolina) settlers. 3 comes from shipment, 1/2 from manors. 17 - 5 = 12; 12 - 6(starting) = 6; meaning you have to train roughly 6 settlers. Do not waste idle TC time between each settler, queue them up.
2. Build as many manor houses as you can, only use 1 settler to build. All settlers go to collecting food. If you have >90 wood but not enough for house (135), task a settler to chop wood till 135 wood then build a house.
3. Send [3 settlers] as first card.
4. Aim to click age button at around 2:45. By that time if you have >650 food, wait a few seconds till you hit 800. If you have less than 600 food, build another settler – but if your timing is really late (2:45 already), don’t bother. Age with Outpost + 200 coin politician.

Transition:
1. Immediately switch all but 5 settlers to chop wood. Typically you have 16/17 settlers, so 11/12 are on wood now. Send 1 settler to your chosen forward-base spot, preferably a decent resource field [trees, a herd, coin mine] your explorer has scouted (near enemy, around halfway point of map, but not too obvious).
2. Queue a settler from TC, and set waypoint to your FB spot. This will ensure your outpost wagon goes directly to FB.
3. Make a manor house with FB settler, so there are 2 settlers chopping wood there.
4. 5 seconds before you hit colonial age you need to switch settler allocation. If you now have 40 population, task 4 on wood (includes FB settlers), rest on food one settler ready to collect age up gold. If you only have 30 population, task 6 on wood (includes FB settlers), rest on food and one settler ready to collect age up gold.

Colonial Age:
1. As soon as you age, build a barracks with your two FB settlers. Now you must make a judgment, to rush quickly or less quick. If the distance between your TC and your FB is not that far, ship [6 Musketeers]. If it is rather far, like on Great Lakes then ship [700 wood]. I am assuming you shipped the 6 muskets; if you shipped 700 wood, look down to the second (5.).
2. Get 50 population ASAP, then switch TC waypoint to gold mine near your TC. The settler that collects gold crate should also be mining now. Leave 4 settlers on wood, rest food, and TC constant villager production towards gold mine. Don’t queue too many settlers at once, maximum 2 because you need to be efficient and not waste time with 5 batch training.
3. Your outpost should have arrived at FB. Build it in front of your barracks. As soon as your barracks is up queue 5 muskets. FB settler goes to hunt/wood according to settler allocation.
4. Once your 5 muskets have come out, if you happen to have a nearby treasure, go attack guardians with explorer and muskets. If not, wait for 6 musket shipment, and keep queuing muskets. In a way easy for you, make sure you can access barracks easily. I just use CTRL+B, and if I have dual barracks I control group them both as [5]; it is close to my finger.

5. Harass with 11 muskets. Do not try to raze buildings (unless they are partially built). Try to avoid enemy engagement at this moment. Time is now roughly 5:40.
6. Second shipment is [6 longbows], or [700 wood]. I’m assuming you shipped 6 longbows, so direct HC ships to forward Outpost. Add to musket queue so you have 5. TC is still constantly making settlers (you have like 16+ settlers on food to support this).
7. After your shipment of 6 longbows arrive, you should now have 16 muskets + 6 longbows. This force of 22 units is easy to micro; I have two control groups – 1 muskets, 2 longbows. Longbows target infantry, Muskets melee the cavalry if they sent. Otherwise, kill all enemy military. You must micro, and if razing buildings on edge of enemy town, retreat to other side of building so that TC fire won’t be shooting you (if you are far enough).
5. Follow all the same instructions up to step 5 (inclusive).
6. Now, once you have started collecting the 700 wood, with the 700 wood you need to build another barracks and 3 manor houses. Of course, you still have settlers chopping wood, meaning the 105 wood left over will turn into another manor house.
7. Ship 6 muskets as your third shipment, directed to outpost. You now have 16 muskets at a reasonable fast time, a good eco and ability to keep up dual barracks spam. You need around 7 on gold, 4 on wood and rest food. Add more to gold if you feel that you are running too low.

Battle Analysis:

Target settlers first, then military, then military buildings, then houses. Refer to the list of shots below for how many shots to kill a unit. Remember roughly how many muskets you need, so you can be efficient and not “overkill” (e.g. 20 muskets shoot at a strelet, but strelet only takes 6 shots). Not many civilizations will have outpost, and if they do try to stay out of range, if not able to then raze it when you have 20+ muskets so you don’t end up losing the musket to other forces and the opponent being able to repair outpost.

If you’re fighting xbows, try to melee them with a couple of muskets. If you have say 15, select 5 and put them in melee mode and attack the xbows. Xbows have 20% range resistance and about 5 hand attack. Muskets have 10, and 20% melee resistance. So for every hit a musket makes on the xbow, the xbow loses 10 hp, and if xbow is meleeing the musket also, then the musket will lose 4.5 hp. However if they are both in ranged mode, the xbow deals 18 damage, and the musket deals 18.4 damage against the crossbowman. This makes your musket inefficient because xbows only cost 40f40w, and train faster than muskets which cost 75f25g. Xbows can also hit and run, if microed by a good player. Thus, we can conclude that melee xbows are much more efficient, given that you also have ranged muskets providing the distraction. Try the same with Strelets which have 72 health, 30% range resistance and 4(x2) hand damage vs infantry. Against strelets, if you melee them your musket takes less damage (in 1 unit vs 1 unit terms) but takes 1 hit more to kill the strelet; but faster because melee attacks have a faster ROF (Rate of Fire). Against dutch age 2 / French early skirmishers, they have 120 hp, 30 range damage & 12 hand damage vs infantry, and 30% range resistance. Skirmishers will always be a threat to musketeers, you can’t do much if they micro really hard. Even if you melee them, it will take 10 attacks to kill them, while the skirmisher not in combat can easily snipe at the meleeing musket to cause 30 damage. If on a plain area with no obstacles, a good player can micro his skirmishers to be able to kill all your musketeers without losing a single unit.

After several waves, if you feel that you cannot overpower your opponent (e.g. due to outpost spam with LI behind, or they try to go fortress) then retreat and manor boom. Put up another barracks, or if enemy is utilizing mass light infantry, get a stable. If he tries to go fortress, do a hard manor boom and make some walls to distract him, while you either stay in colonial and spam a giant army, or age up and get cannons / mercenaries. You need good micro to kill his age 3 units if you are staying in age 2. Be sure to flank skirmishers and cannons.

For all native rushes you should scout the native trade post with explorer, and if you judge that your settler can walk there fast enough to be able to trap the explorer insi de with a wall box, and then do so. If enemy explore is able to get out after building, that’s still fine as long as units made from TP cant escape. This is especially good for Lakota and Comanche since their siege is bad.
Please note that this isn’t supposed to be used versus native either. If you happen to discover that your opponent is native rushing you, try the above method or do a longbow turtle. The longbow turtle is very effective with walls, and native infantry can be easily defeated that way. I hope to post a longbow turtling guide soon.

Additional Notes:

Starting base crates for British is 200 f 200 w. You will receive 1 extra random crate (food/coin/wood) every time, but this extra is awarded for your opponent too. You also have a 66% chance of getting another extra crate. This chance is independent of what your opponent gets. On Carolina you get additional resources of [200-300f, 100-300w, 100g] and Hispianola [300-400f, 100w, 100g]

Number of Muskets to kill the unit in one volley range attack (HP in brackets)

Musketeer (150)-----------7
Crossbowman (100)------6 / 8 melee
Pikeman (120)-------------6
Longbowman (95)--------6 / 8
Strelet (72)-----------------5 / 6 melee
Settler (150)---------------7 / 15 melee
Hussar (320---------------18 / 9 melee
Uhlan (190)----------------12 / 5 melee
Cossack (225)-------------14 / 6 melee
Coureur des bois(180)---14 / 14 melee
Skirmisher (120)-----------8 / 10 melee

^ these are in colonial, including skirmishers (Dutch or French card). I took the trouble of calculating these taking into account resistance, which the thread in AoE3 Strategy Reference section is wrong in some of the units. I hope this helps.

Useful Cards:

Cards to send after third card:


After these, you can choose to send either of the cards below:

Musket Upgrades [Team Musket & Grenadier HP + 10%, Musket & Grenadier all actions done + 10%, Musket & Grenadier HP & All actions done + 10%]

[Church Tech] - 1000f for 8 highlanders, thin Red Line: All HI speed decreased by 25%, hp increased 10%, rogers rangers: 26 guard skirmishers for 2000 gold in age 4.

[Fencing School] - changes infantry train points by 40%

[9 Highlanders] for 1000 coin, they are amazing, especially since I love muskets.

My Deck:




Recorded Games:

I have many, but I only chose these. The first lot are the ones I won, the second lot the ones I lost. In my opinion it's very worthwhile to watch them! "A picture describes a thousand words."

Valckrie vs CPC [Great Plains] - 40 settler, and 40 units (>30 musk and 6 lb which died). This is at 10 minutes, versus a Spain FF by CPC (aka Droideka_11 at HG).
Valckrie vs CaptainKarlsson [Pampas] – normal rush vs french FF. He had to go in the end, but we agreed that I won.

Valckrie vs GoodSpeed [Yukon] – I aged early to attack him, unfortunately my army was scattered and sniped at by coureurs.
Valckrie vs Harry_Potter244 [Patagonia] – successful colonial but I let him fish boom. Everyone knows how amazing this guy is. If you don’t, watch him pWn me with no resource cards! He was French btw.

I hope you enjoy my write-up. Constructive criticism is welcomed.

[This message has been edited by Valckrie1 (edited 11-13-2008 @ 01:52 PM).]