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How To Win At Age of Empires III
A Guide to Tactics and StrategiesA guide to winning the skirmish game of Age of Empires III, with generalt tips, strategies and tactics to help you win against an opponent. Using the methods discussed you will easily beat the computer on the "Hard" difficulty.
Introduction
The article is written for those who wish to become better players and is targeted for beginners. If you have trouble defeating the computer at "Hard", then this article is perfect.
Everything written is all-purpose, meaning there is no preference to a specific civilization. In fact, many of the principles here are valid for a lot of real time strategy (RTS) games.
You will not become a master only by reading this article though. If you want to further improve your game you need detailed knowledge about the different civilizations, their weaknesses and how to exploit them. But theory knowledge only goes so far, actual gameplay experience is a most crucial factor and you won't get anywhere without practice.
Some RTS terminology
Understanding the difference of micro and macro, and being able to identify the three most basic strategies are quite vital. If you know this, skip it. If you don't, read this. It applies to nearly all real time strategy games.The RushThe Rush is one of the simplest strategies around, but there is quite a lot of risk involved with it. With the rush the player sacrifices the economy in order to build build an army before the enemy has any way to counter it. Because the rushing player sacrifices so much of his economy for an early attack, a failed rush often result in the victory of the other player. The most famous is perhaps the Zergling Rush from Starcraft. Rushing in AoE3 is very hard because the defending player can garrison all his villagers inside the town center and build some anti rush forces for a small fee.
The BoomThe Boom is quite hard to do, as it requires the player to balance economic growth and military investments. The idea is to keep military investments at a minimum through the first parts of the game, building up the economy until the point where you can overpower your opponent with superior forces through upgrades. A single misstep though, and your forces might be outnumbered and defeated in the early parts of the game.
The TurtleThe Turtle, or Turtling as it's called is a very defensive strategy as the name suggest. The player invest only in a small force and build more static defense like towers. When turtling you focus on economy and defense, not building an attacking force until very late in the game.
Macro
Macro is the term given to any gameplay that benefits the player in the long term. Expanding your base or taking map control are examples of macro. Macro is to micro what strategy is to tactics. With good macro you will always have a good army and plenty of resources.
Micro
Micro is the opposite of macro, and refers to moving individual units. It is most often used about military units. Good micro is an essential skill, and it can make your troops a lot more effective. It is a skill that must be practiced, but there is a good amount of techniques that can be learned. One example is "dancing", where a player takes a ranged unit, fires at a melee one, moves away and fires again. Repeating this process, the melee unit won't be able to land a single hit on the ranged unit.
Preparing The Game
First you may want to adjust some settings in the User Interface. Personally I run the minimalistic interface. You should choose to have the list of players enabled, this allows you to see which age your enemy is in and how many trading posts he has. The gamescore also indicates how well you're doing compared to the enemy. In addition, enable to show additional information about how you distribute your villagers. This way you can see how many villagers are working on gathering the respectable resources at any time. Start a normal Skirmish game and select one computer opponent. You should be able to beat the computer on the difficulty Hard without too much trouble if you're familiar with the interface and the game. It does not matter what civilization you choose, what you read in this article applies to the whole game. The map you choose is of more importance. We don't want any water maps, because it complicates the road for victory. Also, to keep things as straight-forward as possible we don't want any maps with choke points. You may want to select "Record Game", and thus be able to review your own game and figure out what went wrong in case you should loose.Discovery Age
As soon as the game starts, focus on collecting as much food as possible. Gather at all the crates first, and build a house to support the villagers that will pop out. Then focus on hunting or gathering berries. You do absolutely not want to build mills until you've exhausted all the natural resources. You should start creating villagers from the very start, and you should have continuous production of them until you choose to age up to the Colonial Age. So make sure you have enough food. Select your explorer and start exploring. You want to locate the enemy base as soon as possible. He will probably be as far away from the edge as you are, so circle the entire map at that distance from the edge. Predicting where the enemy is is rarely hard in AoE3. Make 2-3 villagers gather wood, and consider making a Market. Wood is very precious at this stage of the game, and building a market won't benefit you for immediately. You will however have a stronger economy later in the game. If you don't build a market you will have your barracks up sooner. Also, as far as is possible, build your economy related buildings away from the enemy, and your military units toward him. This way your economy have some protection while your troops won't be obstructed by buildings. Build close to the town center and build towers for protection. One interesting concept in AoE3 is herding. Basically, you want to keep your villagers hunting as close to the town center as possible as it offer protection from harassment. While hunting you'll gradually scare animals away from your town center, but you can avoid this by hunting from the outside and towards your town center. By using a couple of villagers you can scare groups of animals towards your home base for more security. You can also consider building a tower/outpost/blockhouse later in the game to support your hunting if it's a long way from your home base. If attacked simply hide your villagers inside and if the enemy persist, bring in your troops. Doing this also increases your map control and can help you notice enemy advancements. You should have at least 17 villagers before aging up, and you should do so as soon as you have enough food. One thing to keep in mind while gathering resources is to spread your villagers more around, thus reducing risk. As an example you can mine from two goldmines instead of one. This does require some more attention to detail though, and it can be harder to protect your villagers in case you're being attack.Colonial Age
As soon as you hit colonial age you should start building your barracks. If possible you should also send a shipment with military troops. As soon as your barracks is build, start building troops. When you have an army of 10-20 men including your explorer, go for an attack. This attack is far from the final blow, but it can be really decisive. If you've done a good job of scouting, you might be able to locate the enemies villagers. At least some of them are likely to be hunting out of reach from towers and enemy forces. Raiding these will give you an advantage. First of all, villagers cost resources so just by killing a few villagers you can force your opponent to spend money on something else than military troops. Second, a dead villager doesn't collect resources, so really you can add all the resources a villager could have been gathered to the loss. Thirdly, you're denying the enemy player to gather resources. Hopefully he will retreat his villagers and in this period of time he will of course not be able to gather resources with those villagers.
Note that this isn't a rush. It's called harassment and it's purpose is not to defeat the enemy base. Therefore, keep you troops alive and do not attack buildings. In fact, you should ignore towers and trading posts. With some luck and skill you will be able to take the lead at this point through a stronger economy.
While raiding the enemy villagers, keep producing troops. Many players are unable to focus on both building their home base and engaging in military operations, and it is simply something that takes practice. The buildings you need the most at this point is the Market, if you hadn't already built it and the stable. You can expect your population to go up, so try to stay ahead of the curve and build houses. Keep producing villagers, you're probably in need of wood.
Hopefully you've diverted an attack from the enemy at this point by forcing him to focus on you troops. You should be expecting an attack at this moment though. Instead of going for the very early harass, you could wait for the enemy to come to you. When he attacks you, take out his force with the support from towers etc and immediately go for an counter-attack.
At this point of the game playing style is starting to matter a lot more. You may wish to Age up again quickly, or if things are going well, keep producing units and send them. If you feel that you can produce units faster than the enemy can kill yours even if you sitting in his base, do just that. Build one more barracks and pump out troops as fast as possible. You might also be able to take this path to victory if you're able to take down the enemy barracks. If your enemy is aging up, you want to age up as well in most cases.
Fortress Age
As the game progresses, it becomes harder and harder to give advice. You should try to respond to you opponents build, hard countering his units. As an example, if your opponent builds 3 stables you should make a lot of pikemen to counter cavlary. But the number of strategies you can use at this point is so large that it's wrong to say that something is wrong to do. That being said, try to macro up still. The later units become more gold-demanding (especially artillery), so an extra plantation is a good idea. Also, you should be exhausted for natural resources at this point, so if you still have villagers hunting half-across the map, pull them back and build a mill instead. If you're low on wood, consider some extra gold and use the market to buy wood. But it's not cost-effective, so only buy wood when you need it badly (for buildings or ships). With units, you should be able to find a alternative without a wood-cost. Also, get that fortress up as soon as possible. Be offensive with the placement of your fortress, but dont overreach yourself, if you can't back up your fortress with forces at a few moments notice, you risk losing it. You might start to feel limited by the population cap at 200, so remember this: One, units not fighting are a waste and Two, upgrading units is more effective when you already have them. (Likewise, if this isn't mentioned earlier, don't upgrade units if you don't have any).Ending words
Beyond Age 3, I'll leave you on your own. It's basically just to keep producing troops and teching up (the hard part is balancing the two). I do wonder if I should write something about attacking, but I'd have to do some research before I do that. Also, if you have suggestions and/or tips you want to share, please leave comments.|
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