AOE3 Forums

I would suggest having all settlers on food and aging as soon as possible, with 12-14 villies, and putting about 6 villies on wood while aging. Age with 400 wood dude and make one barracks. In my experience one barracks with more xbows is more useful then two barracks with less xbows. Also send in 3 hussar card to harass enemy villies and attack abus guns if the enemy is otto.

Make a combo of xbows and pikes, usually more xbows and less pikes, but it depends on your opponents strat. Once you're sure the enemy isn't going to rush you hard anytime soon make a second barracks. If necessary make some hussars to complement your force, but be warned making a stable and having to put some villies on gold will lessen your infantry assault.

Micromanagement is the key. Normally you'll be fighting heaps of infantry with some hussars occasionally attacking your xbows. Remember, in a fight against infantry keep your pikes OUT OF BATTLE, only show them when the enemy attacks with cavalry or when you need to torch a building. It is senseless to waste pikemen in infantry fighting.

Keep making villies, and remember to protect them. If the enemy can't destroy you early in the game and you still have a strong economy, the battle is won.  

My tactics for the French is this.

1a) Gather all the resources you get from your homecity.

1b) Send Explorer to find and gather easy treasures/send native scout in opposite direction. 

2a) Train more Coureurs.

2b) Put Coureurs to build market and research the first tech for improved hunting (hunting dogs?).

3) Put all Coureurs to hunt closest animal. 

4) Upgrade wood-collection ASAP.

5) When it starts to become a bit crowded, I send all Coureurs to chop wood.

6) Continue to train Coureurs, build houses when necessary.

Somewhere around here I've sent for more Coureurs.

7) When I've 800 food, I advance to the 2'nd age.

Somewhere around here I send for the card for improving the trading posts.

8) When I've started to research the 2'nd age, I gather 200 food more, and then put all Coureurs to chop wood.

9) In the second age, I start to build as many trading posts I can, along the trade routes (but only AFTER the improvement card has arrived), upgrade to stageroach ASAP.

10) Build barracks and train 10 crossbowmen, and 5 pikemen.

11) Keep training Coureurs.

12) Upgrade food and wood gathering.

13) Train more crossbowmen and pikemen.

14) When I've about 50 soldiers in total, I attack, this is within the first 6-8 minutes depending on treasures and such.

15) Within about 20 min I've won.

       Harder battles,

16) Keep doing this, and develop coin gathering with your trading posts.

17) Keep advancing in the ages, and finally, train musketeers and Cuirassier.

French xbow / pike rush (this version not to use vs aggressive civ's)

1. 2 vills to hunts 3 to crates
2. explorer/scout scouts and gets treasures
3. once you get 125 food queue a cdb
4. build a house
5. if you start with 200 wood build a market (it was argued somewhere that it helps get your first shipment earlier) if not, don't
   
6. all vills to hunts, age with 14 cdb (13 on resource crate heavy maps eg carolina) with 400 wood
   
7. So far, this has been the basic french age up.
8. Send 5-6 vills to gold
9. keep 3 vills on food, rest on wood
10. get market asap and research hunting dogs + wood upgrade
11. once you have 125+250=375 gold (after hunting dogs) switch all vills to food/wood so theres 7 food 7 wood.
12. cueue 3-4 vills before age up because you will get housed for a bit.
13. in colonial send 4 cdb, collect starting wood
14. research second wood upgrade from market
    
15. build a rax either forward or back
16. build 1 house
17. cueue 5 pikes (some civs like to raid with 3 hussar shipments)
18. build 1 more house, keep all new vills to wood
19. research second market upgrade for food
20. after pikes come out make lotsa cbows and some more pikes.
21. Eventually, balance out your eco. keep about 5 more vills on wood than food, and once you get 30-35 vills switch 12-15 food, 5-10 gold, 5-10 wood and do cbow/musk/hussar (forget pikes at this point)
22. If your opponent hasnt reached fortress your army will beat his 90% of the time (micro!)
    

After that, do whatever, but this will allow you to GREATLY outboom almost every opponent, and all you have to do is survive until you get your military going.

If I think the opponent will rush early on, I send 8 cbows or 3 hussars instead of 4 cdb. After what I mentioned I send 700 wood and build 1-2 towers defending outside resources and a tp plus houses. (usually I wait for later to use tp)

once I get a stable up i get about 10-15 (or 13-18 with shipment if I havent used yet) hussars then attack with musk/cbow while keeping horses hidden and to the side. try to pick off any anti cav units, then come in with horses and @$#& him!

tank_:

cueue 3-4 vills before age up because you will get housed for a bit.

Worst spelling/grammar Ive seen for a while...

GuitarHeroMatt:

tank_:

cueue 3-4 vills before age up because you will get housed for a bit.

Worst spelling/grammar Ive seen for a while...

no, I just forgot to add 'after colonial and 4 vill/8 xbow shipment'

 and I also said this is a more economic approach, if you want hardcore french rush age with 4 food 10 wood and get up a house and a market then switch to 8 food 6 wood and all new vills to food, make 2 rax + 1 house and spam xbows ship 700 wood then 600 wood then 8 xbows or 3 hussars, once the last shipment arrives do a full scale rush and you win XD
 

troy 02:

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Ok dude, wtf was that, why do you come to live a dead thread and put something stupid in it?