AOE3 Forums

Take it from a devoted ports player:you do want to fill up your mills using your TCS you get from aging to do this you need 2 vills. on wood when you start and obviously train until 15-17 then once in second age take the 400 wood and build a mill with some of the villies you trained and put on food, the rest off to wood they go. the rest of your villies that you train with your 2 TCS at this point are mainly set to coin and wood so you can upgrade them at your mill and then reach the third age and train cassadores, organ guns, halbs, muskets, and draggoons because if your the ports you want a mix and then when you do finnally reach the fourth age, upgrade like CARAZY!!! during all this when you age 3 put 1 tc on each resource. in fourth put and extra on wood as this is the most used resource in the game so utilize the porttregese to your advantage and be sure to try this out in a not rated or a comp stomp before putting it in action because this isnt a good strat for everyone in 5th age boom boom boom boom

lol fail

 

and my bad about the pikes thing i just don't use pikes that much. i think goons are better. and if i get anti-cav infantry i usually just get halbs cause then i can still just gather gold and food for cassadores. 

you can tank early rushes easily with 2 town centres. go try it out

(with coloniel militia shipment)

Shunmaha:

you can tank early rushes easily with 2 town centres. go try it out

(with coloniel militia shipment)

yeah, thats how ports can effectively ff against rushes. 

When it comes to the Ports, they have 4 viable strategies, two of which are situational:

 1) FF.  Basically as everyone said, send Colonial Militia and/or Improved Buildings.  Send 700 Gold shipment, herd huntables, get Fortress ASAP. At this point, you have two options. The first is to make Organ Guns. Very, very good against infantry, but very, very weak against everything else. Your second choice is to send the church card and get Besterios. They are guard-level Crossbowmen in Fortress, and really pack a punch. Not quite as good against infantry as Organs, but they can hold their own against other units a lot better then organs can.

 2) Fishboom. Only viable on water maps. Send Schooners. Make Fishing Boats. Either make a massive colonial army, or advance to Fortress. Musketeers are going to me your key unit here, since you need the wood for boats, and can't make Xbows.

 3) Native Rush. Only viable on maps with natives. Better on maps with two or more tribes. Send ATP. Switch ALL villagers to wood on Age-Up. Build first native TP. When you have enough wood for second, switch half of the villes back to food. You should almost have the second one build by age up. Send treaties, build natives, off you go.

4) Counter-Rush. Amass a large colonial army. Wait for your opponent to attack. When he does, kill his units, thne advance on his base. 

I doubt counter rush would be really good as you would probably have a smaller-same army. That is, unless your opponent is a noob or does a wierd rush such as a grenadier rush or something.

FF and then sending Mercantilism is pretty good if you wanna like counter rush

Phoenixwi:

Angus Khan:

ports don't have pikes so if you want to go colonial rush then you will have to rely only on musks or gather all resources to make musk/xbow.  Thats why i usually go fortress and go for the higher tier units that portugal has.  And i say portugals units have low hp because when compared to skirmishers cassadores don't have very much hp and organs have a very low hp for a cannon. But dagoons have a pretty good hp.  Low isn't to much of a big deal you just have to micro your units well so that you don't loose to many.

WTF WTF WTF ZOMG ZOMG TWO PEOPLE THINK THE PORTS DONT HAVE PIKES WTF

ports do have pikes, I can't believe you're giving advice on how to play them and you don't even know what units they have 

Ah yes this would explain it: You have an elorating on vanilla of 1800 but you play nearly all your games against people with an elo less than 1500. You once played a team game with someone of a similar elo vs two 1300s. Ivan why aren't you here?

Hey, I didnt know Spain got Halbs until a week ago. I thought that since they got both Rods and Pikes, theyd be kind of pointless. But now I realise theyre needed as they have a much higher hand and siege attack than both. Everyone has their noob moments

Arcane Ranger:

I doubt counter rush would be really good as you would probably have a smaller-same army. That is, unless your opponent is a noob or does a wierd rush such as a grenadier rush or something.

 If you KNOW your opponent is going to rush, and not FF, it actually works very good. Build Musketeers and Crossbowmen (usually at a ratio of 1:2 but this can differ depending on the units your opponent makes). When your opponent attacks, garrison some(not all) of your villagers and let the TC soften them up, then circle behind with your army and attack them. Corner them in with Minutemen. After they're all dead, circumvent their FB and head straight to their town.

Shunmaha:

FF and then sending Mercantilism is pretty good if you wanna like counter rush

 That is a bit expensive though. 1500 Gold, when Besterios are 2000 Wood. Considering Besterios arrive faster then most shipments, and are night impossible to beat in Colonial, I would say they are a better bet. If you need Organs, you should probably just build them with the gold instead of getting Merc and shipping them.
 

What I'm saying is, your counter rush will probably be weaker or on par with your opponent's rush because of your lack of vill shipments. That said, it's possible for your counter rush to beat your opponent's rush, but that means you're better than him and could've rushed him instead of counter rushing. Alright, now I'm just talking is circles, so I'll stop, lol.

Arcane Ranger:

What I'm saying is, your counter rush will probably be weaker or on par with your opponent's rush because of your lack of vill shipments. That said, it's possible for your counter rush to beat your opponent's rush, but that means you're better than him and could've rushed him instead of counter rushing. Alright, now I'm just talking is circles, so I'll stop, lol.

 

Actually, it would probably be somewhat stronger. The shipment you don't use on settlers is one you do use on military units and/or resources. Alternatively you can send a card like ATP and get extra EXP/Resources from that to make up for the lack of early villagers.