AOE3 Forums

After yet another defeat by the ottomans i decided to try a nation that seemed almost made to counter them, the Dutch. This Strat is only in its beginning stages and can be countered by good players, but it still works against the majority os people i have play so far. The numbers are the order you do stuff in which is why there are more than one of some. Here goes...

Start (age 1)

1) Put 2 villagers on crates the rest on hunting.

1) Using the starting gold make 3 settlers.

2) When the villagers finish collecting crates build a house and market with one, put the other on food.

3) Age up with 400 wood politian, this will be quite fast compared to other nations.^

NOTE: Don't bother using the 3 villager card or any other because it will arrive when you are nearly at Colonial, rather save it.

Transit

1) Put 6 villagers on food, 4 on wood.

2) Make a house (or if you got lots of wood from treasures/map make 2)

Colonial Age

1) Gather the wood with 2 villagers (the ones on wood). When they collect enough make a bank.

2) Send 700 wood card. When collected enough, make a second bank.

3) Using the gold you now get make villagers. (assign with ratio 2:1, food and wood)

3) Build a barracks ,and when you have enough wood, a stable.

3) Send the 700 food card.

4) Start making skirmishers, if you see your oppenent make grenadiers or abus guns make hussars. If you see the enemy make cav get pikes.

At this point you should have a pretty good economy (banks equal about 8 villagers so you should have about a 30 villager economy) and your army counters your enemy nicely. I'm working on what to do after this so I will post soon. Feel free to criticise my strat, but please don't just spam rubbish.

10 villager age up??? No, gather some coin, and age up with 16 vills. You can do it in 4:30, which is plenty fast. Also, the dutch gather coin at 0.69/s (other civs are 0.60), so a bank is equal to just over 4 villagers. I would go 16 villy age up, build a bank during transition, ship 700 wood, build 2 more banks, and spam skirms, and once you have some skirms, if he gets abus, go skirm hussar (obv you must build a stable at this point). Scout, if they are FFing, FF with them and go skirm ruyter (still go for 3 banks). Your strats eco would be too weak, and the ottos would outmass you.

the dutch have one of if not the most powerful FF, and taking advantage of it is pretty easy. you diffidently need more settlers per age up and less on food more on coin.

I tryed aging up with 16 villagers and a bank in transition, and it was pretty rubbish. The ottoman guy aged up about 30 seconds before me and had attacked before i had much of an army. I  can see your point though, often it takes a while to get enough resoures to build a decent army early on.

Akardion:

I tryed aging up with 16 villagers and a bank in transition, and it was pretty rubbish. The ottoman guy aged up about 30 seconds before me and had attacked before i had much of an army. I  can see your point though, often it takes a while to get enough resoures to build a decent army early on.

Even I can age upat the same time as the otto with dutch. You can too.

 

16 settler age up, bank transition, Bank Wagon on TWC/TAD, 700 wood nilla, make stuff...

The guys are right. age up with more than 10 villagers. I'd age up with 15-16 too. the difference is neglectible.

 

Yes, teh otto will age up before you, but he wont attack immediately. if they rush super hard (send 5 janissaries after age up and 5 built locally) they still ahve to wait 40 seconds for them to arrive and another 10-20 seconds to walk into your base. gives you enough time for your barracks (behind TC) and the first batch of skirms, and 5 skirms > 10 jans, obviously.

 

You need to scout though. If you see an artillery foundry go up, make hussars. He won't attack immediately though.

And remember that abus guns have teh siege trooper tag and thus get raeped by minutemen.

Otto will be outboomed eventually.

 

Defeating otto with dutch should be pretty simple. If you, however, make only pikes and skirms and he comes with 10 jans + 10 abus you're f*cked (and deserve to be too, because you didn't scout well).

if he's going IOR just harass his TPs with 5 pikes. no problem to deal with 5 pikes, but he will have to send 5 jans (or if he's stupid abus) to save it, and more importantly, it draws his attention away from teh battle.

 

Since most vanilla otto lamers play on great plains that shouldn't be a problem, since he WILL need two trading posts to be competitive. Just don't let him have the one in teh middle, scout for what unit he's making and outboom him -> win.
 

and raid lots too. Raiding>ottos.

I would 15 age up with 1 bank while aging, 700 wood then 3 hussar to raid him

Do you mean that I make 6 villies for 13 then send the 3 villager card? I usually play on Aoe3 normal so i can't use the bank wagon.

by 16 villies he means:

 

7 you start with

6 produced locally

3 shipped. 

16 age up on vanilla, 15 on tad

Why would you build a market for if in your strategy you did not upgrade anything?

Instead of the market and more houses try to build the bank first, then you getting gold earlier to make vills.. 

Allmost like bank rush without 300wood crater...

JosK:

Instead of the market and more houses try to build the bank first, then you getting gold earlier to make vills.. 

Allmost like bank rush without 300wood crater...

TheDay banks become Rushing units is the day I download Ulti's Nilla FP.

 

Banks gather 0.01 coin/second slower than 4 settlers (2.76 vs 2.75).

 

 

 

 

First of all, a market is important for trading materials around and is useful if you make a slight error or have a lot of one resource. The market may not be useful immediatly, but it is important when you start making troops.

Secondly, I may be wrong about this, but i presume you mean a bank is worth 4 villagers on a gold mine? If so, you would be wrong because a bank is villagers on a plantation, which (I think) gather slower. Banks are also better than making 4 villagers because it builds in 1 go and doesn't require time moving about, and importantly cannot be ambushed and quickly destroyed. Putting in all these factors, I would put a bank at 5 1/2 - 6 villagers depending on the map and other issues.

One thing I recently mused about is the 50 vil max. It means that the maximum number of banks must be worth 50 villagers. The maximum is 8 +15% = 9.2 banks total. Therefore if microsoft has made the dutch equal, each bank should be worth about 5.4 villagers. Looking at the maths it is actually less than this, so either the person who said banks are worth 4 villagers is wrong, microsoft games thought that the advantages I outlined above make it worth more, or microsoft games has screwed up.