A couple friends and I were messing around with weird strategies, and we hit on only one that worked. It worked pretty well though. Not sure if this is often done.
Civs: Ports, Dutch, British.
Ports (me) sends ATP and team early dragoons.
BO's would vary from person to person, but on great plains, it worked out something like this:
Port ages up, puts TC fairly close to teammates' TC's and my own. Colonial militia also sent. Port goes pure hussar (it's slow, which is why the port sends colonial militia, and it requires pretty good teamwork to beat back an initial rush).
These are not primarily raiding hussars (though I take the oppurtunity whenever I can).
Port player goes up to fort ASAP, and ships organs.
Dutch goes skirm/ruyter. We figured that the dutch have so many anti-cav problems in colonial because they don't have much wood for pikes, so we messed around with giving the dutchy early ruyters (food and gold based, so wood can go to banks and houses without having to keep some for pikes).
Dutch makes a sizable army before going to fortress (so it gets there without a shipment and a minute slower than the port, but with a respectable army).
Brit goes pure musk, and is primarily a defender in the beginning, though ages to fort at about the same time as the dutch player.
The goal here is this: Get 3 strong fortress civilizations into fortress with the ability to beat back a rush. The unconventional part is shipping the early dragoon shipment. When the game gets to fort against a port (using primarily dragoon/hussar/cassadore/organ, also sending improved dragoon/hussar combat), a dutch (ruyter, halb, skirm, cannon), and a british player (primarily going vet musk, though once the yeomen shipment comes out, vet lbows are a 50/50 mix with musks), it's usually going to end quickly.
Any comments? This is a totally new idea for us, so I expect there's a bunch of flaws with it, but we kind of want to fine-tune it.
And if you think it's total trash, then say so 