In Age of Empires 3, what is a good build order for the British?

Question

I'm trying to improve my AOE3 skills with the British. What are some good build orders that play to their strengths?

i.e. a rush tactic? or a tanking tactic?

Answer 1

The British Black Watch Kick.

Takes advantage of the British strengths to get the economy up and running very fast.

Direct from the guide, the different strengths it plays to:

• The 2 falconet card, an excellent card indeed.
• The opportunity to create 8 Black Watch highlanders from the church VERY quickly. Highlanders are great anti-cav units and all-around bruisers.
• The Black Watch are delivered in seconds, unlike conventional mercenary shipments, which take 1 full minute.
• The Thin Red Line is also available from the church.
• Excellent economic recovery due to the manor boom.

Answer 2

The way I play the British is for a really good long term economy. It is really easy to get settlers with the various cards and building houses, so you make sure to build a lot quickly.

At the beginning of the game put one settler on gold, two on wood, and three on food. Use all your food for a while on building settlers and put the settlers you make on wood and food. Make houses pretty much whenever you have a good amount of wood, and once you have about ten settlers, save up some food to age up. While you age keep building houses to get more settlers. This way you should start age two with a much better economy than anyone else. I'd suggest playing on a no rush game for this strategy to really work.

During age two keep building settlers, add some mills, and get upgrades from the markets. You'll have to put more settlers on gold and wood at this point. Build a barracks or two, but don't bother building guys.

At age three build a fort for defense and start massing musketeers, especially with the thin red line improvement. Add a couple artillery and you should be good. Also, rockets are awesome, and with the cards, they're pretty easy to get.

Answer 3

These other strategies are okay. Here is what I do:

Send all villagers to food at the start except for 2 to gather crates and build houses. Those two cut wood and build houses when they can. Do not mine coin in the first age, thats just silly. Keep making villagers until about 17 or 18, age up with the 500 food opinion. Send all but 3 villagers to wood and 1 on coin (2 on coin depending on how much you started with). Buy the market and get the wood upgrade, make more villagers and send them to wood. Every 135 wood build a new house. After a few minutes youll be at 20 houses and have 20 free villagers. Do from there what you wish but using this you can really boom quickly.

Answer 4

I have found that the best thing to do is use all but one villager to take down the nearest forest. Use the one to take the free materials. Get your explorer to as many trade posts as possible. This will enable your experience points to rise more quickly. Use the one villager to build manor after manor, and in turn using those villagers created by the manors to gather food. This is great through each age, especially if you use the villagers from home shipments only to gather coin. Military wise, build up musketeers and upgrade them as much as possible. Use free falconetts to cover your infantry.

Answer 5

I have some build orders that exploit British strengths. Of course, this is my opinion and some things I write may not be completely correct.

Age 1

At the start:

• 200 wood and food = Build 1 manor house
• 300 wood and food = Build 2 manor houses
• 200 wood and 100 coin and food = Build 1 market first, get the hunting dogs upgrade and then gather some wood for a manor, OR if you have found some gold treasures simply mine gold to 125 and trade it for wood.
• 1st shipment always 3 villagers
• Age with 17 villagers (or 18 villagers if you have found a good food treasure and think you wont get attacked too early)
• While aging gather wood with all but 3 villagers and try to bring with these 3 villagers hunts to your base.
• Get a market up if you hadn't (do hunting dogs and gang saw upgrades) and build a manor house. If you had a market simply build 2 manor houses and get the gang saw upgrade.

Musket Spam (you should have aged up with tower and 200 gold)

• Get your villagers to chop wood until you have 200 wood and switch all but 2 of your villagers to food (those 2 gather gold).
• Queue a vill before anging up.
• As soon as you age up build a barracks; build the tower defensively or aggressively positioned (depends on how aggressive you want to be) and ship 700 wood.
• Gather coin from age up with 2 villagers and spam muskets.
• Gather the shipped 700wood and buld one more barracks and as many manors as you can. You usually want about 6 or 5 villagers on gold and resto on food to support 2ble barracks musket spam.
• Ship 600w, add a stable if needed and build manors with the rest of it.
• Ship 5 villagers and/or musket hp. (note: never stop making villagers and queuing muskets. Be careful with the muskets you don't want to lose a single one of them without an exchange that is worth it).

Longbow pike spam (age with 500 food)

• As soon as you get 200 wood switch some vills on food so that you have 11 villagers on food.
• Build barracks as soon as you age up
• Ship 700 wood gather food for age up and queue:
  • 5 pikes if you are aggressive
  • 5 longbows if defensive (in this case adding walls isn't a bad idea).
• Build 2nd barracks from 700w and with rest of it build manors.
• Ship 600 wood and build manors. By the same time you gather units with these resources
  • Don't overdo it! Economy comes 1st unless you are very aggressive, which is not advisable in most matchups
• Ship 5 villagers and you should have 50-50 on food- wood separated your villagers.

Good luck and have fun! British is a really strong civ that wins against most civilizations if played right!

Answer 6

It depends on who you are dealing with. If you play with a Russian it is sure that you will have to avoid the Strelets and the early cavalry raids (most of the time 1 minute after the Russian advance ages.) In that case you have to focus both on army and economy.

Here is what I do:

1. Set all villagers on food production except 1 to build a manor.
2. Set all 10 villagers to food until you reach 800 food and age up with 500 food.
3. While aging up remove all 10 villagers from food and place 9 to gold production. Use 1 to collect the 300 wood and build a barracks and a manor with that wood.
4. When the barracks is ready, produce 13 musketeers for defense.
5. Take 5 villagers from gold and put them to food so you will have 5 in food 5 in gold and 3 in wood.
6. You will soon get a shipment. Choose the 600 wood option and build manors with that wood and place them to wood as well.
7. Continue to build some musketeers more but stop if you see that you are not being attacked so as to age up quickly. Important is to take all the market improvements or you will lose for sure.

That's how I play the British at the beginning.

Answer 7

I find it easiest to really kick start your economy by aging up quickly. I gather all the free materials first then send all my villagers to hunt. As soon as I get 800 food I age up and begin putting villagers on wood to make houses. It's the tastes way to make more settelers especially with the Team Houses/Manors build faster card, so I usually play that one first. After that I try to research all the upgrades for Econ as I can and put about an equal number of villagers on each resource depending on my needs. Once you do this your economy should really be booming, I usually have about a dozen settlers on each resource, and the military part falls right into place as you can mass produce a lot of anything with your massive economy.

Answer 8

Throughout history, Britain was known for her fleet. So I found that it is an instant win if you use Zar's economical method on say, Caribbean or Amazon. On either one of those maps your naval power (greatest strength due to the high economy) will be at the front of your force, and not just support or secondary. I have done that many a time and the only tine i lost was just recently when i got preoccupied by my economy and didnt make ships fast enough, if you use this strategy be careful because you are pushing only in one direction, which leaves you vulnerable to a small invasion force unless you build extremely close to the water so your ships can protect your buildings. Good luck!

Answer 9

A strategy I use that works very well is building as many manors as you can right away. After every manor you build, you get a villager. This is a great way to get free villagers. Send half the villagers to wood, a quarter to food and a quarter to coin. Always have your town center spawning villagers, this helps with economy greatly! To have an amazing economy, have 30 villagers on wood, food, and gold. My favourite army type to use is the Hussar's, they are all around great.

Answer 10

Put all vills to food. When you have 17 vills age with 500 food, put all but 3 vills on wood, put those 3 vills on food. Herd animals toward you. Make 2 manors, put new vills on food. When you age, make a vill and a barracks. Put 4 vills on gold, rest on food. Keep making vills the whole game, put mainly on food. Start making a lot of muskets. Ship 700 wood. Make manors. Keep making muskets and vills, put around 2 more on gold soon. Ship 5 vills. When you have 20+ vills on food, have 8 on gold. Ship 600 wood. Make houses and another barracks or stable. Win the game.

This is a very competitive strategy online.

Answer 11

My strategy is find a map with highlanders in the saloon and then try to build up quickly and defend hard with turtle cards and church & arsenal improvements then my build is 51 highlanders converted to black watch later 25 redcoats 10 grenadiers 20 pop worth of artillery and 20 pop worth of cavalry, doesn't always work but it great in 4v4 if you have friends who know what your doing and can back you up a little at first.