Request for Recommendation for Team Game Strategies

[stillenacht]

Hi All!

I'm new to Age of Empires; my friends and I are organizing some LAN parties, and AOE3 is going to be one of the games we play. I was just wondering if I could get some recommendations for effective strategies in 2v2 or 3v3 play. I've played StarCraft 2 quite a bit, but that's the extent of my strategy game experience

1. What empire should I choose? Stylistically, I'd like to choose something American (I am the only American in our group), but I don't want to pick a weak race.
2. What sort of build orders should I follow? What defines them? What is a "fast fort?" Why are there sooo many rush builds? (I'd like to avoid rushing)
3. Generally, what sort of unit compositions are good in each stage of the game? What should a "final" unit comp look like?

[milku3459]

My Favourite builds for 3v3 are British musketeers viewtopic.php?p=98012#top
Or Russian strelet (look on the strategy wall for the Boyars strat). I think Brits would be a good choice for you not just because they are relatively easy to play, but because they are the closest civ to America haha

[forgrin]

Hi All!

I'm new to Age of Empires; my friends and I are organizing some LAN parties, and AOE3 is going to be one of the games we play. I was just wondering if I could get some recommendations for effective strategies in 2v2 or 3v3 play. I've played StarCraft 2 quite a bit, but that's the extent of my strategy game experience

1. What empire should I choose? Stylistically, I'd like to choose something American (I am the only American in our group), but I don't want to pick a weak race.
2. What sort of build orders should I follow? What defines them? What is a "fast fort?" Why are there sooo many rush builds? (I'd like to avoid rushing)
3. Generally, what sort of unit compositions are good in each stage of the game? What should a "final" unit comp look like?

1. If you've just started playing, play whatever you'd like. A good starting civ is France since they have a lot of flexibility and are overall pretty strong.

2. In team, you basically want to just mass units. You can follow the early parts of build orders but otherwise just try things out and get a feel for the game. Probably the most important thing is just copying good player's team decks.
A "fast fortress" is basically a build to rush up to the fortress age as fast as possible without making military units until you click the ageup button. It's good because it allows you to leverage an advantage in shipments (age 3 shipments > age 2 shipments) as well as using more tech-y units. It's not really useful in team aside from with Portuguese, who do it because their colonial play is mediocre at best.
What do you mean by "rush builds?" The time scale for this game is just quite quick compared to something like AoE2 because of the shipment mechanic.
You can also play treaty games if you'd like, but keep in mind that it's harder to switch from playing treaty to rush rather than the other way around since there are different skillsets involved.

3. In colonial, musketeer + hussar. In Fortress, ideally skirmisher + dragoon + hussar/other cav but that can be hard to micro in team games. Cannon + musketeer + some skirmishers can be hard to stop until a certain level of play. Once you get better at micro then dragoon + horse cannon is quite strong (read: very annoying to deal with). Dragoon mass overall is really strong in team games.

[noissance]

Russia/china/spain is a good combo. china can send team provincial administration (lesser houses needed), russia can send team barracks hp or team dueling school, and spain can send team faster archaic infantry and also team melee infantry damage.

[pecelot]

1. Like abovementioned, France is simultaneously rather easy to play as and good at everything, but not exclusively perfect at anything. If you're feeling American, British do well, too, since they boom nicely with vills spawning out of every manor house built.
2. Viability and effectiveness define build orders. Basically they describe the fastest and the best way to achieve a certain result. For instance, as French when going for a standard cav semi-FF you should almost always send 4 CDBs, 700 coin followed by 700 wood, since it allows you to get the maximum possible (good eco, 5 huss — sometimes even more, a fast age-up and wood supply for necessary infrastructure). There are a lot of variations, actually, but still the basis is that particular BO.
3. Your unit composition should consist of your strongest units and troops that deal with enemy army effectively at the same time. Again, taking French into consideration, in the Fortress Age you should ideally train skirmishers, as they auto-upgrade to the veteran status with the age-up, dragoons, because they are overall strong units (some civs lack them and as French you have the Cavalry Combat card, which upgrades them), cuirassiers, since they are one of the most powerful units in the game and have many upgrades, and falconets — some civs don't have access to such a shipment. Then, picking from these 4, it depends on the match-up. For instance, against Germany you can go goon+cuir as they lack a good anti-cav unit (apart from Black Riders), vs Ports you should send 2 falcs early to put him on the clock etc.

[Hazza54321]

french russia brit are good starters with decent eco and ease of play. Brits arguably abit harder.

[P i k i l i c]

@pecelot

notification

French «Cavalry Combat» only improves hand cavalry afaik

[Hazza54321]

@pecelot

notification

French «Cavalry Combat» only improves hand cavalry afaik

age 2 cards, just hand cav, age 3 affects goons also

[gibson]

@pecelot

notification

French «Cavalry Combat» only improves hand cavalry afaik

age 2 cards, just hand cav, age 3 affects goons also

i should win

[Hazza54321]

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@pecelot

notification

French «Cavalry Combat» only improves hand cavalry afaik

age 2 cards, just hand cav, age 3 affects goons also

i should win

Yesh

[sirmusket]

Brit man, the best civilization in the game in terms of versatility, and pretty good for starters, I would say France too but they are plain boring in my eyes

[Diarouga]

french russia brit are good starters with decent eco and ease of play. Brits arguably abit harder.

Honestly, I've always found Brits much easier, because you don't have to manage raids/micro cav, you simply macro and a move with your musk mass, but I guess that someone who can't macro correctly would find France easier.

[Hazza54321]

french russia brit are good starters with decent eco and ease of play. Brits arguably abit harder.

Honestly, I've always found Brits much easier, because you don't have to manage raids/micro cav, you simply macro and a move with your musk mass, but I guess that someone who can't macro correctly would find France easier.

u need decent macro for brits, also if youre going cav as brits its much harder.

[Diarouga]

french russia brit are good starters with decent eco and ease of play. Brits arguably abit harder.

Honestly, I've always found Brits much easier, because you don't have to manage raids/micro cav, you simply macro and a move with your musk mass, but I guess that someone who can't macro correctly would find France easier.

u need decent macro for brits, also if youre going cav as brits its much harder.

Hum, yes if you go cav it's harder.
I've always been bad at raiding/dealing with it and my macro has always been rather good, that's probably why I find brit easier.