Situation:
- It's been a few months since I've last played so I'm a bit rusty
- I remember my favorite strategy was a resource boom (made easy by Portugal's free Covered Wagons increasing Settler output).
- I put some minor thought into my prior strategies and I feel the best strategy would be for me to add a bit of improved turtle tactics to my boom strategy since my largest problem was getting attacked before having troops.
I understand the nature of a boom-strategy therefore I'm not here asking how to prevent getting rushed, I know some tactics on that but inevitably the only acceptable way is spam walls or build troops.
I specifically play Portuguese but I'm open to any tips.
Question:
How do you defend/turtle against a well-done enemy artillery spam?
Attempted Strategies:
- I've tried lining the inside of my walls with my own artillery. This either ends in my artillery getting shot instead of the walls or the enemy shooting walls at max range and then going for my artillery.
- Lining my walls with a mix of troops which unsurprisingly yields similar results.
- Sent troops out and attacked. This seems to work about 50% of the time, the bad 50% ends with another anti-(insert my troop-type here) force picking them off as I attack.
Obviously a decent portion of this is failure to micromanage but ignoring that portion are there any decent strategies that would help me promote my Boom/Turtle strategy? (Allow me to defend my base with the combination of Walls, Outposts, and a small troop force? I do my best to keep my build HP upgrades coming while keeping my troops strong too, but obviously until late-game (where I destroy everything) I am primarily focused on economy boosting.
Best Answer
Turtle strategies just do not work in Age of Empires 3. The problem with walls and other defensive structures such as outposts is that they only give you control over a small area of the map.
If you "turtle" and build outposts near your town center, you will be completely safe from rushes and such for the first few minutes. The problem is that a competent opponent will not run around your towers and let his units die to them.
He will wait just outside of your base. When the food and gold in your base run out, you will want to move to herds and mines outside of your base, but you will not be able to because you invested your resources into stationary towers and walls, while your opponent invested his into a mobile army.
You will be forced to build mills and plantations. While you are spending 400w and 800w for every mill and plantation respectively, your opponent is happily gathering natural resources which are not only free but gather significantly faster. Even if you have more villagers than him, he will have a much much stronger economy, and inevitably win.
With that said, if you really do want to go for a turtle, the only way to deal with cannons (unless he is not protecting them appropriately) is to use culverins.