Does Age of Empires 3 multiplayer still work

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.

What are you doing when playing multiplayer? Internet? LAN? AI only?

A very likely reason for the behavior is the OS. The driver for your LAN Card/WLAN could be old or not really supported for Windows 7. Search for the newest you can find.

Even more likely you are using WLAN with your Laptop and Cable/LAN with your Desktop. If that is the case, try Laptop with cable.

Secondly try disabling Virusscanner(s), Firewall one after the other.