Overview
This guide will summarise how I expect people to play Half Map games, on treaty modes for Age Of Empires III.
Introduction
Welcome, to my second guide!
Why was this guide created? I found the need to document how I, as a player, imagine a half-map treaty game in Age Of Empires III to be played. Because there is no native VoIP communication in the game, co-ordination is difficult.
This guide will only cover the basics of the following:
- Houses, Farms and Plantations;
- Walls – Inner and Outer (Including Towers and Barracks)
Houses, Mills and Plantations
Houses
Generally speaking, you have 20 houses/shrines you are to build (there are exceptions here, but the same rules apply). To make the most out of it (and for movability) I tend to seperate the units into 2 blocks of 10x houses, as follows:
The reason for this is because it just makes the build process easier, as opposed to doing 4×5 stack houses; it is also an advantage if you seperate the locations of the houses, so that upon an assault, you do not lose all your population at one point.
I strongly recommend you organise your houses; having 20 houses scattered throughout the map makes it hard to line things up, slows unit movement down, and makes it harder to manage and defend a base.
Mills and Plantations
Depending on how many of the units you wish to build depends on where you want to store them. As I am the Dutch, I build 2x Mill and Plantations; and situate them right next to one another:
The important thing here is to ensure they are out of the line of immediate fire; you risk both income and villagers if you house these at the front of the base.
Key points to consider here:
- Are you going to seperate your Mills and Plantations from the rest of your buildings?
- Are you going to seperate your houses from the rest of the buildings?
Things to think about:
You should never operate your military from your main base; your main base is your economic centre, and you wish to defend it; it should be as far from the fray as possible, gaurded by walls, and not where you spawn your armies from.
Walls – Inner Base
We will use the following assumptions for this section:
- You are on Orinoco and;
- You are furtherest from the choke point
Whilst this may all vary depending on game style, think of your initial home-centre as the pinnacle of your empire; it is where you store your villagers, Mills, Plantations and houses; along with factories, markets and other economic buildings.
In an ideal world you would have a minimum of 3 layers of walls:
- 1 layer of walls surrounding your economic buildings – Mills, Plantations and Banks
- 1 layer of wall segregating your houses and;
- 1 layer of walls surrounding your entire “base”
In the following example, I should have walls around my bank(s) and house(s):
Note these are not the closest walls to the choke point, so hence why there is only 1x. If this was at the front of the assault path, there should be multiple layers.
Walls – Outer Base
The important ones; the walls you deploy at the choke-points for the fighting.
First and foremost, at the closest available instance of the walls, you should build barracks (or whatever military buildings you shall be using). They should be in a straight line for easy movement for units, and located at gates:
There is no disadvantage to changing walls to gates; so make them all gates.
At the third or second layer, it would be handy to have outposts to initiate units getting too close to the walls. These should not impact the movement of units; so place them between gates as such:
A finished basic wall would look similar to this:
Repeating this 3 layer further back, perhaps at a horizontal link, would also assist in increasing defences.
Note : Linking vertivally between 2 layers of walls to force a path through gates may slow your units down, but means the enemy must target the same path.
Choke Points
The last point of the discussion is choke points. Choke points to me are key areas on the map that, when controlled, give a tactical advantage over the enemy.
Therefore, it is important to ensure there always a defensive position is held. This can be achieved via 4 methods:
- Ensuring Towers, Walls and Barracks are located close by;
- Ensuring Units sit at the point at all times; just as a deterrent and;
- Ensuring the team understands the importance of the location