Complete Age of Empires 3 Hard Difficulty Walkthrough Including Expansions

Overview

With both written and video components this guide explains and shows how you beat the entire campaign game on hardest difficulty.

Act 1 Mission #1: Breakout

In this mission you will have access to three different types of units, however you will only build two: Crossbowmen and Pikemen

You will also have access to one hero unit, Morgan Black.

Morgan Black can be thrown outside of the gate and whip down enemies. Use his ability which is an area of effect damage which can nearly one shot jannisaries.

Crossbowmen are your all purpose unit that are not particularly great against any unit but are alright against all. Pikemen are great against mounted units and only mounted units. A lot of times pikemen will act as fodder.

So you open the mission by moving your crossbowmen to the wall to pick of jannisaries. By continually making crossbowmen from your five barracks you will keep pace and keep the gate up. The fifth barracks, if you cannot find it is north east of your walled base.

At some point you will be told that you need cavalry (The Hussers) to deal with this invasion and you must signal your brother in arms Alain.

Send two settlers and your entire army north. The Ottomans will send a small contingent of units to attack you. Continue making crossbowmen from your barracks and no doubt by this point Morgan Black will be dead. Don’t worry, the moment your units get near him he will come back to life.

After you have lit all of the logs of fire (via gathering) you will gain access to The Hussers. The hussers are weak against pikemen, but thankfully for you the Ottomans have none of those. Move your army back south and with the help of the Hussers kill off their cannons. Cannons must die first. Cannons do insanely high damage and it is splash damage.

Once the cannons are destroyed you will have completed the mission and move to a cut scene between Knights Morgan Black and Alain.

Act 1 Mission #2: Answers

In this mission you will gain access to two new unit types, the hoop thrower and the cannon artillery unit. At the beginning of this mission click on your market and upgrade all of your harvesting abilities. This will give you a 25% increase in resources for the remainder of the mission.

Hoop throwers are really strong against jannisaries (reads right on the tooltip). This gives them a very limited range of use and are not a unit you will mass produce in any other mission. But for this mission continually producing hoop throwers is generally a good idea. Hoop throwers are also moderately good against cavalry, but you will choose pikemen against them anyway.

The cannons are very weak and very fragile to flanking attacks so keep them in the rear and leave them within proximity of your hoop throwers, who can deal with cavalry as stated.

The other unit you will want to make are the Rodelero. Since you have so many high powered ranged units it is smart to have some fodder. The Rodelero have a 40% melee damage resistance bonus and also a 10% cavalry bonus.

With this make shift group of units you should head north and take out the first weapon’s cache.

You will also (for the first time) have access to a priest. If you micro (as in move back weakened units) effectively your priests can heal up all of your units to full at the end of nearly every battle. This will make it so you trade very cost effectively for only a little bit extra effort.

After getting the first cache you should head east destroying everything in your way. Every now and then a few units from the enemy may head south into your base. However your reinforcing Rodelero and Hoop Throwers should be able to deal with them effectively.

Before entering the cave I suggest pushing all the way east and wiping out all of the buildings.

Once you move into the cave you will be fighting clustered groups of jannisaries and if you have enough hoop throwers they should just get mowed down. If you do not use your hero Morgan Black’s special attack which will drop them down to near death in a single swipe.

As you progress through the mine the game normalizes and you just push through armies left and right. There is only one stockpile outside of the mine. The other six are in the mine and deal area of effect damage to each other (and your units).

Once all seven stockpiles are destroyed the mission ends and you get a cut scene indicating why you are going to America in the first place.

Act 1 Mission #3: Pirates!

In this mission you will be introduced to naval warfare which will only be an ever so slight important part of this mission. It should be notable that there are two ways of doing this mission, one in which naval warfare is important and the game goes on longer, or a way to rush it but have a higher chance of failure. I will explain both when the divergence begins.

You will be given a naval ship with an attack called “Broadside Attack.” This is a very powerful attack that will wipe the floor of most ships. As well you will not need to make many of your own ships as you will get ships sent to you from Malta sporadically throughout the game..

Part 1 – Secure your Island

Upon setting up camp you will want to go into macro mode. Macro means producing at maximum effectiveness as much as possible. In this sense I mean that you are going to work on gathering. This means laying down a market and getting maxed out gathering upgrades. While doing this head north and wipe out a group of Pipeblowers and then head south to knock out a group of pirates.

The natives have been co-opted by the pirates and so you will be facing both in this mission.

Once you have a steady economy and can begin building units you should load all of your units (and one settler) on a ship and head south to your first piece of the map.

Here you will only have to kill a few units. However as you start collecting the final map piece a sneak attack will occur on your main island. You will need to reload up all of your units fast and head back.

For this reason I suggest getting the downed cart first. This will transform into a secondary base, which will give you bonus experience and allow you to expand your production.

Upon heading home you can use your ships to attack the Indian canoe while using your army to wipe out his very small army.

Part 2 – Southern Islands

After pushing back this minor attack head to the southern island with a settler and just clean up this island and pick up all of the free treasures.

From here you will need to amass up a very very largely army. I would suggest taking a solid 10 minutes of just making army. I would suggest getting most Rodeleros and Crossbowmen with some Hoop Throwers and a couple cannons. Keep in mind you will also gain reinforcements time to time from Malta so you will also have some calvary and some pikemen to fill the ranks.

Take this time to get all upgrades you can get and make sure you have a very powerful heavy health army. When you land you will not meet much resistance for this first map piece and you will be able to snake it quite easily.

Part 3 – Tactic 1

The tactic that I use in my video is one of slow and constant pacing in which there is no chance of failure, however you are going to invest an extra 30 minutes in doing it. You will need a large fleet of 6-7 ships to make this happen.

Load all of your units that landed on the southern shore and retreat. A massive wave of units will suddenly appear mostly pirates, and pikemen. They have such massive numbers that they will do severe damage to your army.

Instead make a lot of ships. Send your ships north with your army and start wiping out Lizzie’s fleet. Drop off your army on the very northern island for some free settlers and to wipe out a tower that will plague your fleet. Destroy both of Lizzie’s docks and cut off her supply of new ships. From here use your ships to pick off any units and any buildings you can.

Your ships can out range all enemy units. However, do not let them get too close to the shore or the enemy will just run them down. Continue building up an army. Every now and then you should consider sending light cavalry in to clean up the enemy’s gatherers so that she cannot gain access to the silver nodes and her army will be smaller. As you slowly widdle the enemy away you will notice that her army size gets smaller and smaller and smaller.

Upon your attack send all of your cannons to the south and send your galleons (which can be used to produce new units) to the south. You will drop your army off at the north and attack. All the while send your cannons from the south to bust down the gates and wipe out his buildings. The computer will not split up her army and you will be able to wipe out half of her unit producing structures.

You will lose a chunk of your army and will have to do this process twice in order to win the mission.

Part 3 – Tactic 2

As a secondary tactic pick up your army and sail north. Drop your army off at the northern shore and rush them towards the treasure (Morgan Black can pick up the map piece). You will have to kill off a couple of Indians guarding it and Morgan Black can pick it up to end the mission.

This secondary tactic is highly risky, but allows you to dodge the extra 40 minutes of play time.

Act 1 Mission #4: The Ottoman Fort

As the Knights of Malta (Knights of St. John) arrive in the new world… so do the Ottomans. Sahim has followed Badass Black all the way to the new world to stop him from getting what he is after… even if he doesn’t know what it is… yet.

On hard difficulty I use a strategy called “powering.”

With this tactic you purchase military units using your overseas shipments and defend entirely with starting units and build only settlers. This will give you an insanely high starting economy. You should also consider dropping down a Market, getting those upgrades, and getting a dock for extra food (fishing boat). You can also get gold fishing from whales.

Having a powerful economy will allow you to build massive armies very quickly.

Initially you will want to build two trading posts on Native villages. The southern one is most important. You should build two towers to defend this area as the enemy will constantly send units to try and harass this.

There is also another native village on the northwest, this one for whatever reason will never get attacked.

From these two native villages you can purchase a limited number of military units. These are really the only two structures you will need to produce units to.

You should attack the Ottoman base from the south with a maxed out native army.

You will never want to fight towers and units together. Whenever you are attacking into a tower and he is using units pull your units back so you are only facing one and not the other.

This is a fairly easy mission (even on hard) and you can beat it just by resupplying on aboriginal units.

Act 1 Mission #5: Temples of the Aztec

After defeating the Ottomans in America you rally the Aztec people to help you defeat a newer more powerful enemy, the Spanish. The Spanish have amassed a fort and are attacking the local Aztecs in an attempt to pillage these tribes to figure out where exactly their treasure is hiding.

In this mission you will have access to aboriginal unit production, which is mostly what you will be making here. You will want a decent production of wood and food so to keep up with the production of native units.

You will awkwardly gain access to a small navy. You can use this to attack a group of units headed south. This will give you bonus experience and access to some free units.

You can leave the western temple alone. This one can die. It is awkwardly far away from the other two and you only need to keep one temple alive to win.

With aboriginal units you can maintain the top right temples easily for the short duration of time. You can build a couple of towers there to support it as well to give you more units for the major attack.

When the Aztec army arrives you can simply march them forward and wipe out the enemy’s base.

Act 1 Mission #6: A Pirate’s Help

After rallying the Aztecs against the Spanish and finding the location that the Circle of Ossus, Morgan Black heads for Florida. A tropical storm knocks him off course as he lands in Cuba…. where awkwardly the pirates he defeated reside.

The pirates offer Morgan Black help if he can prove his worth and if he gives her all of the treasure from the Spanish treasure fleet.

In this mission you are required to accumulate 10,000 experience. Every you do from harvesting resources, to building units, to killing enemies will build experience… so yes you will be able to do this mission relatively easy. However it has a time limit on it meaning that you will have to do quests in order to achieve this level of experience.

I should note before going into the possible secondary objectives that you will have to do any three of these. Your production and defensive battle wins should cover the other XP. Also you should produce units for a solid 4 minutes before pushing out. After getting enough units you will be able to knock these all out in good time.

Secondary Objective #1: Build A Trade Outposts

Directly south of your base is an enemy outpost that if you capture will give you additional units. The enemy will constantly be spawning units from the south. After capturing this you will gain 2000 experience.

Secondary Objective #2: Cows

In the direct south there is a small herd of cows. If you move your units near it you will capture them. You need to bring them back to your sheep pen. This will give you a very high food source and will complete a secondary objective.

Secondary Objective #3: Loot Gold

Head south and move west. There will be a cache of gold on the western side of the map with some units protecting it. If you gather all of it you will get bonus experience… and free gold.

Secondary Objective #4: Return Native Home

For this more complicated objective you have to defeat an army to the southeast that is guarding a war canoe. Once you have possession of the war canoe you will gain access to a scout who you will have to transport across the ocean to an island. You move him towards the village and you will gain experience.

Secondary Objective #5: Gain Aztec Relics

On the southern part of the eastern island is a small army. If you defeat them and capture the relics you will gain bonus experience.

Act 1 Mission #7: The Spanish Treasure Fleet

After impressing Lizzie, Morgan Black has enlisted the aid of local pirates to help in the destruction of the Circle of Ossus. Now as per the deal he is going to capture the entire Spanish fleet.

In this mission you will get two heroes Lizzie the Pirate and Morgan Black. Lizzie will have a ranged shot and Morgan Black will have his standard AoE attack. Get used to using Lizzie’s attack because it is the most common hero ability.

This mission shows unusually high amounts of favor towards activity and less to preparation and macro, so get used to being on the move.

Every Spanish galleon you capture will be worth 100 gold per two minutes meaning that it will be very advantageous to get as many of these as possible as soon as possible. You also get a free small fleet which you can use to give support for the main attack. You will want to use this to move along the northwest passage (of the map), take out ships and position for support attacks. If you get enough ships they can also capture galleons themselves… although not cost effectively.

You will capture a galleon by destroying the tower around it.

There is a secondary objective to destroy a fort. You should not do this mission until you get enough aboriginal mantlets or some artillery. The mantlets have a 40% damage resistance to all damage compared to the normal 10% that most have.

If you move your army to the northeast and capture a native scout caught in a tree he will mark all of the locations of all of the galleons for you.

Winning this mission is a matter of defending your main base against all attacks while taking galleons as fast as possible. Eventually the enemy’s attack path will be in line with your attack path on them, making things easier.

When you hit his base remember you have some sea power to your advantage. Your broadside attack that all of your ships have is an area of effect attack and will deal devastating damage to land units.

Remember you do not need to destroy his town as the objective is to get the galleons. You can bypass his entire town and just all in that final tower for your objective.

As the game ramps up you will have an unusually amount of gold so make sure you have a market available to buy other resources with.

Act 1 Mission #8: The Fountain of Youth?

In this final mission of Act 1, the Circle of Ossus has been after the Circle of Youth and have setup a large base and large fleet around it. After getting aid from the Ottomans and the Pirates, Morgan Black has decided the only way to deal with this betrayal of the Knights of St. John… is the destruction of the fountain.

The goal of this mission revolves around a very powerful mounted cannon that has a very large range and very large amounts of damage.

This mission will revolve around an appropriate balance of units in order to protect the mounted cannon and keep it alive.

First off you will need a sizeable ground force. It should be composed of mostly crossbowmen, but a few pikemen and some mobile cannons will not hurt either. Any unit you can get shipped in will help as well.

For your navy you will want to get to three ships at all time. The mounted cannon has a minimum range meaning that ships that get really close it will not be able to attack. This means you will need a small group of ships to defend the cannon from ships that get too close.

Your land force has to defend the cannon against large ground attacks. As well it should eliminate the small town near by so that you will have overall less enemy units to deal with. You can use the mounted cannon to eliminate defensive structures and use your army to get rid of all the other buildings. I would wait until you have a few mobile cannons before pushing into this.

The mounted cannon as far as attacks should prioritize enemy ships (that are in range of attack) local town structures, and then the fountain.

You also unlock the ability to make fire ships. Each one of these deal 2,000 damage instantly making them very powerful against the fountain, and enemy ships… but of course they should all be used against the fountain. The more ships you get in the better.

However, it is about balance. You will need minimum three ships at all time and should always have a large ground army to make sure you keep the mounted cannon.

Once the fountain falls below 50% you will have to deal with the enemy hero and a small group of units. If your army is not big enough you will lose the cannon, your fleet, and will be set back many many minutes.

If you keep to the same balance of units in the game and only use extra resources to get fire ships you will slowly beat the mission. Expect on hard difficulty it will be about 30 minutes.

When deploying fire ships use your cannon to sweep of any ships in the vicinity before sending them out. After that make sure your own ships are not blocking the path of the fire ships, just stuff to make it easier for you.

Each fire ship will do 2,000 damage to the fountain and each cannon shot will do 50 damage, so obviously it is about maximizing your fire ship numbers while maintaining your fleet size and your army size.

Because of the length of this mission it is advised early on to work up a heavy economy and get all economic upgrades. The mission will end the second the fountain of youth hits 1 health point.

Act 2 Mission #1: Defend the Colony

Jumping ahead a full two generations you now start at the story of another Black family member, the grandfather of the narrator. Joined with his native friend they roam the wild east of the blossoming American colonies When suddenly, the local aboriginals unexpectedly attack.

In this simple first mission of Act 2 you will be required to defend your colony against the constant onslaught of enemy forces.

The key to this mission will be prioritization.

It is pointless to try and defend colonists who are running away from natives. You will lose 1-2 of them by not defending them and then they will transform into a militia. The alternative is saving them and gaining an extra two militia… while losing position against the main army of the enemy.

No the key to this mission is destroying the enemy’s cannons. The cannons do insanely high damage to your units and if you do not destroy them fast, they can wipe you out.

Your main unit for this will be musketeers followed by anything that you can get overseas.

The musketeer is an all-purpose unit. It does modest DPS and can defend itself against cavalry. On top of that the fact that they have a ranged attack means they can be microed easily to snipe down threats in a single shot.

Note you have two heroes with the same ability. The aboriginal has a very long range however has a longer cooldown on the attack. The British citizen (Black) has a much shorter cooldown, however does less damage. Because of this you want to prioritize Black’s shorter cooldown first and then the aboriginals. This will give you overall more damage and more cooldown usage. This basic tip can be used for every other mission in this Act as you will always have these two heroes.

Early on some colonists will be attacked at the west. This is different from the normal colonist attacks. This attack is against a territory which if you defend, you acquire. This is most definitely worth it as the reward is extra food production, settler production, and extra settlers. After the initial attack the enemy will awkwardly never attack here again, so this first base is definitely worth defending.

Act 2 Mission #2: Strange Alliances

The British are coming. The British under Warwick have oddly been allied with a local tribe. The Indians end up being a trap, and John Black has to stop them.

Out of the Act 2 missions this one is no doubt the hardest of them on Hard Difficulty. There are many tactics and tricks people have used to beat this and most of them have been patched as they were exploiting the mission.

To start move your army south to wipe out an Indian Warband. While doing this hit the delete key after selecting all of your buildings (Stuart’s town). By destroying your entire town this means that when the British show up they will not take over these buildings and will not get double production.

After wiping out the two warbands a scripted event will direct you to move towards another Indian village. Here you will be ambushed by four British musketeers which you can beat easily.

You will gain access to a covered wagon which you can use to build your town hall and start building up an army. The British will occupy your old base and setup camp.

What makes this mission hard is how the British get a Settler lead and because of this advance much faster. This means that by waiting around too long the British will eventually overpower you. This means you will have to strike fast.

Amass an army largely of musketeers mixing in a cannon or two later.

If you move to the northwestern corner of the British base the Brits will have a large collection of Settlers constantly harvesting and the British will constantly send more to this location. If you widdle down his settler count slowly and cautiously without moving into the base the Brits will not be able to produce units and will not be able to advance.

Using this micromanagement heavy strategy you will slowly get an army built up over time and will be able to push with cannons to take out the Brit’s base.

Act 2 Mission #3: The Rescue

The Iroquis are under attack from the British, and John Black will fight them back.

In this mission you will have to balance off defending forces for the Indians in the north, and attack units in the South.

The best possible unit to get in the north is going to be the non-mantlet aboriginals. The reason is because you can only make a certain number of mantlets and a certain number of aboriginals… and you will want the mantlets for your attack.

Your first inclination will be to rush in there, don’t. Your second inclination will be to move directly from the south, don’t.

Instead get a slightly better economy and head east and then north. This will give you access to another aboriginal village. Build a trading post here and this will double the number of aboriginals you can support in your army. You will want to build all mantlets from this one.

All the while you will be building an army of ranged aboriginals in the north. Make sure your units are positioned near your tower so as to get maximum defensive bonus. The AI on the cannon usually just attacks random buildings so leave that until last.

While this is happening amass a maxed out aboriginal army in the east and once you are maxed out (on the number of mantlets) push west with this army. There will be two unupgraded towers here you can take out. Once you start attacking they will pull back. From here you should slowly inch forward wiping out any workers you can.

All the while instead of reinforcing from the east you should start building up an army in the north. The second that your army gets close to the northern tower you move your northern army forward to support and link them up. From here it is simply a matter of destroy all remaining buildings with your army.

For help on microing units properly and what your economy should look like watch the VOD.

Act 2 Mission #4: The Seven Years War

As the Seven Years War begins the Iroquis have chosen to ally themselves against the French against the British. In this mission you must aid the French by defeating a British fort.

In this mission you will not be able to use aboriginal units. The French have taken control of all Iroquis outposts leaving you to use only your units.

In this mission the more cannons you have the better you will do.

This mission is all about your attack timing. You want to attack when some French/Iroquis mantlets start pushing towards the towers. The mantlets will soak damage from the towers and allow your units to destroy them. You can push in with or without cannons with great success.

The second the enemy’s forces show up to defend you will want to move back to your base so you are not taking extra damage from the towers.

Once the towers are down on the southside it becomes a matter of slow pushing to the finish. You can choose to wipe out production on the western side of the map so you face overall less units… but it is not necessary.

If you want to get the secondary objective for bonus experience you can do so while you are wiping out his final building. Head north and the British will have a trading outpost on an aboriginal camp. Destroy it and have John Black build a new one, easy. It can bug from time to time in which case you will not be allowed to build a trading post on it.

Act 2 Mission #5: The Great Lakes

As an interesting note in American history George Washington learned (along with all of his colonels) guerrilla tactics during the Seven Years War. He would later use these new updated tactics that gave him such troubles in the Seven Years War against the British to liberate America. In this mission George Washington, just referred to as Colonel Washington, admits that Warwick is out of control and promises to give aid to finding him and knocking him out.

Colonel Washington offers British fleets in defeating Warwick.

The start of this mission involves moving north and taking out the northern bases. Be careful, there are now max upgraded towers which do splash damage. This means you will absolutely need cannons to take this out. If you have them in your deck, good for you.

After you beat this village you will gain access to transports. These transports have a very high powered ability. Instead of transporting your army across the sea and taking out the enemy use these transports to shell out enemy unit producing structures or enemy units. I would not choose to attack without the special ability Broadside Attack which also has an area of effect component.

At this time you should get your Age maxed out and start producing large quantities of heavily upgraded units. I would not move until every unit is max upgrade. I use heavy musketeers supported with cannons. There are not enough cannons on the enemy side to get cavalry.

After you destroy the southern tower on the western land you will gain access to a large fleet. However the second you attack the entire mass army of the enemy will march south. So you will want to keep his army north by harassing him with your transports while having one or two drop off your units south. These same transports should be available to pick up the units if the enemy’s units are moving south. This allows you to effectively strike two points at once and do heavy amounts of damage.

Once you destroy this you will gain large British ships. The most important is the ability of Mortar. If you want to make this easy run your heroes into the enemy Town Center. With this you can mortar down his Town Center and win without having to fight a battle. Otherwise you can just push forward and use your large fleet to support your attack.

There are two ships to the north that you also have to kill, but by this point that should be a matter of right clicking on it.

Act 2 Mission #6: Respect

In this mission it is almost impossible to fail. Doing this mission means keeping your fingers active and keeping your army going. The tribes will defend themselves and it will be very hard for the tribe leaders (Chiefs) to die off. The goal here is to build up a big enough army over time while clearing up some objectives and killing enemies.

Once you have a large enough army you can actually engage the northern base with great success. By knocking it out you can assure a victory as it will support the pending objective that all chiefs must survive.

Your unit composition should start mostly with musketeers and slowly expand into cannons. Mortars are units you should only consider bringing in near the end when you storm the northern base.

Act 2 Mission #7: Warwick’s Stronghold

As the approach is made closer and closer to Warwick it is time to hit him head on, at his stronghold. You come here with a very limited number of resources to use and because of this… you have to rob Warwick blind.

Warwick is bringing in resources along four trade routes. The more resources he gets the more units he can make. The more you get the higher your income. You start off with two cannons, a group of musketeers, John Black (hero), and Kenyenkay (hero). This very unmobile army has to rob trains. You can do this by tagging them with a unit. You then bring them home and your settlers will pick up the resources.

Strategically you need to start off by addressing the four lines of attack. There are two lines of attack on the east and two on the west. There is one tower per line of attack. This means the key to getting a lot of carts is to get rid of the towers and split up your army effectively.

In my strategy you focus on just the eastern side of the map. You use your cannons to take out towers and then position your units on a high ground area between the two points.

Rarely will the computer attack your base and when he does you can defend with your few settlers. You will want to make mostly musketeers and with all of the experience you will be gaining purchase cannons.

Once you have 4-5 cannons and a large army, you push north… slowly. The idea here is you have to take out towers and armies slowly and continue pushing forward. If you lose too many cannons too fast… you lose.

This is a mission you can play pretty safely because the enemy rarely ever attacks you. Make sure your army is huge before you engage, you will gain resources from two lines of attack when you attack so that will be some extra income.

This mission should take you no more than 20 minutes.

Act 2 Mission #8: Bring Down the Mountain

After defeating Warwick’s Stronghold, Warwick gets away and introduces the world to his new allies, the Russians. The Russians are marching to get the fountain of youth and John Black has to stop them… by bringing down the mountain.

This mission represents a production management system. You have to manage when you are ‘bringing down a mountain’ with when you are defending.

You will gain access to “miners.” Miners have the ability to gather goods, mine minerals, throw dynamite (splash damage) at enemies, and destroy rock bridges.

You should take down the bridges from north to south. If a cannon is not moving by where you are working, ignore it. You can let ten get by so you have tones of room to beat this.

The best and fastest way to beat this is to keep your miners destroying the bridge as much as possible. This means that the only time your miners are not destroying the rock bridges is when they have enemies near by.

The miners are recostumed grenadiers and because of this do insanely high splash damage. This can give you the bolstering you need in large battles.

You should at no point attempt to defend your base. Instead use your settlers by moving them into the Town Hall and defending from the Town Hall. By moving your army out of position you slow down your mining or expose your miners to big attacks.

You will gain miners for free throughout the mission so make sure to keep an eye ont his and move them south.

The mission ends the second the third rock bridge falls.

Act 3 Mission #1: Race for the Rails

Another chapter yay. In this one you are introduced to the narrator for the game, Amelia Black, the descendant of Knight Black, grand-daughter of John Black, and granddaughter of an Iroquis.

As the story begins Amelia Black has taken the family fortune and inherited a railway company looking to get to the Pacific first. In this opening mission you simply have to connect the railroad by building Trading Posts.

This introduces a new concept. In the past all Posts were Trading Posts with natives so to gain access to native units and native upgrades. In this Trading Posts grant resources per shipment making them highly valuable strategic points.

You will need to get three trading posts to win.

The best way to start this is to just build the one that is empty and set it to the resource you need… usually food.

Continue building up musketeers and gaining bulk. There is one major area you will have to attack. It will have two towers to deal with.

You will also be introduced to a new unit, the Railway Worker. This worker can mine gold, gather resources, build trading posts and throw aoe dynamite at enemies. They also deal bonus damage.

This means to win this you will not need much, just a few more units. Build an army of roughly 25-30 and push south. Destroy the buildings and put up your new trading post. After this there is one more to the south that sometimes it unoccupied and sometimes your enemy has built in.

Yes your enemy does have a separate base in the northwest, no it does not matter whether or you destroy it or not.

The mission is won after building three trading posts.

Act 3 Mission #2: Hold the Fort

This guide is less about how to beat the level on hard difficulty and more on how to beat it quickly on hard difficulty.

Start off by taking your small army of a few musketeers and Amelia to build trading posts at every single trading post. Also make sure to maximum upgrade these bad boys for maximum goodiness. Rarely will enemies attack these but if they do, just rebuild.

Leave all of your cannons setup in attack position in your base at all times. They will be very effective against the armies coming at you.

Make sure to upgrade stationary towers to maximum as well. This will assure the enemy will never want to engage them and your trading posts will always be well protected.

After getting all of your trading posts up make sure you have them set to whatever resources you will need, this will mostly be gold and food. The base of your army will be musketeers. Build musketeers nonstop. Do not get any upgrades.

There is a timer that tells you when an army will come to support you. Just keep defending losing as little artillery as possible while this is happening.

While doing this do not build any extra workers, they will not pay off all that fast, plus there is no real sources of food on the map so macroing will be tough anyway.

Once you have a few seconds left on the clock gathering up your artillery and army and march them all north. ‘Gun it’ for his town hall.

In the southeast an army will appear that is made of skirmishers, hussers, and mortars. Mortars can be targeted on buildings while your hussers and skirmishers peel units off of them. There are two town halls in the south and one in the north.

If you do this timing you can avoid having to march your army around the map.

Since the objective is to destroy town halls you can really avoid having to attack any other structures. Your army should be big enough that even with some losses you should be able to take them on.

Act 3 Mission #3: The Boneguard’s Lair

This mission is a momentum based mission. If you have gathered enough forces you can crush Beaumont’s army. If you do not you will have enough forces you will just lose.

IF you are ever facing a melee unit make sure to kite them. To do this move away from them and then right click on one of the enemy units. Follow this up by moving away again and attacking again. The idea is to make sure the melee units get as little time attacking you as humanly possible. For this reason it is recommended you not get melee units until later.

On hard difficulty you will want to clear out every single enemy units and cash in every single Food Convoy.

Food Convoy’s can be turned in for two types of aboriginal units, Ranged and Melee. You will favor ranged initially and near the end you will want to stock up on melee units. The melee units have more armor and more damage but are also more exposed and more likely to die. In most engagements you will want to lead with your ranged units and move your melee units in after.

You should also make sure to use Amelia and Kanyenkay’s abilities almost on cooldown. Kayenkay’s shot has an insanely high range and can be used for softening up enemies without having to engage. Amelia has a big AoE attack and a one-shot kill attack. Using them on cooldown might be a win for you.

Beyond that make sure to explore the entire cave to max out your win. The mission ends when you get to a map.

Act 3 Mission #4: The Lost Spanish Gold

In this mission there are no gold mines. Instead there are lost spanish gold ships which you can mine. These mine at the same rate a normal gold mine would if you had all gold mining upgrades. Because of this gold based units (like musketeers) will be key to beating this.

The initial goal is to defeat three towers. The first tower you should hit is in the southeast. After destroying this tower you will open up more gold paths and the ability to get aboriginal units from a trading post.

I would suggest only getting trading post units for the majority of this mission.

You will get a side quest to bring Kanyenkay to a point on the map. After defeating a few white cats you will gain access to the Fixed Gun from the first campaign with Morgan Black. The fixed gun should first be used to target down the fort to the west so that you can easily get this secondary objective (and get more aboriginal units).

Second you can use the fixed gun to wipe out the enemy’s tower in the south.

The final tower will have a fairly large army waiting there. I would suggest wiping out the army first and then worrying about the tower.

Once you have all three towers down the final objective will appear, destroy the enemy’s town center. By this point you should have enough units to storm the front. For a quick win bust down his gates (right click on the gate) and destroy the town center (right click on the town center). After doing this all or nothing tactic the mission will end. If you lose your entire army, no worries, just build up another army.

Act 3 Mission #5: Bolivar’s Revolt

Throughout the 19th century Bolivar was moving with his revolutionary army through South America liberating countries from the control of the Spanish. Today we would think of him as a Che Guevera type… and we get to play with him in this game!

This is a pace controlled mission. You only attack when Bolivar attacks. You support his army but don’t be afraid to micro so his units take more damage.

Each village you liberate will grant automated units for Bolivar’s army. They will also grant you unit producing facilities. This means that you should not build any unit producing facilities yourself.

The whole game you should be constantly making settlers and only building military units when you have surplus resources for it. There are no need for upgrades.

The first village you conquer will grant you a town hall and a barracks. The barracks should be producing musketeers and/or skirmishers, the town hall obviously settlers.

The second town will allow you to build cannons. You will want to get as many cannons/artillery as possible. These are your power units. Cannons require high amounts of gold and some wood, so keep that in mind when you are resource gathering.

After gaining this second town there will be one more town Bolivar will attack, the final one. For the bonus objective you should attack the eastern village (to the east of the final village) with some cannons and a few units to support the cannons. Support here means staying back and stopping units from sniping/attacking them.

By gaining this village you will have access to stables to make cavalry, and also some more automated units for Bolivar.

On the final attack push with Bolivar and you should be unstoppable. Destroy the town hall to win.

Act 3 Mission #6: Journey Through the Andes

This is no doubt the hardest mission in the game period.

If you are not around a fire you will lose health. You will heal health by being around a fire. So as you walk around you are trying to go from fire to fire.

To make things worse the enemy is sending scouts, every time you miss a scout you have to kill off a couple of hussers and the giant enemy army moves forward. To deal with this cycle between your two heroes three abilities and they should go down fast.

Take things slow. You do not need to rush ahead until you have killed a scout. As well you might as well wait on cooldowns of your heroes before moving forward.

You will lose about half of your army after the long walk. This is the first long walk from north to south. For whatever reason a health nerf was made to skirmisher health and they are unable to make the walk. This makes things even harder. It means you have to be spot on with your use of abilities to win this.

It is essential to skip any collectibles. These increase the health of your heroes which should help you but because you spend so much time on them the enemy is sending that many more scouts and that many more hussers.

In the last little push there are many fire pits. You should not stop for all of them, or even most of them. You should only stop when it is absolutely necessary. If you try to get through this quickly you should finish the mission much faster with less scouts getting through.

Act 3 Mission #7: Last City of the Inca

Leading back into Act 1 as it turns out the Incans did not move into extinction but instead went into hiding. Amelia Black has found this tribe and must save them from extinction.

The Circle of Ossus with Beaumont has arrived and are looking to wipe out the Incans.

The Incan people have promised artillery support to wipe out The Circle of Ossus in North America.

The catch is artillery is arriving one piece at a time from the west and you have to travel it through a trail in which the Russians have blocked.

The southern defenses are mostly good enough to hold off attacks. Staging a few extra units to deal with this is not a bad idea. The bulk of your army should be sent to support your artillery as you move on.

With the artillery attack north into the Russian base. This will not only make the mission easier, but will also reward more experience.

Once this base is cleared out this does not end the ambushes. Units will spawn from the north for every single piece of artillery that spawns.

To speed up the process you can build your own artillery and they will count in the Incan stockpile.

As soon as each piece of artillery is placed in the stockpile you can move it and use it.

Upon getting enough artillery you have to destroy the Circle of Ossus to the west. Destroying this is not particularly hard. Make sure you have a lot of bulk with your artillery, this is musketeers.

Artillery in the game is split into three types:

Anti-artillery: These are your culverins. Culverins have the highest range and do bonus damage against artillery and do very little damage against everything else.
Anti-infantry: Cannons do splash area of effect damage and do bonus damage against infantry.
Anti-building: Mortars deal heavy damage against buildings and have the second highest range.
Upon your approach your artillery should be mostly anti-infantry with some anti-building mixed in.

Act 3 Mission #8: The Ossuary

As a final mission this is not a particularly hard mission. The only thing that might be hard about it is the bonus secondary objective which involves moving up in Ages very quickly.

In this mission you will have Amelia Black and Kanyenke at your disposal. You will last and move north where a Spanish town which hates the Circle of Ossus agree to support you. They state while you macro up they will defend you the best they can.

To support this I’d suggest building a fortress almost immediately. The fortress will take most of the hits and by the time it is destroyed you will have an army.

It should also be noted there is a survival aspect to this mission. If you survive long enough ‘America’ will have sent war ships to help you. The war ships will take out the fixed cannons located all along The Ossuary. On top of this if you lose ships you will just get newer better ones automatically.

The main objective in this mission will be to get high amounts of production and attack. The more anti-infantry cannons you have the better you will do in this mission.

There is not a lot of land in this mission meaning that there is really not a lot of gold, not a lot of wood and not a lot of hope. This means this is not a mission you can just wittle the computer down with. You will need a proper balance of musketeers and artillery to bust down his walls.

The War Chiefs Act 1 Mission #1: War Dance

This expansion is a little more scripted than the last which leads for a better learning experience.

This mission will start with Nathanial Black (father of Amelia Black and son of John Black) with his Uncle Kanyenke moving through the woods. The two are ambushed by local tribes and you move north to a village.

At this village you are introduced to an aboriginal village filled with aboriginal units. These new units at first seem to be an extension of British units, but are in fact their own units.

Unique is the fire pit. The fire pit is ap lace where workers can dance to a maximum of 25. The war dance gives advantages to producing new units, unit damage, and building production. The fire pit has a major strategic value.

When you are attacking you can move all of your villagers to the fire pit to give your attack more power. Other than this the circle is mostly useless for the campaign. It gets better in giant macro games involving giant clusters of unit production.

Much like most missions it is a good idea to move around and look for big white X’s on the screen. These grant extra resources that you can use to produce more units.

the war chief tells you that the two tribes that are attacking you are split and if one town center falls the other will retreat.

This smells like an all in strat (and it is).

Since you only have to destroy one town center it means you can move your forces to a town center and right click on it (once you have enough forces).

The war chiefs expansion offers a lot of unique units that require strong balancing. The core of your army should be tomahawks, who do very well against ranged units. After this it may be useful to get some gun wielding aboriginals to round out your army. You can get mantlets by aging up.

Mantlets provide a massive defensive bonus meaning that if you lead with your mantlets your other unit will be free to do a lot of damage. These prove to be very useful when sieging the enemy.

Once the town center is destroyed the mission is over.

The War Chiefs Act 1 Mission #2: The Rescue

After being introduced to the antagonist, Colonel Kuetchler it is revealed that Kanyenkay’s sister is once again captured and has to be rescued. Yes… again. This is the second time in this series that this woman has been captured.

Unlike last time there is no town center and there is no time limitation worry about her dying. Instead you are given a very massive army composed mostly of ranged units with some cavalry mixed in.

Since you cannot macro up march your army north to the enemy’s gates and bust them down. Hero abilities become very important here.

Nathanial Black has two abilities. One is a single target powerful attack. The second is an area of effect 50% health attack. Each of these are useful at different times so keep that in mind. any time a clump of units arrives use the AoE attack. Any time spread out units arrive, use the single target attack.

You will also get Wind Feather. Wind feather has the ability to train war bears and also the ability to convert guardians to your army. This second ability will become very potent as treasure guardians will get stronger and stronger.

After moving north you will get some villagers. Now you will be able to get resources and make more units. Since you cannot produce units still be a little bit of a slog.

If you move across the entire map you will get around to freeing all of the settlers. Your best bet is to head for Colonel Kuetchler instead and just relying on experience based shipments for troops.

Kuetchler’s army will slowly pick apart at your base. You can easily read the Hessians and save your mother before this happens.

The War Chiefs Act 1 Mission #3: Breed’s Hill

I think this mission more than any other makes the confusing point that the aboriginals might be mixed in with the colonials. You will be given the option of making colonial militia (which you’ll be stripped of later).

This mission on hard will represent a strong challenge and will annoy people to no end.

In this mission there are two fixed guns, one to the east and one to the west. The one to the west is very close to your town and if it is captured you will lose your town. The fixed gun to the east will hit your secondary outpost if it is captured. For this reason the eastern fixed gun can be ignored and the workers can just gather from other areas.

The main unit of this mission will be the colonial militiamen. You will need a few of them holding the fixed gun to the west and the remainder holding the center. This mission is entirely about balancing off production with gathering. If you do not have enough production you cannot win.

As the game moves forward it becomes harder and harder to hold the middle. The key to success here is fine tuning. Figure out at what point in the mission you are failing. You will find that at that time you are doing something different or wrong. For example for me the 5 minute marker was where I would lose. This coincided every single time with researching an upgrade and ignoring unit production.

Getting cannons will pay off heavily here. The more cannons you have the faster you will chop down their grouped up British musketeers.

The two main resources you will need to get are gold and food. You will need some wood for more buildings, but not much.

If you lose all of your units at the western gun remember that any unit can retake it. I would suggest retaking it with settlers and using the gun to destroy the enemy’s attack force.

Overall this is a fairly hard mission that will require very fine tuning and very strong balancing.

The War Chiefs Act 1 Mission #4: Crossing the Delaware

This mission is heavily scripted.

At the start you will land your units across the sea to try and destroy camps at the enemy’s base. Once all of the camps are destroyed you will become a neutral to the town. You will need to create fires using Nathanial Black. If you put a fire in the wrong place click on it and hit delete, this will allow you to make more fires.

Upon doing this you will activate the enemy moving to re-take this small town. Move north to avoid them and take out the few guards sitting in their base. You will now gain control of the much larger base of operations and be tasked with destroying the town center to the south.

For your push you will want mostly colonial militia, some tomahawks and as many cannons as you can get. The push out point should be when you have at least 3 cannons. After defeating his army you can right click on his town center and destroy it to win the game.

The War Chiefs Act 1 Mission #5: Saratoga

At the battle of Saratoga you will need all of your cunning… or maybe just some of it.

The goal of this mission is to build three forts before your enemy can.

This mission will require constant army production while saving up resources for forts. This means making a hand full of production buildings and having more harvesters than you need so you can fill in that gap.

You should stage your army just a little north of where you start. You can stop multiple forts from being erected in this location and slow down the Hessians quite a bit. As well north and to the east a bit is a bridge. Upon destroying this bridge it will stop the enemy from attacking you.

Both of these are very easy to do and very obtainable early on in the game.

All forts should be placed relatively close to your base and relatively close to each other. Forts can be treated like walls, if there is a fort there the enemy is less likely to go there.

It is a relatively easy mission. However if the enemy is able to erect that first fort near you (as in you haven’t stopped it from happening) just restart and make sure your army is staged there. He will try and get a fort there multiple times throughout the game. That’s just enough to give you a very significant advantage.

The War Chiefs Act 1 Mission #6: The Valley Forge

In this mission you will have a unique type of colonial soldier who is able to cut trees and gather resources. Initially you will use them to harvest enough wood to build some homes.

You can use George Washington (hero meleee unit) and Nathanial Black to try and gain extra resources from the white X’s. Once you have enough homes built the “cold” effect will go away. This is a ticking effect that will take down your health unless you are by a fire.

At this point the game will switch over to a new mission, getting food. There are two shops to the south that will sell you food carts. Food carts can be brought to your village. If you go south the native village will grant you some temporary villagers, temporary as in they will only work for this segment of the mission.

Use them to gather resources left on the ground. Utilizing them will make this segment of the game go faster.

I would also suggest any time you feel like you are idling you should use those special colonial soldiers to cut some extra wood for later.

Once the food arrives you will be granted a Center and you will be able to have actual production. At this point you just build up a large army and attack in. The enemy will not make more units than they currently have… so there’s no real worry for attacks.

That is not to say there are none. There will be small 3-4 unit attacks throughout the mission…. yes not that scary.

The War Chiefs Act 1 Mission #7: The Battle of Morristown

As the Americans are on the cusp of victory the Hessians are still looming… and Nathanial wants his revenge on them still… and he has his chance.

The Hessians intend to march on Morristown… and you have to stop them.

The army composition you will want for this is as many cannons as possible, mantlets, tomahawks and militia. Cavalry will not prove to be useful due to the minimal number of cannons you will face.

The cannons will deal the explosive area of effect damage you will need to face off the giant numbers of infantry. The mantlets will soak damage for you to protect your tomahawks and militia. Your tomahawks will deal with ranged units while the infantry will deal with melee units. It is a well balanced group.

Over time get as many upgrades as you can get, constantly make settlers and increase your unit producing abilities.

There is somewhat of a timer on this but it’s not a real timer. You can take your time and slowly advance.

On top of this along the attack path there will be a large number of prisons you can break open to get some bonus units.

The key to this mission is balance. Your cannons will be destroying all towers. You use the remainder of your forces to support your cannons. When you get a decent size of mantlets you can also use them on towers.

You do not want to use mortars when you can avoid them even though they have high building damage. The idea is to create a group of units that can beat the ending army.

There is a little bit of a timeline on this as the Hessian army will slowly approach Morristown. Once this army hits Morristown you will still have time before they can even destroy it. Even when they hit the town you will have a lot of time to get to them and stop them.

After you destroy this army Kuetchler will show up with another Hessian army for you to beat. This one will be much larger. By the time this army shows up you will have enough production to beat his whole army.

You can focus down entirely just Kuetchler with your entire army. He is the only one who has to die.

You would think this was the final mission… but it’s not.

The War Chiefs Act 1 Mission #8: The Battle of Yorktown

In the big deciding battle for the American war of independence it all comes down to taking Yorktown.

This battle focuses around a single well guarded area. The enemy will occasionally sound out forces to attack you and they should be fairly easy to defend.

This is a mission that is mostly about grinding. You will need a lot of unit producing power and all of the upgrades.

The French supported the Americans in the Civil War and it is no different here.

If you knock out a bunch of very powerful guns the French will move in and support you with units.

There is a secondary mission to the east involving destroying all of the defensive structures using a few units you are given. Whether or not you complete this mission has little to no impact on the mission. All of your experience ends and there’s no achievement system.

In this mission it is not so much about what units you choose to use but more about how many units you use. Militiamen will be your best bet because of how cheap they are. Mixing in some mortars or cannons will not be a bad idea either.

The idea is you want consistency, creating a lot of units and sending them out once you get a lot of units.

The mission is long and really it’s just a matter of shortening what you’re doing, as opposed to any particular strategy.

The War Chiefs Act 2 Mission #1: The Bozeman Trail

In this opening mission of the second Act you are introduced to the two main characters of this Act, Clayton Black and Holmes. Clayton Black is the son of Amelia Black and Clayton is living off of the Black’s estate. Holmes is a prospector looking to make a fortune.

The time involved is during the American expansion into the west. The natives of the east were largely amalgamated into European society and served to create alliances against other European powers.

All this time the Plains Indians (as they’ve come to be called) lived independent of all of this and were largely unaffected by European colonization. As the Spanish were defeated in the South and expanded towards Texas and staved off the British in the North (war of 1812) it left the entire western expanse for colonization.

It should be noted that the first surveys of this territory came back showing that it was a giant desert not fir for colonization. Later surveys would show this to be false. As it turns out this survey entered the hottest part of North America during the hottest week of the year.

In this story Holmes and Clayton are going after the great gold rush that made the stories of the old wild west true. At the same time Plains Indians are defending their territories. I should note this is after the train expansion to the west when Crazy Horse is in open revolt.

In this particular mission you start off by getting up three Trading Posts along the train tracks. These trading posts will offer you food,wood, gold, or experience. For the time being they should all be set to experience so that you can get a lot of early Home Shipments.

After you complete all three trading posts you will gain access to a Town Center. Your main mission will change to destroying the two town centers.

They are at opposite ends meaning that when you attack you will be counter attacked by the other.

The goal is to sit, make a giant army, have lots of production and hit in one direction. You will take minimal hits to your base but your production and home shipments will deal with this.

Remember you only have to destroy TOWN CENTERS. This means once you have enough units you just right click on the Town Centers and destroy them.

Once you destroy one town center you just have to fill up your army again and right click on the other town center.

Your unit composition will be mostly low tier units, gold and food types. You can mix in some food and wood types.

The main thing is get a lot of bulk. You will not have access to a lot of unit types so use what you can get. Mantlets offer a lot of damage absorption and save some of your army. Unfortunately at this point in the game you can only get around 5 of them so it’s hard to deal with.

The War Chiefs Act 2 Mission #2: Red Cloud’s War

As Holmes and Clayton approach the claim they find Red Cloud has invaded this territory. Miners are being killed off by Indian invaders.

Miners have amazing area of effect damage but have very little health. Miners also uniquely can be used to mine gold and collect resources in the ground.

This will give you the resources you need to build an army. This mission introduces you to all gold mercenaries, a brand new gold dump in the game. Mercenaries are slightly more powerful than the units they mimic. For this mission start off with the cheapest ones and once you are sustained start picking up cavalry units.

You will want cavalry units to deal with the gaps.

There is no time limit on this mission and it is largely unfailable. You simply need to save enough miners while not losing your entire army.

The War Chiefs Act 2 Mission #3: Claims

In this mission you have to destroy the productive powers of the natives… and the Spanish. To do this you need to destroy barracks, three of them.

The computer will have two hero Indians who will show up immediately and like your own hero units they will re-activate every time they are near their own allies.

This mission is about pacing. You need to amass an army pretty fast, mostly by home shipments. Once you have an army you need to march it south and take out the random Spanish base. This will be the first barracks. This barracks is the only one that won’t fight back so it is the easiest one to get.

All the while all new units should be used to defend your trading posts, which represent a huge chunk of your income for this mission. Having a lot of settlers won’t work out because you need a lot of units moving fast.

It should also be noted that although there are not a lot of units attacking, there are some…and they have to be dealt with.

After destroying the southern barracks get a few more units and immediately push north. To the north there are two barracks. They are the only things there that need to be destroyed.

Unlike the Spanish barracks, these Indian barracks are also defensive turrets. Having mantlets will help a tonne with this push.

When all three barracks are destroyed you win.

The War Chiefs Act 2 Mission #4: Ambushed!

In this mission you have a long hard slug to get to Crazy Horse who is all the way up north. There are short cuts. Every time you open up a short cut you open up a new attack path for the enemy. This means to take short cuts you will open yourself up to more and constant attacks from the enemy.

Each short cut requires a powder keg. You have to destroy a command center to gain access to a powder keg. Every single opportunity you have to destroy a unit producing facility… do it.

You should destroy every unit producing facility along your attack path or face constant repercussions.

You will want some cannons to deal with the massive numbers of Indian infantry. Cavalry are also going to be a good choice simply because they end up doing well.

Taking the short cut will pay out considering that you should be able to produce enough units from multiple barracks to deal with any attack units. As well you can put up defensive structures to assist with this.

Upon heading north try to hug the eastern side of the map the best you can. This will give you a fast track to Crazy Horse.

This map is more about constantly producing units and less about absolute victories. You will lose armies many time and this mission will take multiple armies to beat.

The War Chiefs Act 2 Mission #5: Turning Point

The opening of this mission is pretty brutal. Holmes will nonstop make workers who will gather wood. All the while you have to make units only using resources from trading posts. This will limit how many units you can make.

The best units to make here will have a long range so that they can micro effectively. Here you will need to practice allowing settlers to take hits, move in, get a few shots off with your units and move back once the settler dies.

By doing this you can slowly wittle down the enemy so that you can retake position.

After you retake position you have to determine how long you can maintain the position. Watch the video to get a better idea on how to micro your units to beat this.

After (using this method) you have enough wood Holmes will turn on you and you will have to head north to get the support of natives.

At this point you will want to sit back and macro up. Every now and then Holmes will attack but not too often.

The emphasis of production should be (A) upgrades (B) mantlets (C) cannons and (D) tomahawks.

The objective is to move south and destroy the command post.

As a secondary objective you have to reconstruct all of the trading posts. You can do the secondary objective by destroying everything but the command post and then build the trading posts after.

Your units need to be managed effectively. Cannons should be attacking the wall of the fortress from the northwest or the southwest. Once the wall is opened you can either slowly creep forward and continue to destroy defensive structures or you can right click all of your units on the command post.

One assures success, one has a high chance of success. Your choice.

The War Chiefs Act 2 Mission #6: Trust

Well it’s our favorite kind of mission again, an experience building mission. Much like other missions you have to gain a set amount of experience (10,000) in order to win.

The kicker here is you have to get it before all of the Indian leaders are dead. This isn’t entirely hard to do, it just puts a time limit on it.

Remember that everything you do will build experience. Move around the map collecting X’s and freeing prisoners, that will get you to about 8,000 experience. Sending horses off to the Sioux will grant a chunk of XP.

With this mission you can build up a very large army and actually wipe out the enemy’s northern base… in fact you should.

After you get the trust of the Indians they will show you a secret location of Holmes… it’s in the northern base.

If you attack the northern base and destroy it, it means that finishing this mission will just be a matter of running into the cave and killing Holmes, makes it pretty easy.

Much like Act 1, Act 2’s main story line ends one mission early. The Holmes story line ends here and another random mission that has no real effect on the story begins.

The War Chiefs Act 2 Mission #7: Battle of Little Bighorn

In a final mission having almost nothing at all to do with the campaign and seemingly just stuck in here for giggles, Crazy Horse takes on Colonel Custard. It has nothing to do with the expansion other than the fact that it gives the name of the expansion.

Every enemy military building on the map will provide a small army to Colonel Custard when he arrives. None of these will be aggressive against you in the mean time and none of them will attack you.

To open Clayton Black has to rally the war chiefs to meet with Crazy Horse. Each chief will provide a type of unit and some unit producing structures.

The order of getting to the chiefs should be the north west chief first, then the one south of it, then the one far to the east. The goal is complete when all of the war chiefs are side by side.

A minor note every single time you hear a Bungle horn it means a small advance party or a “Custard charge” is headed toward your base. They are very small and easy to deal with.

Continue to play as per normal macroing up. You will not get access to many cannons in this mission so whatever shipments you can get with them will work out in your favor.

You should get as many mantlets as possible, and fill in the rest with infantry.

You should be actively moving around the map destroying unit producing structures. This will make the final battle easy. The enemy will have relatively small forces defending these places.

The thing is you have to be fast, on the move. As you produce units keybind them up and move them in to help.

Take the entire west side of the map first, this is where most buildings are. After it is clear take out the eastern side of the map.

When Colonel Custard arrives there should be no units to support him. His army will still be moderately large but you should have enough forces to deal with this. It is best to engage him before he reaches your village so that you can create another army quickly if this one won’t cut it.

The game sort of just ends on this note, the end of the story of the Black family. Sadface.

Asian Dynasties Act 1 Mission #1: The Siege of Osaka

During the time of colonization much of Asia became largely isolationist. While the Chinese across the sea had developed gun powder and saltpeter based weaponry, the Japanese maintained a culture of total isolationism favoring ‘the old ways.’

Throughout the history of Japan there was always a struggle for power. In their system of government the Emperor ruled from Kyoto under the protection of the Shogun. The Shogun would be the Prime Minister of a country if the Emperor was like a President. The Shogun ran the country.

The Shogun was selected as the most powerful general (dictator) in the country and would need the alliances of other major families in order to maintain his power. Throughout the history of Japan this splintered system of government maintained the proper checks and balances for the country.

Tokugawa from the province of Edo (now named Tokyo after him) became Shogun and his family would rule Japan for a period of 200 years until the position of Shogun was abdicated to the Emperor in 1867. This 5 mission campaign properly lays out some of the historic events leading to the rise of Tokugawa as supreme ruler of Japan.

In this first mission named “The Siege of Osaka” you are a general of Tokugawa. You are assited by a Daimyo Mototada.

Daimyo’s have the ability to create any Barracks unit on the spot. This can be advantageous when you are on the move. The Daimyo also has a very high health pool.

The other hero unit (General Kichiro) is a ranged unit who has a cooldown ability that increases his damage and a cooldown ability that will teleport him and any near units to the closest Town Hall.

I will be doing this walkthrough from the perspective of heading south. From my experience heading east is impossible on hard difficulty.

Moving on.

If you want to be able to beat this mission you will need to have fairly strong macro. For more on that watch the YouTube video.

Head South and make a castle in the village. The castle is a defensive structure that also builds weak artillery units. There is relatively no strategic benefit for building it beyond the mission’s goal.

Upon building this however you will gain access to a few towers that will kill the surrounding enemies.

Upon doing this you will unlock the ability to free the farmers from captivity. I’d hold off on this one. Make sure you have artillery and a decent army before doing this.

You will want to Age up before moving on. Aging up is done through the construction of a Wonder. Wonders add benefits or create units. Almost any of these is acceptable for this mission. I like the one that gives a short damage bonus.

The other thing you will need to build is the Foreign Embassy. The foreign embassy will give you the option to get units from abroad. Any of the options available are acceptable… however you will always want to order artillery pieces. These artillery pieces will help you greatly in pushing forward.

Once you have your artillery pieces it is time to push forward and liberate the farms. This is done by destroying two towers.

Once this is done the farmers don the wardrobes of various warriors and start pushing forward into the enemy. You need to push forward with them immediately. The goal here is to do as much damage as possible. If at this phase of the game you cannot destroy enough of the computer’s infrastructure, the computer will overwhelm you with numbers.

If you do significant damage it will be a matter of time breaking down the wall. If you do not…. you might as well just start over.

Asian Dynasties Act 1 Mission #2: Uprising!

This mission is considerably easier than the last. There are two ways to do this mission on Hard Difficulty, I will describe the easier of the two.

Upon entering you will take control of a town center and some workers. You will need to build up a large effective army to deal with the enemy.

Effective here means high amounts of musketeers, some samarai, some bow ashagurai. If you can any artillery you can get will be a great asset. By the time the army arrives you should be able to afford at least one from the Foreign Embassy.

There are three villages to the north. Each one of these will supply the enemy with troops unless stopped. You will have time to wipe out one town hall before the enemy arrives. Each one of these villages will double his army so by removing this last village you cut down his army massively.

After destroying this village you should start working on construction of castles. The more castles you can get up the better. The goal here is not to wipe out the enemy… but survive. Your castles will act as a perfect buffer between artillery… and will provide artillery.

The castle will also buy you time for making even more units as your army starts to fall apart.

If you are feeling low on units pull your villagers and add them in to buffer damage.

Good luck.

Asian Dynasties Act 1 Mission #3: Clearing the Road

In this mission the objective is to clear the road and hold it for five minutes. But in my experience doing this on hard difficulty is largely impossible. No combinations of castles, artillery and upgrades were able to actually hold against the enemy.

The goal here has to be flipped instead to…. killing everything.

The first objective is to get a floating bastion. This can be achieved by moving to the west and destroying a tower. If you move weakened units away you do not have to lose any units to this tower. In exchange you will get a very powerful ship that can wipe out a lot of the enemy’s structures.

Next up, Age up… fully. Get full upgrades. The goal here is to defend all the enemy’s pushes while getting everything you need.

Your unit makeup should be musketeers, some samurais, cavalry, and artillery.

So you will clear the road… but don’t build on both. Instead head north. There are barracks up here that you can destroy for a bonus objective. Just south of this you can liberate the workers for extra workers.

Continue south and there it is, the main base. Destroy the entire main base and you get an automatic victory.

Asian Dynasties Act 1 Mission #4: Last Stand at Fushimi

In the introduction to this campaign was the battle of Fushimi, and here it is.

This game on hard difficulty offers two main challenges, surviving and pushing.

Since defensive is required you should ignore the main directions given by Mototada…. that is to be aggressive.

Instead use all of your forces to defend the southern gates from the enemy. Do this until you have enough forces and some artillery to hold off the enemy. You will want to increase your number of harvesters so you can get a larger volume of units faster.

The main objective is to destroy a few towers to the east. Once you destroy this a new objective will activate in which you have to escort villagers east. This objective can also activate if you fail to defend the first wall of Fushimi.

To beat this objective have two parties, one closer to your base and one further from your base so that you can deal with two engagement points. If you build a Trading Post on the Zen temple you can make a bunch of monks which do not count towards your total supply count.

After you escort out 50 civilians the mission is over and you have completed it.

In this mission it is advantageous to have a lot of rifles and a few samaurai. After you have enough rifles and cannons defending your southern gate you can use rifles and heroes to escort your civilians.

Asian Dynasties Act 1 Mission #5: The Battle of Sekigahara

In this mission there are three enemy factions and a single enemy to deal with. After completing a quest regarding an enemy faction you will gain control of a strategic resource.

For destroying enemy forces to the south you gain control of the base which will give you access to a large number of farms and more importantly, a gold mine.

For destroying the area just north of this you will gain access to some unit producing facility. Most importantly you will also gain some defensive structures around the enemy’s base which will now fight on your side.

Moving north and east of this base will bring you to a circle full of enemies. By defeating the leader who is marching around you gain control of 50% of the forces in the circle.

Taking each of these secondary objectives adds about 10 minutes of play to the game.

The mission quite simply is to have enough of your army available to survive giant pushes while still having enough of an army to push the enemy. The enemy can hit you frmo two attack paths (attacking southeast or southwest) meaning that you will need somewhat of a mobile force to deal with this.

As another option you can ‘all in’ and move forward, just make sure there are tones of buildings to destroy on your other front. Once your main town hall is destroyed you lose, so this option is very risky.

There are two northern attack paths. The western path has a lot of unit producing structures meaning you will face above average number of enemies. The eastern attack path has a lot of defensive structures meaning you will have to face a lot of hard to destroy buildings.

Both attack paths are about even however the defensive structures will end up being a faster method because once they’re down they’ll never be rebuilt.

Once you destroy the enemy’s structure the enemy will spawn. This hero has about 4x the health of your heroes combined, however it does not heal. This means you can just keep making units until this guy dies…. and thus you’ll beat the Japanese campaign.

Asian Dynasties Act 2 Mission #1: To Finish a Fleet

I’ll start this guide to discuss the story of this particular Act. At first it would seem the story is a fabrication created by Big Game Studios to make for an interesting way to mix in the Aboriginal faction into the game, this is not the case. The story is actually true.

16th century China, was actually quite advanced. They had gunpowder (saltpeter) weapons long before North America. They had a printing press long before Guttenberg ever came up with one. The Chinese had vast treasure fleets that sailed across the world long before Columbus tried to find India.

The Chinese treasure fleets would sail around the local area with Chinese delicacies and trade them for spices, gold, and silver… just like the Europeans. One particular voyage went even further.

The international cartographers association came on to this when looking at a single Chinese treasure fleet voyage. They were wanting to prove that Chinese treasure fleets hit Ethiopia (an independent empire for all of time) before the Europeans did. After looking at the star charts and matching them up what they found was that the Chinese went even further… they hit America.

When the Chinese landed in America it was mostly likely in Central America where violent Mayan warriors lived. The Mayans were powerful enough to destroy five Spanish fleets with of armies… so one Treasure Fleet was nothing.

When the treasure fleet returned the Chinese were in social upheaval. The Emperor deemed that the reason for this was the influx of foreign ideas and so when a ship arrived with information about the outside world, all records were torched and the crew were all killed.

The only reason we have a surviving copy of these charts is because Christopher Columbus got his hands on them and claimed he was using these star charts to get to India… or maybe he was just reading the wrong chart.

This mission starts at the very beginning in which Captain Huang is introduced to a suspicious Admiral and a first hand.

Huang has a very powerful area of effect bomb attack that ought to be used on cooldown. His first hand has an area of effect fist attack that should also be used on cooldown.

In this introductory mission you are fighting a mirror match, Chinese.

The Chinese army forms very differently from other civilizations. Units will come clumped into groupings with definitive group roles. For this mission just make whatever units you can afford based on what resources you have available.

The opening move will be to head west and destroy a fortress. Destroying this fortress will give you access to a dock and a very powerful ship. You can also connect the trade route along this way for extra resources and extra experience.

After defeating this fortress it will be revealed that the pirates are to the east.

Send your rag tag army to the east. Here numbers are more important than unit composition. By simply having a large enough army you can right click on their main base and just win by numbers.

Asian Dynasties Act 2 Mission #2: Storming the Beaches

The Admiral has landed in India… and the Indians have taken the Admiral hostage. The Indians have their base on one island and you have your base on another.

First clear your island to the east of any Indians. After this setup your base, get max Age and max upgrades (you’ll thank me later).

Make sure to create a decent sized fleet of ships, around five is good. You will need these ships to destroy his fleet and to lay waste to his army. Fleets do very well against his army and have splash damage from their targeted ability.

When you get a maxed out army you can land them in the south to quickly take out the southern tower. This will give you a few extra ships and a new objective.

Upon approach you can split up his army by landing your military units in the south after attacking in the north with your ships. To complete this mission quickly just right click on his Town Hall. With a maxed out army you will be able to blow down his Town Hall with relative ease.

Another objective requires you to destroy his entire fleet. With the fleet reinforcements you get from destroying the southern tower this should be easy.

As another note these fleet reinforcements can use the Mortar ability to target down the Town Center without even really needing to fight. If you send your hero in and have him die near the town hall you will have vision of it for your mortar.

Asian Dynasties Act 2 Mission #3: Lost Ships

The Chinese have landed in America! And the locals have taken half of your crew captive. The treasure fleet is spread out and Captain Huang needs to unify it.

This mission is pace based. By activating a treasure fleet you activate a barracks to produce units. This means it is to your advantage to do a lot of building before you move out. Build a Town Hall and get your economy going. Build up an army and get a little head start before moving out.

After taking the first ship you should build a Castle before the ship for extra protection. If you head west there is a barracks here you can destroy to stop constant attacks on this ship.

After each ship captured the number of units attacking increases, so your unit producing abilities should increase as well. After capturing each ship build a fortress in front of it and destroy the barracks to the west.

You should be Aging up and getting higher end units. For your final battle you will want largely expensive units rather than weak bow units. It would also be wise to add in some flamethrowers to chop down the vast number of Aboriginal infantry units.

When you get the final lost ship you will be told to cut down the village. You will also get a direct path to the enemy. This should be relatively easy considering your existing army size.

Asian Dynasties Act 2 Mission #4: A Rescue in the Wilderness

In this mission you will start off with a hand full of units, Captain Huang and a sailor. It is important to time off their high damage abilities as you won’t need to use both in every encounter.

Huang will also gain an ability to destroy forest. After moving through the woods you will gain access to some settlers.

These settlers need to build a Town Center and get harvesting wood and gold fast. You are instructed to use the income from your settlers to buy units from the Zen Temple, this is a fool’s errand.

Instead build a town center and get on gold and wood. Move forward and you wil run into a few defensive structures surrounded by enemies. You will have to destroy these towers. As well to the east of this are a cage filled with more units and a cage with settlers. Liberate the units first and then the settlers.

The goal here is to erect two castles along the stretch of road to intercept the enemy’s army holding your men. The castles will tank damage for you and give you time to arouse more forces if you need them.

Make sure to use your hero abilities on cooldown and every single time they resurrect. They are very potent and will chew a large hole into the enemy’s army.

Once you defeat this giant chunk of army you can build up as many forces as you want and attack into the enemy to finish the mission.

Asian Dynasties Act 2 Mission #5: No Empire Lasts Forever

This mission starts off with an escape. This part is likely the hardest part of the mission. If you are in a cave you are hidden, if you are outside the cave you are not hidden.

The large cave you go into you will be followed by a lot of enemies. The large cave also has a lot of bears. Proper use of abilities will make this go by quickly.

When you get to your base you need to maintain the super hard irregular strategy of defending small pushes and making a giant army.

There is a bonus objective of unlocking the gold mines and unlocking a back door. The back door is mostly worthless and doesn’t really do anything. The gold mine however without the back door open is very useful. Just make sure to bring a few units to kill bears when you take the gold mines.

You should have a lot of hand mortars to destroy buildings, flamethrowers and a bulk of various infantry units.

Your goal is simply to destroy the two town centers meaning that once your army is large enough and have you devestated the bulk of his army you can right click on both of them to win.

Asian Dynasties Act 3 Mission #1: Into the Punjab

Much like the last through walkthroughs, first a little bit about the history of the Indian revolution.

After the Dutch rebelled against the Spanish their first move was to acquire territory and become a real empire, which they did. The French and British saw a need to maintain their positions in the world and so they worked to help carve up India. The giant land of India (modern day Pakistan, India, and Southern China) was a vast land ready to be conquered.

India was home to a giant expanse of mountains that cut off villages and created multiple small empires in the area, yes India was a split nation of people. The Europeans used these inter-country differences to carve out the Indian empire and use them against each other.

As British dominance grew in the seas, the Dutch Empire vanished. Various wars with the French with the help of the Germans left the French weak. This gave Britain the opportunity to take control of all of India, all of China, half of Africa, Canada, and many Middle Eastern lands.

The British were the world’s bastion of power. In order to maintain this power two company’s were created. First was the Hudson’s Bay Company which was responsible for running the country of Canada and maintaining the fur trade. The British East India Company was created to maintain the flow of spices and resources out of India. This company was the effectively government of India up until Ghandi became Prime Minister.

In between this period was the Sepoy rebellion. This was the first crack in the British Empire. It sent a message home that they were not the noble rulers they thought they had been. The Sepoy rebellion set the East India Company back quite a bit and fed into a future determination of a nation of people.

In the Ghandi peaceful rebellion most of his supporters were wealthy descendants of Sepoys. Instead of just killing off all of the Sepoys it was determined they could bribe these people with new positions of power.

On to the game. In this mission you have to destroy Saltpeter sites and recapture the main trade route on behalf of the East India Company.

To do this you will want majority Sepoys and Elephant artillery.

The goal to this mission is to make a strong economy. This will be tougher than in previous campaigns because the Indian worker costs wood instead of food. This means you will need to have a lot of wood production which means you’ll have tones of ability to make buildings but less ability to make units.

To deal with this you can take in wood shipments and have your harvesters gathering gold and food instead. With this approach you can make a lot of harvesters and grow a large army very quickly. This tactic will pay off in future missions as well.

It is a good idea to take out and capture the southern trade post (just east of your base). This will give you a tonne of resources that will pay off. If you build a Keep here it will stay protected for most of the game.

Do not go north from there. It is an ambush.

Instead head north and west of this ambush and you will be able to take out the heavily guarded middle trading post. At this point it is largely pointless to capture these. They will get destroyed very quickly unless you guard them with a lot of Keeps.

Instead just continue north to the main stronghold. Once the stronghold and his unit producing abilities is destroyed then you should build up all the trading posts. Until then he will keep sending armies at you.

Asian Dynasties Act 3 Mission #2: Fires of Calcutta

This is easily one of the hardest missions in the game, period. This is largely because you have to swap out your strategy so heavily and consistency does not pay off.

You should use you heroes to tank the damage since they have the most health. Your main hero has an ability to increase everyone’s damage temporarily. This ability will come in handy often.

To the west of where you start is one barracks, you should destroy this before heading to the base.

When defending your base you will need three control groups.

The first control group will have your hero and will be to the south.

Your second control group will be made entirely of sepoys and be stationed to the north.

Your third control group will be made of cavalry and will assist both sides. The cavalry army will also be the one attacking all of the barracks. For the locations of the barracks watch the video.

When your cavalry is large enough you will attack barracks.

There are two barracks directly north and one to the south across the river. If the enemy attacks while you are attacking you should head this very mobile force home to defend.

As well you can have the Major build Sepoys on the spot to aid in the destruction of the barracks. Once your sepoys are done here you can just add them to a control group to help defend your home.

Destroying these barracks on hard does not slow the enemy attacks. Most enemy attacks are randomly spawned at random times.

After destroying these three northern barracks there will be a ring of barracks to the south, three of which are guarded by two Keeps.

The cavalry can head directly south and take out one additional barracks before the big switch.

The big switch will be an army of Sepoys and elephant artillery. Instead the cavalry will largely defend your base from the enemy. This slow push will take out the Keeps cost effectively and slowly.

The mission ends when all barracks are destroyed.

Asian Dynasties Act 3 Mission #3: Resist!

As Nanib rebels so do so many sepoys follow him.

As far as missions go this one is relatively easy. You build a Keep and start building units. There will be small attacks from time to time, but you can deal with them all very effectively if you stay by your keep.

Building reputation building pens is smart. By doing this you will have a new set of resources without cutting into your main army supply.

I use sepoys and cavalry in this mission. The high damage and armor of cavalry make them able to stomp any units, sepoys just end up being a cheap resource dump.

Push out once you have high unit producing abilities. This means that if you lose large chunks of your army you can rebuild it very quickly. To win Right Click on the enemy’s base.

Asian Dynasties Act 3 Mission #4: Raid in Delhi

Possibly one of the easiest missions in the game you must raid Delhi, free sepoys and save the Sultan of the Mughol Empire.

The game acts as a little puzzle, avoid the enemies whereever possible, destroy explosive barrels near elephans and progress through.

The Sultan is the only one who has health that will regenerate. However the Sultan dies is an automatic loss. You need to keep enough of your units alive so that the final battle to save the Sultan will be a massive success.

As an alternative you can just move the Sultan through the enemy line as you attack in to get to the final point.

Asian Dynasties Act 3 Mission #5: Company Confrontation

The final confrontation of the Age of Empires 3 series is a sticky one.

In the first part of this mission you should build a keep and work on building up an army. In the beginning it will be a lot of sepoys and a lot of melee units. Very quickly you will need to get up elephants to defend against these pushes.

To the west of your base will be a constant attack of enemies. After every single attack from the north there will be a small attack to the west.

You will want to expand your base to the west. Use wood imports to power up your economy and have your harvesters get food and gold to afford an army.

Once you survive the waves you can plan to move on the enemy.

The enemy will have saltpeter supplies to the west. Destroying these cuts down the enemy’s ability to create their own sepoys. The enemy also has trade routes to the north which will cut off resources and cut out their ability to make units.

Once you break in (from the back) you can capture the enemy’s back two cannons. These can be used to destroy the enemy’s main base and win the game. All you have to do from here is just protect these guns while they take out the main base.