HOW TO: Age of Empires 3 Hard Difficulty – 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.

HOW TO: Age of Empires 3 Hard Difficulty – 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.

HOW TO: Age of Empires 3 Hard Difficulty – 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.

HOW TO: Age of Empires 3 Hard Difficulty – 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.

HOW TO: Age of Empires 3 Hard Difficulty – 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.