HOW TO: Age of Empires 3 The War Chiefs Hard Difficulty – 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.

HOW TO: Age of Empires 3 The War Chiefs Hard Difficulty – 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.

HOW TO: Age of Empires 3 The War Chiefs Hard Difficulty – 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.

HOW TO: Age of Empires 3 The War Chiefs Hard Difficulty – 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.

HOW TO: Age of Empires 3 The War Chiefs Hard Difficulty – 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.