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

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

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

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

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