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 #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.

HOW TO: Age of Empires 3 Hard Difficulty – 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.

HOW TO: Age of Empires 3 Hard Difficulty – 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.

HOW TO: Age of Empires 3 Hard Difficulty – 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.