Beginners Guide for Multiplayer (Supremacy Mode)!

This Guide will help you win your first few games in Multiplayer. It discusses common starter build orders, unit compositions, scouting and good Cards.

General Tips

Things you always want to do:

• Allways Produce vills
  
• Keep your villagers Working
  
• keep ressources low by Spending your ressources as soon as you can and get army or economy
  
• be active on map
  
• Get Used to hotkeys early!

Age 1

• Send your Vills to collect seperate crates (food first, then wood)
  
• only collect as much as you need (all food, 100 wood) then build house
  
• Start hunting with your vills (Berries are slower than hunts)
  
• Scout with your explorer and get treasures (see Chapter Scouting)
  
• Start Herding hunts to your tc (you want 2 extra batches of them)
  
• if you found wood: Build market (and get food upgrade) or TP
  
• Age 1 card: usually 3 vills
  
• Age up politician: Quartermaster (400w) or 200 gold outpost
  
• while Ageing up scout your opponent (see chapter Scouting)
  
• During Age up split your vills accordingly (for hussars send 4-5 from food to gold)
  
• During Age UP get Market upgrades (food and gold) or trade post on the trade route (to get shipments faster)

Age 2

• Immediately after ageup: send first card (if rushed, then units) if not 700 wood (wood is gathered the slowest. Food (from hunts) the fastest. Gold gather rate is between wood and food)
  
• gather the ress and build barracks/houses and get units out
  
• Try to always have a unit in Queue, so you can always get batches out (if you need them)
  
• with 700 wood you can get market upgrades (both food upgrades/first gold) a stable, houses and maybe a tp
  
• good cards to follow up (depending on situation and what you want to do), Villagers, crates, units
  
• Transition to age 3 with 700 gold

Scouting

Basic Tips

• Use shift click for scouting
  
• Scout for treasures and sheeps (if the map has any)

Treasures:
3 types of treasures
Easy: 0 - 2 (weak) guardians (monkeys)
medium 2-3 guardians
hard: 3 or more guardians (good guardians)

Get all easy treasures
get good medium treasures (scout, food and wood maybe xp and gold)
still: dont be too picky, get as many treasures as possible.
Treasures usually not worth getting in age 1: (non scout) units, pets, sheeps

how to get treasures with minimal dmg:

• go in melee against bandit riflemen, pistoleros and caribeans
  
• Use this Tricks to take minimal dmg
  
  1. shoot guardian
     
  2. move out of treasure "circle"
     
  3. when guardians turn around shoot them
     
  4. go back into "treasure circle" and kill guardian
     
  5. rinse and repeat.
  BE CAREFUL! only do this if you know where the enemy explorer is or on locations which are unlikely enemy explorers will come (edge of the map). You can do this somewhat safely against civs which go for tradeposts.

Scouting what the Enemy is doing:
at 3:30-4:00 send your scout to enemy base and look out for:

• Forward vills who maybe want to build a front base
  
• What ressources he s gathering: food + wood = crossbow pike, many vills on gold = Abus or uhlans, much wood = fishboom? Manor boom?
  
• if and what military building he is getting (stable, barracks, foundry?). If he s getting none, he probably goes ff (or you didnt scout the fb)
  
• if you can spot the first shipment it s also good to anticipate what he s doing (aggressive, ff or boom). Avoid loosing your explorer in the process of scouting

After you scouted:
get back and get medium treasures.

About scouting in midgame:
you can do this with explorer OR by raiding/ attacking the enemy
you want to look out for: Unit composition, unprotected vills,docks, and military buildings

Video showcasing scouting
https://youtu.be/czHwrsVFBQA

Unit Composition

Age 2:

• Musk/melee cav,
  
• Musk/light infantry(archer,crossbow,strelets) ,
  
• xbow pike,
  
• MAYBE: melee infantry/melee cav (hard to pull off)

Age 3:

• Musk + melee cav (hussar) + canon (falc)
  
• dragoons/skirmisher

Decks

Detailed Deck Guide:
For Water and Teamgame see the complete Guide!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2319936517
Corresponding Video for all Decks: https://youtu.be/VV9t3sML1Hg
Generally:

• Usually you only send one card in age one and you safe your next shipment for age 2 and send the age 2 power cards.
  
• Most games get decided in fortress and comerce age. That means you want to have cards for every situation in those Ages.
  
• Most supremacy Games wont reach industrial and if they do, you usually want your factories as fast as possible.

Adjust your deck to the strategy you are doing:
If you are going ff, you wont need as many age 2 cards and can put in more age 4 cards.
But also, your deck shouldnt be to one dimensional because:
- you are not flexible and cant react to the things the enemy is doing
- the enemy might know your complete gameplan just by looking at your deck

Diaruga pro tip: Only have 2 decks for 1v1 land and 1v1 water each. So you wont be predictable.

Land

Age 1 Cards:
Age 1 you allmost allways send vills. If your civ doesnt have vills, you send your wood trickle or some other economy card. Sometimes you can also justify 300w.
If you want to tp boom or fishboom your second card is advanced tp or schooners. Usually you have 1 to 4 age 1 cards (vills, economic theory +...)

Age 2 Cards:
Good cards to start age 2 are usually vills, 700w or if you want to be aggressive units.
For cards:
you want to have Crates (allways wood and gold), units, and vills/banks. You allways want to get a boost to your tempo or have choices to react to the enemy.
Getting rushed early? you want to be able to send 8 crossbow. Enemy overcommiting on light infantry? 3 huss. Enemy is going for a ff? Send 700 g and advance too.
rule of the thumb is you want 7 "immediate" cards (crates, units, vills) and 3 can be upgrades of your choice (cav HP, musk HP, advanced arsenal)

Age 3 Cards:
Good cards to send when you just reached age 3: 2 falcs, other units
The rest of the Age 3 Cards look like this:
7 Immediate Cards: crates (1000 wood for buildings/tcs, 1000 gold), + units. Best unit cards are: 2 falcs, 8 skirm, 5 huss/3 cuirass, 5 goons, maybe some mercenaries
3 economic cards/ unit upgrades (usually 3): Refridgeration, royal Mint and a strong unit upgrade (as french: Cav upgrade)

Diaruga pro tip: Dont use royal mint or refridgeration, they take too long to pay off. He uses more unit upgrades and up to 8 unit/crates cards

Age 4 Cards
Factories, 2 heavy canons, 10 vills, Strong unit upgrades (usually you have 2-5 age 4 cards)

Summary:
few age 1 cards (vills + advanced tp/shooners)
All Age 2 cards (7 crates/units/eco, 3 long term Economic / Unit upgrades)
All Age 3 cards (7 units/crates/eco, 3 long term Economic / Unit upgrades)
Age 4 cards: Factories, 2 heavy canons (or other unit shipment)/ Power unit upgrades maybe: 10 vills

Card progression and closing thoughts

Good Cards:
Age 1:3 vills (allways a good first card for Supremacy),
advanced tradepost (if you go for Trade route), schooner (if you go for water).
With civilisations which dont have 3 settler, first card can be wood trickle (distributism for india and russians) or crates.
Age 2: 700w, 700g, Units, Villagers
Good age 3 cards: 2 falcs, 1000 wood, units


Thoughts for TG:
you usually stay with one unit type at the start (Melee cav, light infantry, heavy infantry) and you can go for more eco in Fortress age


Here is a Video Guide for those interested (I redid it, because i wasnt satisfied with the original):
https://youtu.be/D3tWKimT7YE


If you have questions, just ask them.
GL & HF!


Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition© Microsoft Corporation. This Video/Guide was created under Microsoft's "Game Content Usage Rules" ( https://www.xbox.com/en-US/developers/rules ) using assets from Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition, and it is not endorsed by or affiliated with Microsoft.

[Andi]

Nice to hear :). I prepared a in my opinion better youtube video, i will upload it in a few days. It s a bit shorter and i think better understandable :)

[Raven]

Great guide, getting used to it