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Portuguese Tower of Power- Sourced from HG- No Patches

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Portuguese Tower of Power- Sourced from HG- No Patches Empty Portuguese Tower of Power- Sourced from HG- No Patches

Post  ~Admin~Kestrel~ Thu Jul 31, 2008 4:51 am

The Portuguese 'Tower of Power'
By Echoic
[JPEG, (196.93 KB)]

Goal:
The 'Tower of Power' is a Portuguese strategy designed to repel attacks while booming interrupted out of two TCs at home and advancing to age III. It is a turtle and a boom combined. Age II consists of turtling to age III with defense from minutemen and TC fire. Age III consists of finishing the tower (TC-TC-Fort) and creating military units and sending military shipments to counter with superior units and a superior economy. Writing a guide for a turtling strategy is difficult, so bear with me This strategy is a guideline, but as turtling is you will need to adapt.

Who this strategy works against:
Rushers, including native rushers, ottoman rushers, and ulhan raiders. Ottoman, Germans, and Spanish can all be easily out boomed in safety. Russian rushers are easily taken care of as well. This strategy will crush most rushes.

Who this strategy is not optimal against:
Dutch, britboomers and Russian boomers/map control spammers, along with France non-rushers. Portugal is not good at fighting France in general, mostly because of their dependence on range (CdBs don't die to ranged military. Ever.) and paper-thin units that CdBs tear apart. France can also boom up with Portugal. This strategy will work against boomer civs but a more 'open' boom might work better. Fast fortresses with mercs can be difficult, not because they destroy your town but because they're ridiculously difficult to kill, especially without falconets.

Required cards:
Colonial Militia (+50% TC attack, minutemen army 400f 400g enabled)
Fort
700 food
700 gold
700 wood
600 food
600 gold

Recommended cards:
Advanced Trading Post (Stronger, cheaper and have an attack)
6 Dragoons, age III
4 Dragoons, age III
9 Cassadores, age III
3 Organ Guns, age III

Shipment order, first 5 minutes:
1) Advanced Trading Post OR save (see "concerning first shipment")
2) Colonial Militia

Build order:
Discovery:
Although this strategy is largely situational, and turtling can never follow a strict build order for very long, the first 5-6 minutes and villager allotment can be outlined:

- Gather crates while shooting hunt animals near the TC. Shooting animals near the TC is VERY important to this strategy, because if you go out of range then the tower of power will not protect you. After gathering crates, set all villagers on food.
- Que up villagers at the TC, build a house and a market if the resources are available, explore, get treasures, the usual. Be sure to place houses and the market (and all subsequent buildings) within your TC range of fire.
- Send ATP when your shipment arrives. (if you do not have this card, you can substitute it or save it for age II resources. This strategy will however follow a build order presuming you have it.)
- All villagers hunt until you have 11 villagers, and save resources to age up. Yes, this leaves idle time but it is the latest you can safely advance and get your TC up in time for a rush. Age up with the 500 food politician and send Colonial Militia when your second shipment arrives.

When age up button is pressed:
- Move all villagers but one, who stays on food, (one villager will collect you 100 food by the end of aging up) to wood. Collect 125 wood and place a trade post. Trade routes in your base that would be safe from the tower of power fire are always good bets.
- Once the 125 wood is collected, move the 10 chopping villagers to gold and collect 300 (two calls of minutemen in the case of a rush, or a gold shipment more to age up if rush is not overwhelming)
- Once 300 gold is collected, distribute the 11 villagers as following: 7 on food, 2 on wood, 1 on gold.

Colonial age:

Shipments:
3/4) 700 food or gold
3/4) 700 food or gold
(if needed):
5/6) 600 food or gold
5/6) 600 food or gold
(See 'concerning age II shipments' for more info)

- Send a couple hunters to gather the 500 food crates and que villagers. Created villagers should be placed on food. Do not stop creating villagers unless aging.
- Place your second TC. Here is a good example of good TC placement:

[JPEG, (195.97 KB)]

Notice that both TCs can fire if any building is attacked, most importantly the two TCs. See "concerning proper placement" below for more info on placing your TCs and forts.

- Once your second TC is up, queue villagers for food out of it along with your main TC. Do not stop putting villagers on food until you have 13 villagers on food. See "Concerning villager allotment" below for more villager placement info. Once you have 13 villagers on food, set a TC to nearby wood and another TC to nearby gold and continue to pump villagers out.

Fortress age:

Shipments (recommended):
1) Fort (military production and the completion of the tower of power)
2+) improvise (counters!)

- Stream villagers from both TCs and the third when it is up to food (you might need a mill) until you have 20-25 villagers (see 'Concerning villager allotment')
- These villagers on food will allow you to constantly stream villagers from all 3 tcs. Do it at all times!

More info:
Concerning age II shipments:
Resource shipments are age up or defense resources (in addition to the extra gold/food you're gathering). The 13 villagers on food will allow you constant villager production from both TCs. In the case of raiding or a rush that isn't capable of dropping a TC, the 700 food will give you enough food (with the 500 from aging up) to age up, assuming you have 13 villagers on food to ensure that villager production isn't lowering your food supply. The 700 gold will also give you the gold required to age up. I suggest sending age II resource shipments nonstop until aging up. Military shipments are unneeded because with two TCs oneshotting most units and minutemen, you should be able to hold off any colonial force. Shipments of resources are the icing that will age you up or give you minutemen while your villagers are sustaining constant villager production. Keep them coming.

Concerning calling minutemen:
Do not call minutemen unless a TC is in danger of dropping, which requires quite a large force if your villagers are garrisoned. 10 villagers in a TC with colonial militia will one-shot most units that have a siege attack greater than a musketeer, so dropping these TCs is very difficult. Every time you call minutemen, make sure they're justified in saving a TC, because each call sets back your fortress time. Also, since minutemen HP decay, if you must call them, call the appropriate size of minutemen for the job. If you have 4 landskenchthecht mercs and 10 pikemen beating on a TC, don't call the 400f 400g minutemen, call the 150f 150g minutemen. Minutemen are strong! If you need to call the 400f/400g army, you can certainly raid with it and fight off reasonably sized raiding parties. This army will one shot-volley just about any unit, use them as hit and runners like you would skirmishers. While you're not going to kill anything without losses, you can definitely take down a moderate sized raiding force.

Concerning garrisoning villagers:
Garrisoning villagers stops them from gathering resources, but the rate at which his units drop from colonial militia TC fire (his resources lost) is far greater than the resources you'd have gained. TCs with 10 villagers garrisoned and this card are absolute killing machines. As ulhans or native horses run by trying to find villagers to pick off, I like taking 10 miners/cutters and garrisoning them. Bang, a horse down, and ungarrison.

Concerning villager allotment:
The whole premise of this strategy is to continue uninterrupted villager production as in a normal boom while under protection. For this to happen, you need the following at all times:

Food
Amt of TCs x 6 + amt of TCs - 1
Example:
Age II -
Two TCs x 6 = 12 + 2 - 1
13 villagers in age II (as you see above)

If you had 3 TCs (age III) you would need 3 x 6 = 18 + 3 - 1 = 20 villagers.

Wood
1 villager on wood for each TC will produce enough houses for constant production. Obviously you will want more than this for trading posts, market improvements, mills etc.

(Thank you, cAlcA3)

Concerning placement of forts and TCs:
As shown in the second picture, your forts and TCs should NEVER be farther away than indicated in that picture. Imagine one TC being a nail stuck in a popsicle stick that's nailed to a table and the second TC has to be placed somewhere along the stick as you spin the stick around the nail. The popsicle stick is as long as the TC distance apart in the second picture. The fort must be placed in a spot that both TCs can fire upon if being attacked.

The best placement for these buildings is next to gold mines for instant garrisoning (popping running by horses), near a forest for the same effect, or in the direction of your next food source so that you can shoot them back to the TC safer.

Concerning first shipment: (new)
The first shipment does not have to be ATP. Due to some issues arising with food being too far from the TC to reliably round up (sonora comes to mind) you may need to put up mills. Don't let this be a crutch though, animals can be herded pretty far with a little micro.

Once you scout the area, if there are plenty of nearby animals to place a TC next to or herd near one of your TCs, your first shipment should be ATP or something else (I'm testing saving this shipment to send 700 food/gold alongside eachother instead of waiting for another shipment). If your food is scarce, get colonial militia as your first card, save the second shipment and send 700 wood in colonial age.

The reason I choose 700 wood over advanced mill is because 1) you don't need to have any wood gathered to build a mill, only the shipment, 2) you get XP for building the 400w mill 3) you only need to gather 100 wood for two mills as opposed to 400 with advanced mill. Two mills is all you're likely to use in colonial.

Closing:
This is a basic guideline, not an instruction book. There are certain guidelines to follow, but once you get to Age III you have to have the ability to fight back. This is designed as a way to counter the rush without a large hit to your economy. I typed this all up in a couple of hours, so if you have any suggestions or formatting ideas let me know . This has been successful the last week or so I've been pounding away at it, and I have yet to get crushed by a rush. As in any turtling strategy (or booming one, as this is mostly a mix), you have to adapt. Thanks to cAlcA3 for the number crunching help. I’ll take another look over this after I take a breather and fix some formatting issues.
~Admin~Kestrel~
~Admin~Kestrel~
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