N3O Age Of Empires and Starcraft 2 Clan

Raiding is a vital part of strategy once you reach the higher levels of AoE3. Even from PR14+ you can expect to see raiding, so I'll add a few tips here, and if you feel the need to, add your own

Food
You can often tell where enemy settlers are gathering their food from by looking at the hunts near their town. If you see dead animals there, chances are there are setters there. When you send cavalry (or any other unit) there to raid, always try to strike from the direction of their town. Your opponent will be hesitant to send his vills back to his town seeing as your units are blocking the way and creating pathing issues. You're bound to achieve more casualties this way.

Wood
You can tell a lot of the time where your opponent is gathering wood from by scouting the trees in his area. If you see falling trees, that's right - there are enemy vills gathering wood there. This is not as easy as hunt-spotting because each tree holds 300 wood and gathers slower than food so you need to observe closely.

Coin
This is, in my experience, the trickiest resource to catch your opponent out at. During early to mid-game, if you click on one of your vills and hover the mouse over a mine, you can see whether it is depleted or not. If a little pickaxe icon appears, that means the mine still has coin left in it, if there is no pickaxe icon there, that means one of two things.
1. He has found another mine and is currently gathering from that one.
OR
2. He has built plantations

General Tips
When you raid, something subconscious will happen - your opponent will "fear the fog". When you raid a lot, he will expect attacks left right and centre. This can even mean he results to building plantations and mills to sustain his economy, granting you access to the most valuable resource, and I don't just mean hunts and mines. The most valuable resource you will gain access to is Map Control. If you deny them food, you deny them the game.

well said

all I can add is:

use the attack move and enjoy the butcher party

Trying to get the cav between the vills and the tc/outpost is important too

Yup, always get your cav between the vills and TC/outpost to slow them down giving you more time to "slice an' dice" and type some Taunt 21's........

[quote=""StrokeyBlofeld""]and type some Taunt 21's........ [/quote]

Lmao! Good one Jim.

As for the gold mine info -- I did not know that.

I know for team games that your raiding force can grow quite strong so when you have 20+ hussars don't be afraid to turn your raiding into a siege force! Start raiding when he runs all his vils to the TC, burn it down and hes screwed. Even if you don't get the TC down at the very least you'll make your opponent do a 180 with his troops on the front line and give your allies an advantage there.

That said unless your planning on sieging a bit your don't want to be raiding with to many hussars. Instead of lumping 20 into one group split them into two groups of 10. Attack with one group wait until his anti cav chases you away and then attack from the other side with the second group. You can use the same tactic to lure anti cav units from the main army leaving it open to the attack.

Also, I'd suggest against raiding a lot once the opponent gets to age 3 and is a civ that has goons (cavalry archers aren't that deadly), because goons are faster than and completely destroy hand cavalry. If you see a stable I'd HIGHLY suggest ceasing your raiding.

The times I've played Russians, there's been nothing better than finding 30 lonely vills and using the attack move with a few oprichniks. Flee, as soon as you see cav though.

Also another thing, when taking down buildings with infantry or cav, don't just rightclick on the building. Move the group up close to the building and then rightclick. This way, every troop gets to throw their torch at it. If one just rightclicks on it, the troops in the back will have to walk around those who are already throwing. But I think everyone pretty much does this already.

Personally sometimes I throw some cav away in order to get more settlers, but I think that's just my playing style: amazing eco and good unit choice, really bad micro

lordandcount

Personally sometimes I throw some cav away...

?

lordandcount

my playing style: amazing eco and good unit choice

?

lordandcount

...really bad micro

this makes sense and is true

Out

^LOL. You have to think that if you loose 3 hussars 600 res, to get 3 villagers which cost 300 res + all the resource they gather, that it's pretty cost effective. If your 10 hussars are getting only 3 villagers... maybe not so effective.

[quote=""LaZy""]lordandcount

Personally sometimes I throw some cav away...

?

lordandcount

my playing style: amazing eco and good unit choice

?

lordandcount

...really bad micro

this makes sense and is true

Out[/quote]

You know they way you two talk trash to each other, I'd think you two were brothers...

About cav trowing away, an example of that is getting in a base with 49 axe rider+ warchief, do fire dance on the towncenter, when you have it down the anti cav arrived and then I do war dance and destroy an army and settlers, but lost most if not all cav.
With french I like to do same, I take a risk by seiging buildings in order to get settlers, most times it works, sometimes it don't.

And Soccer, I don't like to thrash talk to lazy, just can't stand portugese, lazy people, people who are saying things that aren't true (like I am NOT raiding you), and have a dentist fobia or something like that




ps: lazy knows I'm joking, just saying so evrybody knows too