The USA can pair two things at once : a fast Fortress Age, taking only 70 seconds, and a Fortress Age that provides units, in most cases 5 Regulars! Pair that win the levy mechanic we saw above and the extremely strong unit shipments in early Fortress Age, and you got one of if not the safest Fortress Age transition.Ībuse this to take a technological lead on your opponent without sacrificing much tempo. This play pattern allow us to defend the map control we took more cost effectively, once again patching our weaker economy. On top of that, most USA units have a longer range, making them extremely good at taking poke shots at the besiegers.
Not only Outposts are more accessible to the USA and less taxing on their economy, they are also more powerful than with any other faction thanks to the points mentionned above. From there, we want to switch into a contain strategy, using Outposts! Indeed, they are going to provide us with extremely good vision, a building to play around when our opponent tries to contest map control, and a point to call our levies from or receive our powerful shipments to swing a battle. This allows us to push back our opponent into his own base and take map control. You should be able to win almost any forward base battle. Paired with an early Outpost given by the Spanish Immigrants and the flag ability that boost all units attack by 10%, this makes the USA one of the strongest faction at contesting map control in the very early game. That’s a lot of units, and they are good quality units!Īs we saw previously, the USA are able to overwhelm their opponent with a lot of units very early on, despite their bad economy. If you use everything at once early in the game, you can mass up to 20 military units before 5:30. 54th Regiment of Massachusetts ? 890 resources worth of units while getting your veterancy upgrades with food!Ĭombined with the levy mechanic, those extremely strong shipments allow you to compete on the military side, despite your economy being far behind. Meanwhile, USA with 8 State Militia, ships 680 resources worth of units, that scale well into the game! 3 Gatling Guns? 1050 resources. Worth nothing that Crossbowmen do not scale well into later stages of the game. If we take for reference 8 Crossbowmen or 3 Hussars (available to most European civilisations), they are worth 640 and 600 resources each. On top of that, the USA have a few but extremely powerful unit shipments. They should be your primary option, while you keep the Minutemen for desperate defenses (against infantry) or deadly Marines push.
The pikes patch two of USA issues : siege damage and anti-cavalry. In both case, you pay 300 resources for either 600+ or 480+ resources.Īs a result, you should use it as often as possible! This will allow you to mass more with less resources. Each Pikeman is sligthly stronger (10%) than a regular Pikeman, so > 80 resources. Each Minuteman is as strong as a veteran Musketeer, so > 100 resources (careful the health decay over time). The levy mechanic and powerful unit shipmentsįirst of all, the levy mechanic allow the USA to call 6 Minutemen (or 6 Pikemen with Spanish Immigrants) every 160 seconds for 150 food and 150 coin. However USA were given a lot of tools to balance out their extremely slow setup. If you try to play USA like any other civ, you will find yourself so far behind you will have to win 1 unit versus 2 or even 3, which is of course not possible.
How to abuse USA strengths to patch their weaknesses I will for sure improve it in the following days! Until then, have a nice read!
I’m quickly putting it together for various reasons, while i got my first hangover after months of COVID isolation. I’m sorry if the current presentation of this guide is not up to my standarts.
I can’t stress how important it is to abuse those mechanics to their full potential if you want to have any chance to perform with the USA! Without those, the USA is a very weak civilisation… The USA have a few pillars : their buildings assert map control their few but powerful units defend said buildings their homecity shipments aim to produce long term value their levy mechanic allow them to keep up tempo wise, or even surpass their opponent!
With those sharp build orders in our hand, USA can now compete with over civilisations, and turns out to be a rather versatile civilisation. The problem is : USA suffers from many weaknesses, that you need to compensate for with extremely sharp build orders. It took weeks if not months to finally figure out truly potent build orders. The USA, one of the most interesting and complex civilisation we have ever seen.