Spanish:
Pros: Very strong rush, strongest FF in the game, overpowered maybe, Lancers and rodeleros.
Cons: only 1 factory, weak boom.
Difficulty: Mediocre
Best strategy: ATP FF.
as posted on agecomm by GoodSpeed
Spanish counters:
Vs Portuguese: ATP or naked FF lancer spam
Vs Spanish: Musk rush or naked FF
Vs French: Xbow/pike rush or naked FF
Vs Ottomans: Xbow/pike rush or hardcore Turtle FF
Vs Russians: naked FF
Vs Dutch: naked FF or ATP FF
Vs British: Musk rush or naked FF à cannon spam.
Vs Germans: ATP FF
Civs that Spain are best against: Russians, Germans, and Portuguese.
Notes:
- Mind the wardogs being recruited for 75 food by your explorer, they can power up your rush and are a very strong defence against a rush if you FF.
- If you FF, villager allocation is different for every civ. Against ports and british go for more gold (mercs, lancers and cannons) than usual. Regular allocation should look like this: 7 food 4 wood rest gold
- If you naked FF, instead of 700 wood you can also go for 5 villagers and chop all the wood. You won’t have your TP but you will have a somewhat stronger economy. Consider doing this if you collect more than say 150 wood from treasures.
- If you naked FF on great plains, look for the sunflowers!! Can speed you up 20 seconds with a 15 vill age-up. You can age to fortress at 5.20.
BO’s:
Musk rush:
Age1: 16 villager age-up with 1 tower and 200 coin politician. While aging, allocation 3 gold 7 food 6 wood.
Age2 (+-4.40): Build barracks as close to enemy base as possible as soon as you’ve aged and send 7 rodeleros. Build your tower next to the barracks. As soon as the barracks is up, start spamming musks. Leave 4 vils on gold 4 on wood and rest on food. Waypoint on food.
Spam musks, send 8 pikes and 6 rods, then 5 vils, 4 vils, 700 gold, age, own….
Xbow/pike rush:
Same as the musk rush, only mind your villager allocation (when aging to colonial 5 food 11 wood none gold) and instead of spamming musks, you spam xbows, pikes if you need siege or if you are up against an unexpected FF (against an expected FF you go musk rush)
ATP FF: (on maps with 3 or more TP's. think again before performing this strat when playing strong rushing civs):
Age1: 16 vil age up 1 tower 200 coin, allocation should look like this: 9 food 5 wood 2 gold.
Mine gold until you have 100 then put gold vils on food. Waypoint on food. 2nd card is ATP, still in age1. then build as many TP’s as possible with your explorer for 150 wood a piece.
Age2: while building TP’s, send 700 gold and age to fortress at something like 7.00 with the 8 pikes, or, if rushed, 4 pikes 4 xbows. Send 700 wood and build rax and stable, send 5 vils. allocation something like 9 food 10/12 gold rest wood.
Age3 (+-8.30): your economy is strong (25/26 vils) and you have a lot of TP’s (3 or more). your OP shipment spam can begin. Spam either lancers or skirms or both and make sure there’s pop room for rod, pike, lancer, and cannon shipments.
^ this strategy is the strongest known in Age of Empires 3.
Naked FF:
If you plan a quick all out assault in age3, you can have 20 rods 8 pikes 5 lancers and 5 skirmishers at 8 minutes with 1 TP. Works very well against enemy FF’s (or against mediocre rushes), especially against Dutch, Russians, and Portuguese.
Age1: 16 vil age-up 1 tower 200 coin. Allocation 3 gold 13 food. if you have 100 gold (250 vs rushes (for minutemen)) all on food.
Age2: send 700 gold right away, after that 700 wood. Age at 5.30 to 6.00. of the 700 wood build either barracks or stable (stable vs Ports and barracks vs anything else), 2 houses, and 1 TP. If you go for barracks, start making rods until you’ve reached age3. if you go for a quick one send 7 rods while still in age2 and rush their arses off in age3 by sending 5 lancers and making 5 skirms in rax (allocation 6 food 6 wood rest gold).
Age3: Spam Lancers vs Ports (vs ports send swiss pikes as soon as possible) and skirms vs the rest. Spam shipments with that and go for the win. If you reach out of military shipments and have hardly damaged the enemy economy, you’re dead. mind ur micro!!, ur armies are very diverse and can be used quite effectively if your micro is good, on the other hand when ur micro's bad, your armies will die quicker and you'll reach out of shipments which means death. this strat really relies on good micro to be effective.
