Age of Empires III Definitive Edition Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - How to Obtain All Gold Medals (The Art of War Missions)

All Gold Medals Guide

First Of All

The Art of War is a serie of 10 missions helping you discover the game in depth.

It is quite simple but to get the golds medals, you have to make sure there is no idle villagers/military units (in a battle) and if possible, always have your town center making villagers.

#1 Early Economy

Objectives:

Train 12 villagers.
Gather 800 foods.
In 3 minutes and 40 seconds.

How to get the gold medal:

Make sure your town center is always making villagers until you reach the number of 12.
With your explorer, check the right side of the map to find the others hunts.
Dispatch the first 6 villagers to the hunt on the north and use the 6 upcoming villagers in one of the right hunt you just found out.

Making damage to an animal make it runs further, so shoot it to make it run further of the enemy outpost.

#2 Treasures

Objectives:

Gather 1000 foods.
In 3 minutes and 15 seconds.

How to get the gold medal:

Put all the villagers to the nearby hunt after they finished gathering the food crate (you don't need to gather the wood).
With your explorer, it is important to optimize the cooldown of your ablity, so first of all : rush to the north position to take down the Outlaw Blowgunner with your ability and take the 45 food treasure.
Next, go to the left and take the treasure that gives 2 lamas. You can kite the wolves by moving backward when they attack you (your ranged attack deals more than your melee attack).
Finally, you can take down the last treasure next to your town center.

Lamas fattens over time, so wait until they reach ~80/90 foods and press "del" to delete the units, in front of your villagers. Gathering food with lamas is a lot faster than hunt.

#3 Home City Shipments

Objectives:

Earn 5 shipments.
In 6 minutes.

How to get the gold medal:

Always make villagers with your town center.
After gathering the chests of coin, put all your villagers to wood until you reach 200 woods.
With your envoy, scout the right side of the map, and leave the left side to your explorer.
With your explorer, go to the left side and check out the treasure with the 4 delinquent Thuggee. Kill one of the delinquent using your ability (and only one) and while it is in cooldown, go north and build a trading post once your reach 200 woods.
Once the trading post is built, your explorer needs to finish off the treasure you started by using your ability each time you have it, and running away immediately after a kill so you don't take extra damage from the delinquents. This treasure will help you get a shipment.
You can win time by taking all the nearby water buffalos to your town center while your ability is in cooldown. Speaking of water buffalos, makes sure to use them efficiently. Like lamas, you can gather food faster than basic hunts.

At the same time, you need 3 of your villagers to mine some coins so you can always produce villagers at the town center.

The rest goes to the food and wood, your objective is to build a bank. Gathering wood is slower then gathering food so you will have to put more villagers on wood (70% on wood, 30% food).

Making a bank will give you a lot of exp and coins over time, which help you make villagers that cost 100 golds with the Dutch.

You Can Take

Take these shipements in order:

4 villagers.
3 villagers.
3 hussars.
1 bank wagon (you don't really need this one to be honest).

Use the 3 hussars to take down the the enemy gurkhas on the bottom of the map.

#4 Booming

Objectives:

Train 60 settlers.
Advance to the industrial age.
In 7 minutes.

How to get the gold medal:

When the game start, put all your settlers to the nearby trees except for the 5 settlers hunting bisons. You will need to gather 725 woods for a new town center, the market upgrade "steel traps" and a house.
Take your dog to scout the right side and your explorer to scout the left side. Once you have 500 woods, build your town center close to the hunt you will find on the south.
With the first shipment available, take the covered wagon and build a town center to the hunt you will find on the right side of the map scouted by your dog. It is important to have theses town centers built as fast as possible so you can really start booming. Furthermore, you will be able to exploit all the bisons with not much travel time for your settlers.
After the wood gathered, put all your villagers to hunts (and not berry bushs, you gather slower than on hunts). Do not forget the pronghorns next to your first town center. Leave 6 settlers to the mine until you reach ~700/800 coins, then also put them to the hunts. With the market, sell 100 foods for coins until you reach 1200 coins (enought for the age up). It is important to advance to the industrial age before having 60 settlers. Don't forget to attract the bisons to your town centers with the trick learnt during the first mission.
After the covered wagon, bring the 5 settlers then the 4 settlers from your home city.

#6 Early Defense

Objectives:

Advance to the fortress age.
In 3 minutes.

How to get the gold medal:

When the game start, train settlers while sending 8 crossbowmen from the home city. When you have enough wood to take "steel traps" in the market, take all the settlers to the hunt. The second shipment will be the 700 coins, you will then only need to focus on 1200 food (and 25 golds) to age up as soon as possible.
Your town center has a lot of hp so you can allow yourself to tank the damages for a while. It is important to not attract the ennemies to your settlers so with the crossbowmen, try to micro on the left side of your town center.
You might loose some settlers in this challenge (depending on the quality of your micro) but it should be doable easily by focusing on these steps.

#7 Early Offense

Objectives:

Kill 8 enemy villagers.
In 4 minutes.

How to get the gold medal:

Make 2x5 crossbowmen, send the first 5 on the left side of the enemy town center and the rest on the right side. Five crossbowmen will need to attack twice to kill 1 villager. Take your time to scout every ressource spots while killing the villagers, you can achieve the challenge easily by ignoring the enemy military units.

#8 Land Battle

Objectives:

Defend your camp against the enemy attacks.
Less than 3 units lost.

How to get the gold medal:

The key of this mission is to kite and send back your low hp units from the battlefield.

Wave 1 - the hussars: send the pikemen.
Wave 2 - the Pikemen: send the crossbowmen.
Wave 3 - the crossbowmen: send the hussars.
Wave 4 - the hussars, crossbowmen and pikemen: send the musketeers.
Wave 5 - the halleberdiers and musketeers: send the skirmishers.
Wave 6 - the skirmishers: send the hussars.
Wave 7 - the veteran hussars: send the dragoons.
Wave 8 - the dragoons: send the halleberdiers.
Wave 9 - the veteran cuirassiers: send the dragoons.

#9 Naval Battle

Objectives:

Reach the target area with your fleet.
Don't lose any of your ships.

How to get the gold medal:

The key is to take less dammage on your fleet as possible. Use your frigate as the main damage dealer and the caravel as baits. Send back the low hp ships, and never get in range of the outposts, fort, fire ship and falconets. Use the broadside attack of the frigate to take down the falconets.
As shipments, take improved warships than european cannons.

#10 Artillery

Objectives:

Defend your camp against the enemy attacks.
Less than 3 units lost.

How to get the gold medal:

Save your low hp units as much as possible and deploy your artillery in bombard mode before the battle.
Use your falconets against the infantry, your culverins against the falconets and the mortars against the building.
Be patient with the mortars and wait for the enemy to come at you.

W.I.P.

Source: https://gameplay.tips/guides/8685-age-of-empires-iii-definitive-edition.html

Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition - How to Obtain All Gold Medals (The Art of War Missions)

First Of All

#1 Early Economy

#2 Treasures

#3 Home City Shipments

#4 Booming

#6 Early Defense

#7 Early Offense

#8 Land Battle

#9 Naval Battle

#10 Artillery

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