Standard & Aggressive Play

House of Trading Post Community

Starting Macro

• Your Exploration Age macro is based on whether you have a coin treasure under your town center or not. 
• If you do, then you go for market + house, and research hunting dogs (mine the remaining coin). If you don't have a nearby coin treasure, simply go for 2 houses.
• Exploration Age macro is simply 3 settlers on food crates when the game starts and the rest on wood crates. After you collect 100 food, shift all settlers to wood crates, and build 2 houses (or market + house), as fast as possible. 
• Generally, you want to age with 16 villagers with market start, or 17 villagers with 2 houses start. If you find more than a 50 wood treasure, it's also worth going for 3 houses in Exploration Age, but it's not always an option.

Transition to Commerce Age

• While transitioning (aging up) into the Commerce Age, research the gangsaw (wood) upgrade in your market. It's very important for Brits to have that tech since you have many settlers and the upgrade pays off quickly. 
• If you don't have a market, the first thing you are going to do is build one and research gangsaw. 
• In the scenario where you already started with a market, simply over gather 100 food after age up and directly switch to wood with the rest of your settlers (this applies to both scenarios). 
• Generally, you want to be at 40-50 population (based on manors built) depending on how the game/match-up goes and have 325 wood stacked up: 125 wood for steel traps and 200 wood for barracks or a stable. 
• Against civs like Russians or other hard rush civs, steel traps start is not ideal;  it is more important to produce military units instead. I will talk about it in detail later. 
• You can chop wood for a TP in certain match ups, e.g., Portuguese or Spanish, where you want to steal trading posts from their ATP strategies. 
• Don't forget to research great coats (settler hitpoints upgrade) in your market (preferably after gang saw or after steel traps). This upgrade is particularly important against certain matchups, e.g., Germans as they constantly raid or Russians due to their early pressure, and so on.

Standard Opening and Adapting

• Your game plan is to contain your opponent in the Commerce Age, and possibly age to Fortress Age to get veteran musketeers and train longbows/ dragoons + hussars, depending on what your opponent does. 
• The unit meta is musketeers/ longbows + hussars to pressure your opponent. If you have the upper hand, you can skip the 4 settlers shipment to go up to Fortress Age. If you need to stay longer in the Commerce Age, send the 4 settlers shipment.
• You will have to train dragoons in certain match ups, e.g., against Germans or French as they tend to mass a lot of hand cavalry units.
• Once you hit the Fortress Age, you generally want to ship 2 falconets first and push your opponent right away. 
• If you are feeling greedy, ship the 8 villagers. 
• If you are getting pressured you can ship other military shipments like 10 longbows, 5 hussars, or 9 musketeers. 
• Going for artillery is strong against the African civilizations, as they struggle to mass a lot of culverins. 
• Shipping 1000 coins will allow you to keep on massing more musketeers and falconets for a heavy push.
• In some match-ups you could use the 1000 coin shipment to age to the Industrial Age and play with guard units and rockets/horse artillery shipments. This would be possible when your opponent is playing very greedy and doesn't push you in early Fortress Age at all, otherwise it has a high chance to fail.

Standard Rush Opening

• Against certain civilizations you want to play aggressively. 
• Upon reaching the Commerce Age, place your outpost in the middle of the map or as forward as possible and build your barracks next to it, so you can pressure faster and harass your opponent to get a lead.
• Typically, you will train musketeers. 
• You may go for longbows if your opponent is not making hand cavalry.
• In certain matchups, you can even start with pikemen then boom to age up and take advantage of your Fortress Age shipments. 
• This build order is especially effective against the Japanese, where you want to be able to get more units out. If you feel it to be beneficial, ship 6 musketeers and 6 longbows forward before aging and keep the pressure; you can even add a stable, if necessary. 
• The steps are similar to the standard opening, but putting more pressure on your opponent.

Build Order

• Collect the food crates first and queue a settler as soon a possible, start scouting with your explorer around the town center
• Build 2 houses or 1 house and 1 market for hunting dogs  if you have more than 35 coin treasure under TC
• Have 2 Manor houses built by this time
• Ship 3 settlers
• Age for The Governor (200 coin + 1 outpost)
• Get +100 food, build a market if you haven’t and send gangsaw upgrade from the market
• Build your military infrastructure and distribute your settlers depending on the resources your units cost.
• Musketeers production
• Longbows production
• Hussars production

Water Adaptation

• In water maps, you can add a dock and slowly train fishing boats in the late Commerce Age, or while aging to Fortress Age. 
• In this scenario, you don't need to play that aggressive as your water boom will also give you a huge lead (sending schooners as an early shipment is not recommended).

Holding a Timing Push

• Against timing pushes, which come around the 7-9 minute-mark, you want to build some walls around your base and a barracks, and train around 5 to 10 longbows. 
• If you are aging to Fortress Age, ideally wait for the 7 longbows from the age up ( The Adventurer). 
• If the pressure is high, you want to ship 6 musketeers or 6 longbows, send minutemen and instantly spam reviving your explorer whilst producing musketeers. 
• Use your settlers to tank. 
• Use your town center fire effectively on the low HP units, 10 settlers garrisoned is optimal. Don't put more settlers unless your town center is fully surrounded and put settlers into town center once they are low HP.