Strategy For 3 Player Game Age Of Empires Series

I recently played a three player AoM game for the first time and i could not figure how to start about in the game. I couldn't figure where to make forward base and who to be offensive at first. I couldn't get enough time to do anything and had to resign out in desperation in both the games i played. I wil like to know some basic starting strategies for 2+ player games. How to start about and what should be main motive offensive or defensive?

Please help out as i have som emajor games coming up

well if you are on an enclosed forest type match (my favourite) identify the two main "strangle points" where the terrain comes together forming a natural wall, and fill in the gaps with 2 or 3 layers of walls, gates and towers and eventually castles.

If you are on an open map then you need to react to how your enemies play, if they are attackers constantly attacking you then i would recommend building a large army ASAP but keep most of them around your town centre, send out a few soldiers, enough to repel his forces every time he attacks. He will progressively send more and more troops each time, the trick is to keep building up this huge army in secret, so when he sends a reasonable force of soldiers and you send out a small amount of your huge army to kill them all you can then send in every soldier you have (making sure to keep training more to defend) and kill as many villages as you can. Target the civilians first, they generate resources and target the most expensive buildings too, You probably wont kill him in this attack, but he will retaliate with a big force, so be ready for them when he does, but while your troops are alive just keep focussing on individual buildings, i like a HUGE archer section, 100+ if possible just archers, a single right click on any unit will destroy it straight away, with the exception of upgraded rams, and it takes seconds to destroy low level buildings, the only units that can damage your group are rangers, so as long as you kill melee fighters as soon as you see them you are very hard to take out. If he has Onagers make sure to spread your guys out

You could try luring his guys into the third guy's army too, send in 10 or so mounted units, run around his base and then lead his attacking troops right into player 3's base, they will probably get caught up in battle, you can run your troops to safety (Not your base, they will be followed) and then attack the first guy's base while him and play 3 fight it out

Well these players don't play strangle games and also those map are very few also. I think walling can be helpful alot especially around you touch center and barack add with forts so that you can have defensive game back up if you do mistakes in the offensive part of the game. I figured raiding ain't the first thing one should do and if he does it should be pretty nicely macroed so that they don't go waste. Defensive start and then 10+ min raids work are good.

I really loved the final part of your advice. It is so innovative and ingenious. Love the thing , i hope the guy doesn't see it when i am doing or obviously he will macro them back. But it will be alot of fun. I just have to make sure i don't lose alot of time there

Another good idea is to send out a small force to attack from say the left, wait for his army to respond in huge numbers and then run in with a massive force from the right. His troops will end up divided but you need a fairly big army to do it. If you can have a small group attack from the right, to lure him there, then a big force on the left and as as his men move to the left side of his base to fight you off have another big group on the right hiding and then send them in. He wont know where to send his troops It might not win you the game straight away but you can thin out the numbers of villages and destroy things like houses, farms and other strategic buildings.

Whatever happens you cant afford to fight his troops head on. The casualties are too many and you wont have enough troops to survive the barrage of arrows from a castle or town centre long enough to destroy the building itself so you need to avoid his army as much as possible so you can get to the relatively undefended buildings. Battering rams are good for that Especially if you have a team of archers defending each one to take out melee attackers as the rams are strong against archer attacks so its not such an issue. But this only really applies to AOE2. I cant remember the siege weapons in 3