To get a good understanding of a civilisation we need to know their weaknesses and their strengths.
I’m trying to be as general and nonspecific as possible.
Why USA is a bad Civ:
-No settler cards only French and Irish immigration cards which require resources to be sent or time to pass.
-Carbine Cavalry Suck
-No hand infantry
-Carbine Cavalry Suck (this is worth repeating since their the only civ that has no hand infantry)
-Their unit improvement cards are among the worst
-Their crossbow unit has less range than a musketeer without a card
-You can never place a flag where its actually useful except on large maps.
Why USA is a good civ
-Their building upgrade cards are definitely the best in the game
-State Capitol is really good: you can train wagons and get some upgrades an age earlier
-You get XP crates
-Outlaws are consistent, have charged abilities and can be upgraded to guard level
-Gatlings are cheap and can be made from the fort
-They have Foreign legions instead of mercenary shipments which don’t cost all your coin
So basically, If you’re smart:
Your buildings will be better than your opponents
You’ll maximise wagon use; they don’t take up settler time and they grant XP when erected
you’ll supplement your somewhat weaker USA military with auxiliaries of Foreign legions, mercenaries and even outlaws (3 saloons from advanced saloons is very useful)
No one has been playing them much lately in my range. The players that want the op civ want the real thing, the swedes. If they are ever cut back the swedes usa will appear again with more frequency.
They are not underpowered they have alot of powerful options for people that know how to use them. It used to be you just hit them as hard as you can early. That worked ok but makes for a pretty short unfulfilling game. The Spanish option made that very difficult to do. Players lately have been employing it as a very effective rush as well
Then you smoked some good purpa. Cause you are having hallucinations.
Swedes is stupidly weak at the moment. They would never be taken seriously while they don’t get at least the advanced torps with 3k+ HP, a ranged attack and 40% less the cost like the other Europeans civs do.
A XP trickle on Torps and revert the nerf on Caroleans attack would be well welcomed too.
And this is just the beginning, they will need much more buff to stop being a trash tier civ.
Yes, but you need to consider the fact that they don’t have a skirmisher unit until the late game, when the gold mines starts to dwindle, virtually making the Jaegar useless.
To remedy this problem, I would suggest that every single shipment gives either 3 Jaegars or a falconet on top of the base value of the shipment.
USA is actually my most played civ, as after release I played a ton of just USA.
Having seen and tried all of it’s strategies here are a few good and bad points.
Low and slow eco, traditional builds with usa just are too slow and when you check all resources gathered you will be significantly out gathered by almost any civ until the 25 min mark, from my experience there’s only 2 ways to match eco, either send french and irish immigrants 1st to copy the traditional 3v,4v shipments of other civs or use chinese immigrants to control a tp line with stagecoach.
Terrible anti-cav, carbine cavalry are 1 of the least used units quite simply they are bad dragoons, in most match ups this cav weakness is over exaggerated at least in 1v1 where there’s just not that much cav in general, and with arsenal you can get the socket bayonet tech which improves your regulars in melee vs cav(+20% attack in melee) as well as the hp tech which is more then enough in most games as regulars are great musketeers.
1 of the strongest turtle civs, with usa and the capitol building you can quickly build tc’s and outposts without having to use villagers or your explorer, making it very difficult to push your base without mortars. General can also build and rebuild forts, can place the flag mid map to increase the speed units train and buff them near the flag to make a strong forward base.
There are several cards to get mill wagons which you will need if doing a 3tc boom and turtling because you will quickly run out of food, however with limited deck space i feel it’s better to get max woodcutting upgrades with hamiltonian economics and that will aid in building mills when needed and production of gatlings/state militia and of course outpost spam.
USA also have access to a ton of trickles which helps when turtling, you can get the bank wagon, capitalism trickle, xp trickle from spanish immigrants, age with pensylvania and get the church gold trickle worth another bank as well as pensylvania gives you church wagon and increases build limit so you can now get 2 churches trickling xp. Factory in age 3 as well, you can really get a strong eco with all these things combined, although it is very greedy and may not work well against any aggression.
4.State militia are probably the best standard unit in the game, unfortunately they need the long rifles card or their range is bad but with that and springfield armory techs: counter infantry rifling, flint lock, paper cartridge and military drummers which all research fairly quickly and for free they become a powerhouse in age 2 and beyond. That will give them extra multiplier vs heavy infantry, +10% hp, +15% attack, +10% speed and state militia gain more hp up to 30 units so they become very fast, beefy, cost-effective skirms and with high hp can even stand up to cavalry. Also have an upgrade card in age 3 to make them even stronger, there’s an age 4 federal card that gives them an additional +10% buff from the flag.
Unfortunately even with all that USA still isn’t the best turtle civ, portugal are by far the best on water and on land inca have usa beat quite significantly with their strongholds to garrison units, 2 building hp cards, stealth fort/warhuts, houses producing food, strong archers, chimu runners to raid. usa just falls short but it is still a fun civ to use and can be viable just know that you will be at a small disadvantage vs most civs.
Well lancers are huge vs usa as they’ll beat musk, but usa can handle regular cav like huss just fine in melee.
Like going full huss isn’t an instawin vs usa like it can be vs russia age 2.
spains lancers are very hard for usa to counter, probably their worst match up unless they can win quickly age 2, I guess nothing but carbine cav, or send the dragoons card 1st in fortress and get a fort built asap to train them, the dragoons will destroy the lancers as they’re stronger than regular vet dragoons, will always be difficult tho because spain have a fast ff and can ship 4 and 5 lancers.
that applies to any civ though, would need a culverin.
Could say the same thing as brit musk, they can handle cav too unless they come with artillery then they’d need a culv.
USA’s just got a big weakness vs lancer type cav specifically because typically they don’t want to make dragoon due to lackluster carbine cav. Inca suffer the same because they just have spearmen as anti-cav as they’re dragoon unit the bolas warrior sucks. At least usa actually can send the french dragoons I guess, what can inca do, they’d have to just use bowmen and fall back to a stronghold because the spearmen would not do well vs 10 lancers.
No way, Sweden is in a relatively good spot right now, low A tier, no where near where they used to be, but not horrible either
When the 3 civs you play have a powerful cav unit ( lancer cuirassier, and chimu runner), then they aren’t yeah usa has one thing that’s exploitable and I’m lucky the civs I like specialize in that one thing.
So a better way to put it is: usa is disgustingly Op vs most civs
I too have played a LOT of USA and just repeating some points here:
They are terrible against cavalry to the point if you get attacked by a good group of cav + art you literally just say ggs. Carbine Cavalry need a very significant buff to make them not the absolute worst unit in the game.
Good and bad eco… USA has really good eco IF YOU GO THAT ROUTE but then suffers big time in the military department and loses to any rush whatsoever. Or they have terrible eco until age 4ish when they get caught up on villagers but have a decent military. It’s a very annoying trade off that suffers in both directions.
USA has a good anti infantry artillery. The gatling cannon is a great unit. It shreds through infantry with no effort whatsoever but loses to Culv and Cav SUPER HARD. It’s a great unit with a specific use case. Note though that it STILL does not help against USA’s massive cavalry weakness.
The State Militia is probably one of the best units in the game. I spam these guys (with rifling) like there’s no tomorrow in pretty much every game I play.
Regulars (muskateers) are too expensive. Nough said.
USA skirmish unit is worthless. Not that this is a big deal because USA is good vs infantry but just something to take note of.
Minutemen are amazing BUT with marine card SHOULD BE ABLE TO BE HEALED. May actually make building surgeons worth while.
Tons of strategies that people are trying to perfect: USA has some of the craziest game strats in AOE3. Lots of interesting diversity due to the immigrant cards.
State Capitol unique building has some interesting upgrades and can build wagons.
So with all of that said I definitely believe USA has some big room to grow to be viable in top gameplay. I don’t want ANY civ to be OP I just want them all to be viable civs to play.
Agree with the carbine cav, desperately need a buff.
I’ve found that going french immigrants(worth 3.75 villagers) then irish immigrants at 5 minutes (4 villagers) more than matches most civs early game, then you can either go for more greedy options or military depending on the matchup. With USA I often do french and irish then virginia ff into new hampshire for 2 fast tc wagons immediately on age up, only ports have 3 tc’s as fast.
There are many options too if against a slow civ you could go full greed and send the bank wagon and age with Pennsylvania for another gold trickle and church xp trickle. Massachusetts is also good when combined with french and irish as it’ll give you a card for 3 pilgrims (3.3 villagers) and the extra food as well, depends how greedy you want to go.
If against an aggressive civ I’ve always found that USA can hold very well, typically you will have a barraacks/outpost from age up, can also go spanish immigrants for an additional outpost that can call strong pikemen on any cav, combine that with the 8 state militia and should be able to hold any early aggression.
yeah usa has one thing that’s exploitable and I’m lucky the civs I like specialize in that one thing.