Samby's Fur Trade FI

Leverage the incredible power of the fur trade card to power your way to industrial age and hit your opponent very hard with Napoléon's very own Old Guard.

Age I

• Perform a TP+house opening. Priority on wood treasure to get the house up asap. Then food treasures to age up with as least idle time as possible.
• Herd agressively. This strategy requires an enormous amount of food. You will need 3 to 4 herds.
• 3 coureur des bois as 1st shipment.
• Age-up with the governor (tower+200c) with 14 cdb.

Transition

• 2nd shipment is advanced market. Build it defensively as the destruction of the market compromises the strategy.
• Gather 50coin and 50wood (treasures can help) to reasearch unting dogs as soon as the market is up. Keep herding with 2/3 cdb.
• Sell food at the market to get 125w and 125c. Avoid overselling/buying and gather the leftover itself.

Age II

• Research steel traps asap.
• Queue enough cdb to have 18/20 population. Keep gathering food with all your villagers until you have enough to age up.
• Gather the coin crates then sell food to have 1000 coin. You have two food upgrades and the advanced market so it is more efficient to sell food instead of getting coins.
• Ship 4 cdb asap.
• If you played correctly you will have enough resources fast enough to avoid idling your TC.
• Use the exiled price (fast) age up.

Transition

• Keep gathering food. Sell some to buy wood for a house. It is not very original we know.

Age III

• Keep training cdb.
• Ship the fort ASAP. It will be our only line of defense for a while. Your hunts at home are probably exhausted by now so the fort can be used to protect more exposed hunts; However, if you herded early this should not be too difficult.
• Did we tell you to keep gathering food with all your cdb ?
• Ship Fur trade as soon as possible. When it arrives we want to have more than 4000f in the bank.
• Once the conversion is done you will be swimming in coin. Immediately buy back 2000 food at the market and age up to industrial with the Tycoon (1000 coin).

Transition

• You should have plenty of coin left ibuy wood for a church and research mercantilism. We need more shipments fast.
• Ship the church card as soon as possible.
• If you are running out of hunts, go to berries and mine. Be warned that this is inefficient. You could get the far hunts but this is ultra risky.

Age IV

Thing will get interesting. Pick up the 1k coin asap and ship the 25 royal musketeers. You should have a spare shipment so queue whatever unit will counter the response of your opponent to your grenadier. You will be pop capped for a long time after that.

Research young/middle and old guard. The push as soon as the 25 royal musketeers are here. Be aggressive. You need to raze the enemy's infrastructure before their economic advantage turns into a military advantage.

Branching paths

You are pop capped. You can either

1. Re-macro to get more houses (mine coin and buy the wood at the market until the buy price is 120) and produce out of your fort and complement the units trained with unit shipments.
2. Send factories and macro for a revolt to the USA which is quite easy to achieve by the time your two factories are rolled in.

In case of early aggression

A shrewd opponent looking at your deck will understand what you are going for. Your biggest window of vulnerability is early age 3 before your fort is up.

• If you see a colonial timing attack, you have the two tower shipment + minutemen and cdb with great coat/blunderbuss. Skip the fort in age 3 if you send the infinite 2 towers.
• If case of a big age 3 timing (5 falcs or any heavy siege push that will overwhelm your fort), the age 3 merc shipments are available to defend yourself. You will have to give up on mercantilism or age 4 in the process but you will have stopped the timing and are free to counterattack with middle guard and a good economy.

When revolting

USA is most of the time the best choice. When revolting with the USA, use your factories to afford the better unit shipments. Washington grenadiers are excellent and Knox artillery can shut down enemy's artillery. The 12 regulars are excellent anti cav. Pulaski's cavalry is a low-value shipment and should only be used when you absolutely need heavy cav. 4 gatling is higher value if you want to deal with light infantry.

Haiti is the other choice for a revolt but is very niche. Its main draw is the "Picket" shipment to easily spam pikemen backed by falconets to raze buildings faster. Avoid Canada and revolutionary France as they do not raise your population to 200.