Into the Caves

Into the Caves is the second scenario of Act I: Blood in Age of Empires III. The knights must wipe out the remaining threat to the island.

Answers

File:CutsceneA.jpg

In this cutscene Morgan Black wants to find any remaining Ottomans and soon finds Sahin The Falcon making a swift retreat. They have a short conversation about the future of the knights and the nickname "Frenk" before Sahin leaves. Later Alain informs Morgan that pockets of Ottomans are located to the east and so Morgan orders his men to follow him. Bringing with them a bombard captured from the enemy, in the event they will need it's firepower.

Aggressive Strategy

You begin under attack, though the bombard proves your greatest weapon repeatedly during this battle. Your town begins moderately sized. Equipped with two Outposts, two Barracks, a Field Hospital and some Houses. It's not overly important to start building more right away.

The strategy runs mostly on the initial units you save, the bombard, 15-20+ trained crossbowmen and the high siege damage Swiss Pikemen you save. It's not important to earn large amounts of experience in the campaign (cheats), this is due to the fact you won't be able to Build a Deck as you can in skirmishes. Any new cards you unlock will not be able to be switched out for inferior cards, you are stuck with both. Furthermore, if you reach the maximum number of cards allowed in a single age line (9) the next card purchased for that age will push one off the list (can never be used again), maybe even one you wanted to keep. For this reason it's best to know what's most useful so you can precisely take the cards you want for the ages you want (with or without cheats). The trick below (leaving the map running) is one way to "buy" your greater number of home city cards (when the HC becomes active) with a time investment instead of a cheat code.

Note: Enemy settlers will typically flee into the cave, or to the gold deposit north of the treasure X in the first picture.

Upgrade your crossbowmen at the barracks, and train 15-20 more while finishing off the Ottomans attacking your base. Heal any wounded units at the Field Hospital and priest. Head northeast (ignoring the treasures and caches) and attack at around 4 minutes with the bombard in tow.

The attack at 00:05:02 after having the soldiers focus on the Ottoman defenders and the prisoner cage while the bombard pummeled the Ottoman town center. Have the prisoners and all other units focus on the town center after they are freed. Once the town center falls, free the prisoners to the southeast and then head immediately to the cave to intercept a Covered Wagon.

The attack at 00:06:44, the town center wagon almost escaped but if you look closely you'll notice a cannonball chasing it. It's important to stop this wagon from making it into the cave, they can attempt to rebuild otherwise because the game doesn't prevent you from building "underground".

The attack at 00:13:36, halfway through the caves while operations continue outside to mop up stragglers.

The attack at 00:19:56, only those two Galleys and two Ottoman Fishing Boats remain at this point.

The attack at 00:21:21, the final galley sinks. All enemy military units are crushed, destroy the caches and gather the treasures at your leisure.

The game at 01:30:59, the home city had reached level 5 due to building millls (+80 experience each). You can check your level progress by clicking Menu and Player Summary. This works only on maps where you have no teammates, otherwise it opens the tribute screen.

One of the few maps in the game where it is possible to build docks inside cliff walls. Given that this map can be beaten on any difficulty with a turtle and naval supremacy strategy as well, it's worth noting.

Speedy Strategy

Technically all you must do to win this map is destroy all of the weapon caches, the time taken to win can be reduced to 5–7 minutes. Instead of following the above strategy to stop them from building, instead focus solely on destroying each of the caches and destroying them as quickly as possible.

Instead of immediately counterattacking and destroying their town hall follow the same steps above but then head in that direction and clear a path into the cave with the bombard in tow. Train 10-15 more crossbowmen and send them to the cache north of your starting town. Trying to build an artillery foundry to train some hoop throwers (bonus objective) at your base for defense is optional. Hotkey the bombard so you can quickly deploy it or get it ready for travel. When the last cache is destroyed the map ends. Template:SeriesNavigation